1979 Now

A couple of years ago, I started writing a novel set in 1977. This meant researching/refreshing my memory of the events and music of that year and, even when it was completed and then published, I didn’t stop. I carried on tracking time and as 2017 rolled into 2018 there were LPs from 1978 to dig out and play; this year, I’ve been enjoying a vintage age for music 40 years in arrears with all that 1979 has to offer by listening to LPs from The Cure, The Raincoats, Wire, The Fall (two), Skids, Tubeway Army, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four, The Clash, Specials, PiL, Adam and the Ants, Joy Division, The Slits, Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Members and, of course, Bowie and Iggy.

Having said that, I don’t live entirely in the musical past: I buy a couple of dozen new albums annually and mostly see current bands live, with this year’s crop including Sleaford Mods, Yak, Rozi Plain, Fontaines DC, The Stroppies, Cate Le Bon, Callum Easter, Chastity Belt, Vic Godard, Edwyn Collins, The Murder Capital and Kate Tempest; but I often feel that I didn’t appreciate the quality of the times I was living through in my youth and failed to pay enough attention. So, I’m paying attention now and it is well worth it.

1979 is arguably the finest year there has ever been for popular music of my taste but it also has some interesting political parallels with our current position. Then, as now, the leader of the country was a blonde maverick, adored by their supporters but loathed by their enemies, about to usher in a right-wing project – monetarism then, Brexit now – that would disproportionately damage the most vulnerable in society. Then, as probably now, they were at the start of a 10-year period of power that would transform the landscape of our country.

The difference is that Thatcher’s reign came after a time when eleven of the preceding fifteen years had seen Labour governments delivering liberal social reforms and legislating to enshrine employment rights and to support women, gay people and ethnic minority groups, measures that would offer some protection against the worst excesses of the free-market agenda. Unfortunately, the start of Johnson’s administration follows on from nine years of suffering that we have already had under Cameron and May’s austere Tory governments: NHS, education and local authority cuts; hostile environment; Universal Credit; and no action on climate change, homelessness and racism. With all this as the foundation, I think that what we are in for in the twenties will be much worse than what we endured in the eighties.

I have no solutions to offer of my own. Once again, just as in 1979, people of my class have voted in large numbers for a Conservative Party that does not have their best interests at heart. All I can do is put my faith in the hope that the Labour Party stops eating itself and holds the government closely to account; that, and turn up the music. Happy New Year.

So Funny It Hurts

A year ago, I was convinced that Jeremy Corbyn was the person best placed to lead the Labour Party and I cast my vote in the election accordingly. One year on, when my ballot paper drops through the letterbox tomorrow, I am certain that I will not be doing so again. The writer and actor Alex Andreou has set out an eloquent and lengthy exploration of the causes of his own disillusionment with Corbyn. I won’t repeat his litany of the shortcomings of our leader, but Andreou’s reasons for his volte-face chime very closely with my own and it is well worth a read.

For Andreou, it was Corbyn’s performance in the EU referendum that was the final straw; for me, it was his refusal to stand down when his own MPs overwhelmingly delivered a vote of no confidence in him. I do not think it matters how The Coup started – it’s called politics - but the fact is that scores of young and talented left-leaning Labour MPs also lost faith in the leader of their party. I know that the membership is now deemed to have holy sovereignty but we are a party that seeks parliamentary power to deliver our socialist beliefs and MPs need to be a well-led and cohesive force.

I suspect that Corbyn would have stood down but for John McDonnell; if you watch Jeremy’s video plea to members at that time, when he blinks at 1:38 you can just see HELP ME written on his eyelids. And for all the faux outrage over The Coup, we seem to forget that Corbyn is leader as a result of his own coup: pleading for nominations from MPs to broaden the debate and then very efficiently signing up thousands of supporters to deliver victory (marginally more full members voted against Corbyn than with him last year, but amongst supporters it was a landslide).

If I am disillusioned, I fear that others are deluded. We have experienced a lifetime of losing on the left and Corbyn suddenly makes us feel like winners. Indeed, the mailshot I have just received from his campaign is branded with the slogan Winning Values; but these victories are all inward looking. Corbyn wins the right to automatically be on the ballot: victory! Corbyn defeats the legal action to make him seek nominations: victory! Corbyn’s slate is elected to the NEC: victory! New members win the right to vote in the election: victory! All this winning but there is absolutely no sign that the people – the voters - share the new-improved-size Labour Party’s love for Corbyn. His supporters point to some average mid-term election results but the pattern shows that Labour is in danger of becoming a metropolitan party: there have been some devastating council by-election losses in provincial areas as well as damning national opinion polls.

I do not think Corbyn is interested in becoming Prime Minister; what is important to him is leading a party of political purity: the means has become the end. I support his core ideas around employment, housing and transport but Owen Smith has done more to present how these will be realised in the past few weeks than Corbyn has done in the past year. A more effective and efficient leader will be able to communicate the policies that, up until now, have been hidden behind the person. The problem is, Labour has become ‘Just Jeremy’ and this is not entirely his fault.

The worst part of the mess we are in is what is being ascribed to Corbyn by those who follow him. If it wasn’t so tragic it would be funny - or do I actually mean that the other way round? My main reaction to recent events has been to find them incongruously funny – I cannot take Jeremy Corbyn seriously anymore. The more po-faced and humourless his adoring Momentum masses become, as they spiral towards electoral oblivion with their matching graphic design, the more hilarious it gets; and I keep being reminded of two comedy films from that most politically significant of years, 1979.

Whenever I see footage and images of the mass Corbyn rallies, presented as proof of just how popular Jeremy is, I immediately think of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Graham Chapman, playing the eponymous hero mistaken for the saviour, is pursued through the streets by a horde of persistent and devoted pilgrims that he cannot shake off – “Now, fuck off!” “How shall we fuck off, O Lord?” – and he has to fall back on his mum to convince his followers that “he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!” And whenever I see Corbyn interviewed, delivering messages that a year ago seemed refreshing but now, with hindsight, seem rudimentary and ill-thought out, I am reminded of Peter Sellers’ character, Chancey Gardener, in the film Being There, where the statements of a simple gardener - “as long as the roots are not severed, all is well” - are taken for words of profound wisdom by the political class. Both of these films are perfect metaphors for what is happening in the Labour Party at the moment. I have no idea how this movie will end, if indeed it ever will, but once you have seen the emperor naked, there is no going back; you have realised the joke and it is very funny – but it is so funny it hurts.

Fear and Loathing

Just over a week ago, a colleague and I were handing out Labour In For Britain leaflets outside the village hall before an EU referendum hustings meeting, one of a series of debates organised by the local MP in the run up to the vote. Rural Sussex is not natural Labour territory but most people politely took a leaflet; some were actually enthusiastic, a few declined and two were downright hostile. The first gave us a Tebbitesque "On yer bike"; the second, an elderly woman on two walking sticks, took me aback when she snapped, "No! You've come here mob-handed because you're scared you're going to lose!" Scowling and muttering, she hobbled off into the hall.

In the meeting, after pitches by Leave and Remain speakers, the MP invited comments from the floor. Amidst a succession of muddled points about sovereignty, the likelihood of Turkey joining the EU and the veracity of the £350 million per week figure, the elderly woman made an aggressive contribution of telling clarity: she wanted to leave the EU to keep out immigrants, to reduce the threat of ISIS and to take back control. It was easy to recognise its source: a lethal cocktail of tabloid rhetoric, vintage Boris Farage and plain fear. What she said encouraged others: a young woman, who confessed she was not old enough to vote, bemoaned the loss of the British Empire and laid this at the EU's door.

The next day, I became involved in a debate on social media (not something I usually do) with a Leave campaigner who had used an image of British servicemen returning from the war in support of an out vote. I pointed out to him that the EU existed to ensure that there would never be a European theatre of war again and my late dad, who had lost his mum in the Blitz and then been involved in the bombing of Dresden, was a passionate supporter of the European project having seen at first hand the suffering on both sides. I was told to bugger off and that people like me were giving away British freedom.

A few days later, I overheard my children discussing the referendum debates they were having in their classes at school. They were talking about the minority of kids who supported 'out' and the reasons they had given; immigrants, and the need to "keep them out", was the constant justification. My oldest two, aware enough to not want to stereotype the outers, were skirting around the issue. It fell to the youngest to articulate what they were all thinking: "All the mean kids are supporting Leave," she said.

Mulling over all of this the night before the murder of Jo Cox, my wife and I were puzzled that we seemed to have reached a point where we are living in a climate of bitterness and resentment. Politics had clearly failed a section of the electorate but that did not entirely explain the quick conversion to anger and hatred; sections of our own community seemed to be bound up in a straitjacket of fear and loathing.

When politicians talk of immigration it is either to fudge or inflame. The worst examples of print media - The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express - have been doing only the latter. When I spoke at the hustings meeting, I said that immigration is a two-way street: there are 2 million Britons living and working in Europe and, like it or not, we are living in a smaller world; the NHS would not have survived without immigration and our ageing workforce needs migrants more than ever. I was applauded by some for my comments but when I looked across at the elderly woman she was snarling not smiling.

There is a need for honesty about immigration, not undeliverable promises and certainly not the hysterical hyperbole that some politicians and journalists have been peddling of late - they should hang their heads in utter shame. Jo Cox's assassin had seemingly flirted with neo-Nazism for 20 years; something made him violently snap now and the febrile atmosphere of our current culture and politics cannot be discounted in this.

Together We Stand

To hear Jeremy Corbyn speak about the European Union as a force for social justice yesterday evening was to remind me that, up until now, the debate over the EU referendum has largely been a battle of swinging dicks, trading hypothetical consumer testing points. In a race to appeal to the electorate’s lowest common denominator – what’s in it for me? – it was refreshing to hear a high-profile politician outline what is in it for us.

Corbyn was sharing the stage at St. Mary in the Castle in Hastings with Judy Rogers, a local Labour councillor, and Shakira Martin a vice-president of the National Union of Students. Their compelling stories underlined Corbyn’s point that other voices were not being heard in, what has boiled down to, a playground spat between two Old Etonians.

Rogers outlined the struggle, throughout her career, to achieve pay equality with her male counterparts and Martin, a young black single-parent who was involved in Corbyn’s leadership campaign last year, spoke of the power of education to transform the lives of people in her position.

Taking his cue from these confident women, Jeremy Corbyn outlined a positive view of the EU and defined Britain’s Tory government as the real institution of restrictive self-interest. Rather than focus on business, he proposed a vision for a reformed EU that builds on the great strides in social justice already made in the areas of employment rights, human rights, climate change and air and sea pollution.

It was a message that is not heard often enough in the referendum debate as it fails to permeate a mainstream media obsessed with personalities, conspiracies and splits. Corbyn refuses to play that game and instead invokes the spirit of Robert Tressell by emphasising that we can only move forward if we work together, and that we will only go backwards if we stand in isolation.

Back to the Future

On holiday in Cornwall last week, my aged vehicle broke down. Happening near the end of our holiday, it was not going to be repaired in time so I spent a couple of days trying to make arrangements to get the car, two adults, three kids, two dogs and a pile of luggage back to East Sussex. Mostly, I was at the top of our holiday home desperately clinging onto a sketchy phone signal whilst I tried to coordinate a major breakdown service, a recovery firm and a local mechanic. It was not easy. It was a stressful time. At one point in the middle of all this my mobile rang and, desperate for good news but fearing it would be more bad, I barked “Yes!?” into the phone.

“Oh, hello. I’m phoning from the Jeremy Corbyn campaign team. I was wondering if we could rely on your vote in the leadership ballot?” said a polite young man.

“Yes you can!” I bellowed. “YES, YOU BLOODY WELL CAN!”

Taken aback by the blend of aggression and affirmation, I suspect he thought I was joking. I wasn’t. He had caught me at a bad time, but I was deadly serious.

Having re-joined the Labour Party at the end of April, the election defeat in May meant that I was quickly forced to consider who I would want the next leader of the party to be. I struggled to think of anyone other than Andy Burnham as a potential leader: working class roots, experience of government, still grounded; and as the candidates began to declare – some unfamiliar having risen without trace, others hamstrung by overleaping ambition – my mind did not change. That is until Burnham launched his own candidacy at a business consultancy specialising in tax avoidance, wearing a navy blue business suit and looking and sounding like all the other fortysomething showroom dummies – Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Osborne – who have lectured us in recent years about the austerity medicine we all need to swallow: my heart sank.

However, due to the largesse of MPs who supported a widening of the debate, things started to look up: Corbyn got on the ballot at the last minute. Those MPs now probably regret their benevolence with him so far ahead in the polls, but this episode perfectly highlights the massive disconnect between the parliamentary party and its members. Of course, spin doctors, Labour grandees and faux-radical superannuated newspaper columnists are queuing up to tell us that a Corbyn-led Labour Party would be unelectable; and based on the profile of the recent voting electorate, they are right.

Elections have increasingly been dominated by older voters: the older the age group, the higher the turnout. At the last election, generations that had benefited from decent and available social housing, free further education, cheap home ownership and proper pensions elected the Tories. Manipulated into believing that the country can no longer afford these fundamentals of an equitable society, they pulled up the ladder. The reason Corbyn can win in 2020 is because he will be backed by a different electorate, one that supports those fundamentals for all. What he has done within the Labour Party – energising and attracting young people into politics – will be replicated across the country as those starting out in adult life will oppose their exclusion from education, housing and fair wages

It is not just the young who will win it for Labour. The sages warn that we have to tempt back Tory voters to win an election; this cannot be done with a left-wing manifesto, they say. But most voters do not think in terms of left or right-wing; they think in terms of policies. What Labour needs to go back to is its traditional beliefs. For a long time it has been drifting away from these (for me the New Labour nadir was not the Iraq war but super casinos; remember that idea?) and the number of people voting Labour fell at each election of the Blair premiership despite him winning three times. It is the voters who have deserted the party - not just to the Tories but to the SNP, UKIP and abstention - who will respond to Corbyn’s core Labour ideas for a future of investment not austerity; ideas which will build social housing, create manufacturing jobs, abolish tuition fees and run public services for people not profit. And I am sure that under a Jeremy Corbyn government, my car would not still be in Cornwall.

Grassroots

So, there I was, two weeks before the general election, getting excited about the opinion polls for the eight East Sussex seats. Set to buck the south-east Tory trend, the county was on-course to be a multi-coloured ribbon of red, yellow, blue and green. The reality, of course, was different: the Lib Dems lost Lewes and Eastbourne - curiously the electorate rewarded the Tories for downgrading maternity services and closing A & E in this town - and Labour failed to take Hastings and Brighton Kemptown. The only bright spots were Labour winning Hove and the Greens holding on to Brighton Pavilion. Otherwise, East Sussex is as blue as the rest of southern England.

It’s not all bad, though. Labour came second in the seat of Mid Sussex, Nicholas Soames' fiefdom covering the West Sussex area around Haywards Heath and East Grinstead. This may seem like the sound of straws being clutched at, but Labour has been a distant third in every general election since the seat’s creation in 1974; this result is seismic. It has made me realise that, for any left-leaning person, if Cameron’s lazy Thatcherism is to be truly opposed, only Labour can do it. It is a broad church, other anti-Tory parties are not: the Green Party has barely broken out of single issue politics and, whilst smaller parties on the left are excellent at local campaigning, their electoral performance is a token. A friend in Gloucestershire told me he realised, as he campaigned unsuccessfully for Labour to re-take the seat of Stroud that was lost in 2010, that any anti-Tory position other than Labour is a luxury: we cannot afford to argue the purity of our political positions whilst people are victims of the bedroom tax, cuts in council services and the tearing apart of the hard-fought-for social safety net.

However, it wasn’t the hope of the Mid Sussex result that made me finally re-join Labour, the party I have always voted for, was active in in London during the 1980s but was last a member of in the 1990s: I filled out my application before the recent elections. I had been questioning the terms of my political engagement for a while - thinking of not voting, having faith only in trade unions, flirting with the Greens – but when the notice of candidates for the local district council elections was posted in my area, it became apparent that in a large number of the 35 wards there was little democracy on offer. In my own ward there was a choice between the existing Tory councillor and a UKIP challenger; there were similarly limited options elsewhere and, in a few wards, sitting councillors were standing for re-election unopposed. Labour fielded candidates in only 15 wards, mostly in towns, and the Greens only 7. How can this be allowed to happen, we cried, throwing up our hands? Well, we had allowed it to happen. If there is no alternative political activism at the grassroots in the countryside, there can be no alternative in the democratic process. Two quotations were running through my mind when I went to the polling station to spoil my district council ballot paper: the writer David Runciman’s aphorism, “only politics can save you from bad politics” and Podemos' leader Pablo Inglesias’ observation that, “if the citizens don’t get involved in politics, others will”. It was time to stop pontificating and get active.

We are now trying to build a Labour Party branch in my village – seven members and counting – with the modest aim of making sure there is always a Labour candidate on ballot papers. More importantly, it is vital that other views are always heard, even in these conservative rural areas, and that people are reminded there is only one political party wedded to the founding principles of our fair and modern society: the NHS, comprehensive state education, affordable homes and employment rights.

The Changing Landscape

Look at the political map of south-east England, outside of London, and it is a sea of blue. There have been times when there were splodges of other colours, but currently you would have to squint to pick out the tiny dots where there is anything other than Conservative representation in the House of Commons. Of the eight constituencies in East Sussex, five are currently held by the Tories but, in an outcome that will probably mirror our fractured national electoral picture, this is set to change in two weeks' time.

There are two constituencies that cover large, mainly rural areas – Wealden and Bexhill & Battle –and these are typical Tory territory. They have returned Conservative MPs since the dawn of time and that is unlikely to change this year. The odious UKIP polled well in these areas in local and European elections last year but, with large majorities, the Tories should see off any challenge even if UKIP make a sizeable dent in their vote. The Liberal Democrats came second in both seats last time but may see the rise in popularity of the Greens in these areas translate into votes at their expense.

Two of those tiny dots on the map are yellow and represent the neighbouring seats of Lewes and Eastbourne. Lewes was won narrowly by Liberal Democrat Norman Baker in 1997, ending a long line of Tory MPs, and he has held it since with a reasonable majority. Baker is a popular MP locally and has always benefitted from a massive anti-Tory tactical vote; but the radical spirit of many Lewesians view his participation as a minister in the Tory-led coalition government as heresy; the Green Party is hoping to capitalise.

Eastbourne became a Liberal Democrat seat more recently. In 2010, Stephen Lloyd defeated the Tory incumbent by a majority of over 3,000 in a constituency the Conservatives are desperate to win back next month. When there was a major fire on Eastbourne pier last summer, Cameron and Osbourne were helicoptered in the next day with a bag of cash for refurbishment.

Of the four urban seats in East Sussex – three in Brighton and Hove, one for Hastings & Rye – all bar one are currently held by the Tories. Caroline Lucas is the only Green dot on the political map: she represents Brighton Pavilion with a slim majority but may feel some fallout from the unpopularity – transport policies, 2013’s bin strike – of the Green-run city council. I have always been impressed by Lucas: she has been the only MP to appear at local teachers’ strike rallies and has spoken eloquently and passionately against the Tories’ ideological assault on comprehensive education. All four of these constituencies are held with majorities of under 2,000 and are in the top 30 of Labour’s target seats.

With an excellent local candidate in Sarah Owen, opinion polls suggest that Labour will take Hastings and win two of the three Brighton seats: Lucas will survive but the Conservatives will lose Brighton Kemptown and Hove. Hove is something of a bellwether seat: since 1979, whichever party has won there has formed the government. In 1997, on hearing that Labour had taken Hove, Tony Blair became convinced that the Tories had finally been defeated.

Current polling also suggests that Lewes and Eastbourne will re-elect their current MPs and, if this is correct, come 7th May, East Sussex will have one of the most politically diverse landscapes in the south-east: 3 Labour MPs, 2 Conservative, 2 Liberal Democrat and 1 Green.

This may still not represent everyone: speaking recently of his “emotional attachment to a Labour Party that no longer exists”, the writer Irvine Welsh reminded me of my own dilemma. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), an alliance launched by the late Bob Crow, most reflect my views but are fielding a candidate in only one East Sussex seat and that is, sadly, not where I live. Thanks to Nick Clegg not holding out for a referendum on proportional representation as his thirty pieces of silver, my vote in one of those large rural constituencies will be irrelevant. But I still don’t know whether to follow my emotional attachment or support those who most resemble what Labour used to be, the only anti-austerity party I can vote for: The Green Party.

Doing Politics

In last week’s European election in the Wealden area of East Sussex, where I live, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) came top of the poll. With 16,000 votes, UKIP were just ahead of the Conservatives; the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems mustered 10,000 votes between them. The change from 2009 seems to be that UKIP have taken a couple of thousand votes from the Tories and, probably, some of the protest vote that previously went to the Lib Dems and the Greens. I am under no illusions about this; I live in a deeply conservative area. Although not far from London, it falls in a large gap between the main routes out of the capital down to Brighton and Hastings. It is very easy to become frightened of things like Europe and multi-culturalism when you have little experience of them.

UKIP’s ‘success’ should be put in context, though: because of the low national turnout, only 9% of registered voters supported them; but that is still more than each of the main political parties. The ‘Russell Brand effect’ has been blamed for spreading political apathy amongst potentially progressive voters: his admission that he has never voted has been cited as a validation of failing to engage in the political process and a contributory factor in letting UKIP in. In recent years I have been an advocate of not voting as I felt that the choice between three privileged, middle-aged men in navy blue business suits is no choice at all. Little did I know that another one would come along - this one in a mustard-coloured suit with a pint in his hand - and convince some people that he offers an alternative.

However, UKIP are not an alternative; they are a negative, backward looking party. There has been no successful political philosophy that advocates a return to the conditions of the past – only disastrous failures such as the Nazis and the Khymer Rouge. And because of that, UKIP do need to be challenged and confronted. There were two things this week to re-invigorate the political will. Firstly, David Runciman, in his essay exploring the choice between boring old politics and the revolutionary allure of technology, said “only politics can rescue you from bad politics”; and quoting Malcolm Gladwell’s appropriation of Gil Scott Heron’s aphorism – “the revolution will not be tweeted” - he made the point that, whilst social media is a powerful tool, “political change requires more lasting and durable connections”. Secondly, the leader of Podemos (We Can), the new anti-austerity party that managed to come third in the elections in Spain, explained the party’s philosophy as “citizens doing politics”. Pablo Inglesias added, “if the citizens don’t get involved in politics, others will”. Others, such as ex-public schoolboy commodities brokers posing as men of the people. The situation is clear: if we are going to deal with the ‘bad politics’ of UKIP, to stop their attacks on the welfare state and society’s weakest, we need to be ‘doing politics’, not just tweeting to the converted.

Exhortations to ‘get involved’ can often sound cliched and meaningless; but to ‘do politics’, to build on the support of the 25% that didn’t vote for reactionary parties in my area, and to capture the imaginations of the 62% that didn’t vote at all, means engaging with the process by joining a political party. The Green Party has branches in Hastings, Lewes and Brighton, and the Socialist Party is also active in Brighton. Let’s not bother with the Lib Dems, but how about this for a radical idea? The Labour Party: the largest progressive political party that has a history of building a fairer society and opposition to the repression of minorities. It is the only political party I have ever been a member of but its continuation of Thatcherite privatisation and vanity warmongering drove me away. How about getting involved with them again? Pushing from the bottom to promote those positive ideas that we know are popular with a majority of people: large-scale building of social housing and common ownership of utilities and infrastructure. So...?