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Leamington Letters #99: This is the real Labour party

19/10/2015

7 Comments

 
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“He’s not playing the game!” complained a journalist and self-appointed pundit on the BBC’s Newsnight, and everyone agreed. The new Corbyn regime is separating itself from the gossip and leaks and news management which is the way of life in the Westminster bubble, where politicians and journalists went to the same schools and the same universities and the same dinner parties. It is not concerned with the creation of instant sound bites. And it eschews the public school debating society ethos, where major issues are decided by a majority of smart-arse quips.
 
So what does our media – the Beeb and the Grauniad included – do in such circumstances?
 
It makes it up. Helped (and encouraged) by the likes of Tristram Hunt and Simon Danczuk, they fill their column inches with stories of chaos within the party. It is being taken over by Trots. It is filled with crazy leftists who wish to revert to something called ‘the politics of the 80s’. It is ‘unelectable’.
 
So I attended the first North Leamington branch meeting since the election with some trepidation. The Warwick and Leamington CLP supported Corbyn for the leadership. It was clearly full of ranting weirdos - bearded, sandal-wearing, vegetarian.
 
Of course, it was nothing like that. It was a meeting devoted to education, and the speakers were nursery teachers, secondary school teachers, FE lecturers and a particularly impressive sixth form student from the Trinity School in Leamington. Over the course of a two hour meeting, almost every aspect of the education system was examined and analysed in a lucid, constructive and coherent fashion.
 
As someone who graduated some 45 years ago, and whose children have long completed their education, my core interest was in the current state of nursery and primary education as it is affecting and will affect my grandchildren. In this context, I was appalled to learn of the new baseline assessment programme which is being imposed on children as young as four!
 
For those who, like me, were profoundly and disgracefully ignorant of this policy, it is yet another example  of this government’s fixation with testing and the narrowing of the curriculum.
 
But this time, it applies to children of four and five years old. And the tests will take place within three weeks or so of their first attendance at reception class.
 
In other words, kids of four and five years old will be reduced to a number, a number which may well follow them throughout their education, because this will be used as a means of measuring their progress throughout primary school. It will be imposed top-down into nurseries. It reduces teachers to scorers.
 
You might think that in a meeting of Corbynistas, this would provoke angry and emotional outbursts. It didn’t. It stimulated detailed and rational debate about the nature of education itself, and structured opposition to policies which defy the views of those involved day-to-day with the care of our kids.
 
Because this is the new Labour Party, the new politics. Not sound bites about ‘education, education, education’; rather, principled and intelligent discussion of real issues.
 
I left the meeting significantly better informed of course. But also proud to be a member of this party, this movement, these people.
 

​Today from the everysmith vaults: Still fascinated and intrigued by the parsing of popular music by Yo La Tengo. And that's where I am heading this minute, to see them live tonight.
7 Comments
Ben
19/10/2015 16:35:59

Great stuff on both counts. Needs circulating and I will.

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Allen
20/10/2015 07:36:36

This is why Corbyn won. Because 'ordinary' members of the Labour Party who work tirelessly in the ways you describe had enough of their work being ignored and countered by their so-called representatives. What you witnessed was real politics, which takes place week in and week out in constituencies throughout the country. It is time the leadership listened. And Corbyn is doing so.

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StevenL
20/10/2015 08:02:57

Read this while listening to Warner on the Today programme. He's exactly the kind of person Labour can do without. Thousands of new members? Not the right kind of people. Stay and argue his corner? No. Labour lost two elections with people like him but his response is more of the same. Good riddance.

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Nick
21/10/2015 20:23:51

I am convinced this country needs reasoned opposition to this government with its 26% mandate. The issue is as you say the press which refuses to embrace those who won't play the game. Maybe the tax credit cuts and Tory opposition will start to make a difference.

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Robert
22/10/2015 07:37:24

Decades ago, we won the battle against testing at 11. Now it's coming back through the back door. An annexe? And testing at 4 is the next step. Disgraceful.

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CJ
23/10/2015 22:26:59

Interested in your characterisation of YLT working to parse popular music. Similar perhaps to the way in which Warhol 'parsed' American movies. It's a thought you might develop ...

Reply
Richard Holtby
16/11/2015 17:01:38

I am interested in finding out about The Real Party.
I live in Hastings, East Sussex, England.
Who is the best person to contact.

Reply



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    Max Smith

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

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