Longrider

I was brought up Old Labour. My maternal grandfather was a staunch union man and proud of it and as soon as I was old enough to be politically aware, I followed in his footsteps. Like him, I believe in a fair, just and socially aware society that looks after those less fortunate, giving them a helping hand when they fall. A society that also gives room for entrepreneurs to flourish and create wealth that will enrich us all.

This was a man I never met. My mother filled in the gaps for me, telling me how like him in character I was - including the stubborn willfulness in adversity. Robert Spalding died relatively young having suffered the rigours of the icy seas as a merchant seaman on the Murmansk convoys during World War II. Surviving being torpedoed, his health suffered and he succumbed to chest infections in his early fifties. It is to the courage and sacrifice of his generation who fought and died for their country that we owe the society we live in today.

A society with the freedom to be who we are, go where we please and say what we wish. A country where Habeas Corpus still applies. EEEK. REWIND. It did. Until David Blunkett and Charles Clarke removed that from our unwritten constitution. So the society my grandfather went to war for is being eroded by those who inherited it. Our lives are being blighted by the ominous surveillance of CCTV cameras wherever we go, we can be detained at the pleasure of a politician without recourse to the "evidence" against us and in time, if they are successful, every move, every transaction, every tiny inconsequential piece of our lives will be subject to the scrutiny of the state. The kind of state my grandparents’ generation fought against.

I joined the Labour party because I detested what went before. I observed all that was good and caring in our society being eroded by the Thatcher government. I watched the rise of the selfish society with horror. Okay, so some things needed fixing and not everything that happened was for the worst. Union reform was necessary - war with the miners was not. Some state owned organisations should be in the private sector. I can accept the sell-off of BT and British Airways. I cannot and will not accept that the sell-off of the railways was the right decision. Against this background I returned to my roots and joined the Labour Party and actively campaigned for their election to power. May 1^st 1997 was a sweet day. That landslide victory was a wonderful experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. Sitting through the night as the counts came in I realised that I was a part of history and a new beginning. Today, that dream is in ashes. The policies being enacted by the Labour Party today are Tory policies of yesterday. No wonder Michael Howard doesn’t know which way to turn - all his best moves have been stolen from under his nose.

This morning I decided to see how my MP Roger Berry voted during the third reading of the ID cards bill. I had some hope that he would rebel - he has a history of doing so. But, no, he fell in line with the party whips and voted in favour. I cannot in all conscience support an MP who is prepared to vote for something with which I am so passionately opposed. As a Labour party member voting for an opposition party would be hypocrisy.

So, today, I did the decent thing. With a heavy heart I resigned my membership, letting both the party headquarters and Roger know what I was doing and why. I hope Robert Spalding would have been proud of me.

It seems that Snopes has identified that the Telegraph story I commented on earlier this month isn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Red faces all round…

Following Michael Howard’s decision to back the ID card proposal in principle - well, he would, given his plans back in 1996 when he was Home Secretary - the Tories decided to abstain during the third reading of the ID cards bill in the Commons because, according to shadow Home Secretary, David Davies:

“…ministers had failed to give assurances on how the scheme would work in practice.”

Okay - so why didn’t they have the courage of their convictions and vote against?

The bill now having passed its third reading in the house goes to the Lords where, according to the Prime Minister this action has paved the way for:

“Tory peers to join forces with Liberal Democrats in the Lords to kill the bill.”

I should damn well hope so - at least the Lords (outmoded and unelected as they are) have the courage to stand up to the government and block bad law. Well, sometimes, anyway.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke waded into the Tories saying:

“If in the final event, it does come to the case that we are not able to carry the legislation in this Parliamentary session, we will know quite clearly that the reason will be the decision of the opposition party, and their decision to put peace internally within their party ahead of the national interest.”

However, what Charles Clarke means by “National Interest” is not one of a free, democratic people, but one of subjects belonging to the overweening, over powerful state. One where the basic relationship between electorate and state is reversed, where we answer to them, rather than the other way around.

I am reminded here not of George Orwell’s 1984 which is often (correctly) cited in these debates, but his equally prophetic Animal Farm. In the closing scene of the book, the pigs who overthrew the humans start quarreling with the erstwhile owner of the farm over a game of cards:

No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I look at the front benches of the House of Commons and “it is impossible to say which is which.”
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