every smith
  • MS: Max Smith's blog
  • History to the Defeated
  • every smith: independent creative consultants
  • Words: Max - a brief bio
  • Sites to see

A blast from the past

12/11/2010

2 Comments

 
Yesterday, searching for my birth certificate in an ancient box file, I came across an old Labour Party membership card.

It's from the pre-Blair era, when Labour was Labour rather than New Labour. And it's notable for the paragraph on the reverse, the seminal Clause IV.

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

Can someone remind me of the problem with this?

It seems to me to be a wholly legitimate and laudable aspiration. Had we (Labour) practised what we no longer preach, we may have avoided - inter alia - the banking crisis, the deficit and Ant and Dec. We might even be a bigger and better society.

Today's listening: Alice Coltrane, Journey in Satchidanada. Sublime.
2 Comments
Sean Luckett
12/11/2010 07:10:00

It is indeed remarkable that a party can come into existence, take control of the running of the country, change the country, lose power, change their very soul, regain power, sell themselves out, lose power and end up being nothing to do with what they aspired to become when they were in creation.
All in little more than a century.
But then Bob does ads for Victoria's Secret, so nothing lasts forever...

Reply
midlifedreamer
21/11/2010 05:39:39

A reasonable question, to which I started to compose a simple response

However one hour later a short statement has set me on the road to drafting what seems the outline of a short story.

How the ideals of a simple generous and kind man, my father, were frustrated by dishonesty, greed, and ego of both politicians and industrialists,and probably more importantly by the apathy of the people he represented.

His is not the tale of a man of power or of high political ambition, but of a working class trade unionist who just wanted 'A good days pay for a good days work'.

Having just read Clause IV for the first time, it gives me a greater insight to his frustration and confirms that he was the man I always thought he was.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Baseball
    Books
    Film
    Food + Drink
    French Letters
    Leamington Letters
    Media
    Music
    People
    Personal
    Politics
    Sport