The Exile

Is the Renaissance scholar dead? That's the topic of a debate in yesterday's Guardian in which Professor Adrian Monk of London's City University argued that the last thing that Britain needed was more arts graduates:

Actually, no, not so long as graduate conversion courses still run. We are far from nuts.

A friend of mine read Physics at Christ Church, Oxford, and then decided that what he really fancied being was a barrister. So he trotted off, funnily enough to the City University, and did his GCC. Any number of others followed that path, first reading for an arts degree, then switching via a GCC to something else.

Probably a pretty extreme example comes from another friend of mine who did it all by himself with no formal training whatsoever. This fellow read Geography at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and now advises banks on their computer needs. He actually goes a bit further than that and installs the damned computers and gets them running.

The point is that if you have a decent degree from a decent, Russell Group, university, then your mind has been opened to all sorts of possibilities. Furthermore, you have proven that you can assess, analyse and weigh the value of evidence. Making the switch from arts to technology is relatively simple for a man like that.

I might add that society is also a damned sight more civilised.

Interesting to see that Ken Livingstone is a cocksmith of the first order - five kids with three different women takes some beating.

It is also interesting to see that this story has emerged now, just as the race for Mayor of London really hots up.

Will it matter? Well, given that Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate, is also a celebrated shagger, probably not. That may be why his camp have refused to comment on any of this. The Liberal-Democratic candidate, Brian Paddick has also decided to keep quiet, although that may have something to do with the fact that he is a poof. Glass houses and all that...

What amazes me about all this is the notion that it is in any way newsworthy. Maybe I have lived in Mexico for too long, but the notion that there is a senior political figure who doesn't have a string of mistresses is too ludicrous for words.

Here's a good one - Richard Corbett is one of Nu-Labour's prime stooges in Brussels who decided a few days ago to set up his very own blog. Like many a wankblogger before him he decided not to allow comments, presumably for fear that the anti-EC brigade would arrive in force to make him look a tit.

Not to worry because one such fine brigade member has done just that - by setting up a blog that scrapes Corbett's drivel as soon as it is posted. The only difference between the two blogs is that the copier allows open comments: and what comments they are!

Corbett seems to have rounded up as many creatures as he can find to hit the blog with pompous comments - it reminds me a bit of when Gimlet's mates arrived here giving it lip and providing me with easy laughs. What is it about the Nu-Labour crowd that makes them such humourless, sanctimonious gits?

More importantly, don't they realise that all they do when they scream like prize lapdogs is provide yet more publicity for the people that are out to make them look even more bovine than than they do normally?

The race to be mayor of London kicks off today, and Boris Johnson the Tory challenger, has a nice 12 point lead over Ken Livingstone the Labour incumbent. That doesn't mean that the race is over as Livingstone is a noted survivor, but it is further proof of yesterday's argument that the days of New-Labour are numbered.

No doubt the wankblogs will start to scream that Boris is a laid back toff, which he is, but he is also not a Thatcherite ideologue. As mayor he would be not all that much different from Livingstone.

That, surely, is the point? Stripped of all the rhetoric, Labour was created to represent the views of the urban working man and his wife and his kids. The party no longer even pretends to do that, so is it any wonder that the urban working class no longer support it?

Who would I vote for? Probably for the Respect candidate, Lindsey German. That doesn't mean that I am a Trot, but it does mean that I would want to give a sarcastic two-fingered salute to those who believe that labour and capital can somehow get along on capitalism's terms.

I'll stick my neck out and say that Labour is going to lose the next election.

I began to think that two weeks ago during lunch with the journalist Neil Clark in Oxford. Neil reported that something like 700 pubs have shut since the smoking ban came into force last year. I remarked that nothing was more likely to cheese off the last working class votes that Labour had than to see their local swill shop close down.

Of course it isn't just the smoking ban that will cost Labour the next election. The ban, though, is symptomatic of a polity that has become disengaged from the electorate and their concerns. To give just one example, the war against Iraq is not something that features much in conversation, but the cost of utility bills does. It may be argued that the parties have never fully represented the wishes of their supporters, if they had, then Labour would be the party of capital punishment. However, the parties represented some of their supporters wishes and desires - enough of them to ensure that the core vote would turn out at election time.

Today neither of the two main parties, but especially Labour, can be said to articulate the desires of anyone other than a small, metropolitan elite, who are unconcerned about house prices, utility bills, or immigration. Labour will pay the price for that at the next election.

Secondly, there is about the Labour government an air of cack-handedness that fairly takes the breath away. It is not just the loss of two million people's personal data that was contained on computer disks that some pen pusher mislaid, it is the sheer level of incompetence that seems to emerge with every day that passes. Today for instance it emerged that Leeds Magistrates' Court has managed to forget to pass on several hundred convictions to the National Police Computer.

This level of incompetence has been matched by an equally unpleasant level of sleaze that threatens the Tory record set during the Thatcher and Major years. The Lee Jasper affair in London is just one example of a Labour Party that seem to be more concerned with handing out goodies to its sinecurists than it does with aiding its traditional supporters.

Finally, does it really matter if labour loses? It is not as if the party has done much to unravel the Thatcherite changes of the 1980s. Why should a working man, living on a northern council estate, really give a stuff about which of these gangs of thieves has their paws on the levers of power?

There isn't anything that I can disagree with about this posting, and it is getting quite a justified airing around the socialist blogs. I think that there are two reasons why we have come to this pretty pass. The first is the professionalising of politics, and the second the takeover of the Labour Party at local level.

When Sir Winston Churchill lost the 1945 election it looked for a time as if Chartwell, Churchill's Kent home, would have to go on the market. A group of well wishers bought it and the Churchill's remained there until their deaths, whereupon it passed to the nation.

In those days it was expected that a Tory or Liberal would have a private income and that Labour men would have union sponsorship. I meant that the Commons more or less represented the two great classes that make up British society. It also meant that the middle class rabble by and large were kept out of politics.

Today becoming a member of the House of Commons is a tasty little earner for an ambitious little scrote who wants to trouser away a few thousand pounds a year. It is not the wage that is the problem, but all those lovely tax free expenses.

That by itself is not enough to explain why the Labour benches are now crawling like maggots over a corpse with middle class scrotes. The blame for that can be laid at the door of the lower middle class who have basically taken over the local Labour Parties. As was argued here, living in a working class district these days is rather like living under colonial rule. This being so, why does anyone expect those local colonial administrators to select someone who hates their guts? They choose someone from a nice home, with a nice background, who will put forward nice policies, that nice people like. The job of the working class is to turn out and vote for these chancers every four years or so. Other than that they must know their place.

The only way that this will change is if working class people stop allowing themselves to be used as voting fodder. To a certain extent this is happening, as more and more of our people simply refuse to vote.

That said, we need a pro-active answer, and one that will rally our tribe to battle. Partly that is what The Exile is all about, exploring paths that will lead to our class taking its justified retribution. Alas, although I can see the problem, I do not have an answer to it.

Bob Wareing, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby has been deselected, reports Neil Clark. The NuLabourites have chosen Stephen Twigg, a former MP who has no connection to Liverpool, to stand in his place.

First it has to be said that Wareing is 77 years old and should have retired a decade ago. That said, the fact that the local party has chosen Twigg, rather than a local activist, probably says more about the state of the NuLab base than it does about either Wareing or Twigg.

Put simply, what we are seeing is further evidence of the internal colonialism under which working class people are now forced to live. It could be said that it is their own fault, because they chose to disengage from politics. However, that disengagement came about because politics, in the shape of the Labour Party, no longer represented them.

The Wareing Affair is a case in point. In 1983 Liverpool registered a 5% swing to Labour - it was the only part of the country that saw through Thatcher and the class she represented. Given that Liverpool has been hammered time and again since then, it would be ludicrous to claim that the bulk of the population in Liverpool West Derby have suddenly become adherents to the NuLab notion of supporting globalised capitalism, screwing working class people and acting as America's batman in various wars of aggression. So why was Stephen Twigg, a man who believes in all of those things, chosen?

The Local Labour Party has been taken over, that's why. Not by the right, not by the left, but by that new sub-strata of social workers, teachers and council officers who form the colonial caste in our cities.

Yes, people are fighting back - this blog is an example of that - but I do fear that their call for a new party is just so much pissing in the wind. We need more than a new set of initials. We need an organisation that reflects our culture of drink beer, shag women and bollocks to the boss.

Labour started to go wrong when it ceased to represent the urban working class in any cultural sense. That happened before the party dumped the economic policies that working class people believe in.

This stranglehold that the class enemy has on politics means that we are treated as scum who are only needed to vote for whatever middle class tosser the local colonial class want to impose. It is also why a new party is not enough. It has to be a new party that will make people like Twigg feel afraid - very, very afraid.

The issue is as atavistic as that. It is time that the middle class felt the bladder tightening sensation that only fear brings.

If Bob Wareing does carry out his promise to stand as an independent, then could that be the start of the fightback? Only time will tell, but The Exile has a nice, Latin motto that a working class party should adopt: Oderint dum metuant!

Is it my imagination or has the campaign to save the harkis fallen on hard times? I ask because this post that has just gone up at the main save our harkis site. It may be my imagination, but the poster seems to be more interested in slagging of Neil Clark than he does in saving harkies. Indeed, there does appear to be a kind of desperation to the posting, as if things are just not working out quite as planned.

Dear oh dear: could it be that the British people do not actually want 20,000 collaborators living it up in the UK while the army continues to bleed in Iraq? Maybe the politicians realise this, and maybe that is why these self-appointed saviours are finding that replies from MPs are few and far between? Well, at least 15 have replied to your pathetic little missives so far, lads, so it's a start. Don't give up hope on the other 600 and odd just yet. Keep dreaming.

For those of you who are less an enamoured by the idea of 20,000 potential security risks being brought over to Britain, some talking points can be found here. Please write to your MP or local newspaper and tell them why you oppose this lunacy.

Returning to the little matter of the 20,000 collaborators that various types want to bring over to the UK. It is time to start writing to MPs and the local newspapers. The locals are probably better than the nationals, if only because they get fewer letters coming in, so you have a better chance of yours being published. As far as your MP is concerned, I reckon that it's better if you actually send him a letter, inside an envelope, and with a stamp on it. E-mails are fine, but it is possible that your MP will take you more seriously if you are prepared to go to a bit of trouble to write to him rather than just clattering something out and pressing the send button.

The rule is simple: keep it short, keep it polite and keep it very simple. One page is enough, and you should make no more than two points to back up then case that Britain is not to provide a home for imperialism's flotsam and jetsam.

If you have never written to your MP before, then why not tell him that? "I have never written to you on any matter, but I feel so strongly that the 20,000 Iraqi collaborators should not be housed in Britain," would be a very good way to start.

Over the past week this blog has listed many of the reasons why they should not be brought over. At the risk of boring the regular readers, I am going to repeat some of them. Anyone is free to choose a couple of them and send them off to the newspaper or MP if they wish. Just rewrite them in your own words.

1. The plan is to bring over 20,000 Iraqi collaborators to safety in Britain. Why should they be allowed to leave Iraq, when our soldiers are continuing to die there?

2. This plan could actually put our soldiers' lives at even greater risk. Those Iraqis who have so far sat on the fence will realise that a full withdrawal is on the cards. Might they not decide that it is time to show how patriotic they are and fire off a few shots at our soldiers?

3. The Americans will not allow their collaborators into many areas of the Green Zone, because they simply do not trust them. They know that these harkis are also supplying information to the guerrillas. What evidence do we have that the same thing is not going on inside the British lines? Could we not be importing a dangerous fifth column? This plan needs further thought, and the views of the security services should be solicited.

4. The unemployment rate now stands at over 5%. Why should the British people allow men and women who have shown no real desire to fight for their own country into ours to take the precious jobs that remain?

5. Council house accommodation is scarce. How will these collaborators be housed and will it mean that our children will be forced to the back of the waiting list?

You could end your letter by saying that more time is needed to decide where these collaborators are to be taken. Could they go to a third country at Britain's expense?

The point here is that it is obvious that most MPs do not actually want 20,000 harkis dumping anywhere near Britain. Be reasonable and offer them a chance to do nothing and they will probably take it. They can wave your letters in front of those sad-arsed losers who want to see Britain flooded with collaborators and argue that political considerations prevented them from doing anything.

Remember that time is on our side. The longer this goes on, the more chance there is that the Iraqis will sort out the problem for themselves.

That way the warmongers won't even have the consolation of being able to say that they lost the war, but saved the harkis.

The number of Iraqi collaborators that could end up in Britain has now reached 20,000, according to one of their hand-wringing supporters. This figure includes just about everyone who ever collaborated, plus their families.

People, write to you MP and to your local newspapers. Let's get the massage out:

Not our war, not our problem, not our harkis: keep the buggers out.

Neil Clark hasn't been pulling any punches today as he joined the campaign to keep imperialism's refuse out of Britain. As this blog started the campaign to keep the harkis out, let's put together his arguments and mine.

1. Had the war against Iraq succeeded, then today the USA and its ever faithful poodle would be knee deep in the gore of Iranians, Syrians or both. The relative lack of collaborators in Iraq made the job of the resistance that much easier, but make no mistake, they gave imperialism's cause a boost. They deserve the chop for that.

2. Leaving them to their fate sends a message to other putative collaborators. Take the money now, get the bullet tomorrow. Your call, chancer.

Funnily enough, Neil's point here was made in reply to one Adam LeBore who wrote an article in The Times calling for the collaborators to be admitted for just that reason, that nobody would work for imperialism again. That is the whole point.

That said, I suspect that LeBore's views are shaped by the fact that he works for The Times, a scab sheet of the first order. 6,000 printers were put out of work because people like LeBore crossed the picket lines to do as Murdock wanted. One scab supports others: why am I not surprised?

3. The collaborators cannot be taken out of Iraq so long as the British army remains in Basra. To do otherwise would be to send a signal to every person who ever sat on the fence waiting to see who would win. They would read the signs of impending withdrawal, grab their rifles and start taking pot-shots at the British. Let's face it, when the British leave, everyone is going to have to show just how patriotic and pro-resistance they were. If not, they will likely end up dangling from a lamppost like these harkis. Put simply, anyone who argues that they can is putting the lives of collaborators above those of British soldiers.

4. Finally, what evidence do we have as working class people that these creatures will not jump the council house waiting list or be parachuted into jobs that we want for ourselves? As this blog pointed out yesterday, the dole offices are now open to over 5% of the population - more folk are on the cobbles today than in 1979!

Sorry, but this writer believes that the days of ragged trousered philanthropy are over -it is time that the working class put forward its own demands and stopped allowing the agenda to be set by the middle class scum who have done so well out of the past thirty years.

Are there any other blogs who want to join in? I don't see it as an organised campaign, but if we sing from more or less the same choir sheet, then we might just influence the government. Certainly we will probably have public opinion on our side.

As for the warmongers who are now bleating about these doomed collaborators. Sorry, losers, but it looks like you are fucked once again.

It is now emerging that at least 600 Iraqi collaborators could be eligible for settlement in Britain, if the rules were to be relaxed. Each one would be allowed to bring his family along, and Iraq being the third world type of place that it is, what that amounts to is a lot of people.

Even if the government restricted it to what we think of as family - and that is a big if - then we could still be looking at around 2,000 people.

How, pray, is the government going to get them out without tipping off the Iraqis that a full withdrawal is looming?

The writer Johann Hari has an interesting piece in The Independent in which he attacks the British comprehensive education system. To summarise his points, he writes that "class polarisation in our schools" leads to the children of the wealthy being educated in "schools that select by mortgage price," while the rest go to "warehouse schools, where the sheer concentration of kids from disadvantaged and troubled families creates a resentful culture that shuns learning." Hari makes the point that his parents, who left school at 15, were both educated at places that "had all the local kids, of all backgrounds, so a ghetto mindset never set in."

This argument strikes this reader as being flawed on several levels. The first and most obvious point is that Hari's parents obviously went to a secondary modern, because they were the schools that turfed everyone out at 15, prior to the raising of the school leaving age in the early 1970s. This writer was educated at a secondary modern and left school at 15, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that the school educated children "of all backgrounds". The classes have been well segregated since industrialisation began and the children of the middle class were nowhere to be seen at any working class school. A local secondary school in a working class district educated the local children, and the only mixing that went on was between the offspring of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled parents.

However, to broaden the debate out, this writer wants to take issue with the Hari argument in general, which is that the comprehensive system has failed in some way. It hasn't: it does exactly what it is supposed to do.

The British class system has always been open ended and talented fellows like Johann Hari have always got on - there is nothing new about that. To give just two examples, Ted Heath was the son of a coal merchant, and Roy Jenkins the son of a Welsh miner who was imprisoned during the General Strike of 1926.

What both these men - and Johann Hari - have in common is Oxbridge. The two universities take the brightest and the best from the working class and turn them into smooth, plump members of the establishment: Roy Jenkins was a wonderful example of that.

For the rest, that is to say, those who cannot make it to Oxbridge, the system has always had two functions:

Firstly, it provides jobs for the lower-middle class who work as its teachers and administrators. This has always been the case, and the only thing that has changed over recent years are the numbers involved. Thanks to the expansion of the higher education system over the past 20 years, something has to be found for the over ambitious, but lowly talented products of the polytechnics. They become teachers, educational social workers or local authority education managers. Is anyone seriously suggesting that the education industry doesn't benefit them, and for that reason they will fight like cats to keep it the way it is?

Secondly, schools work perfectly for what they were designed to do, and that is turn out factory fodder. Children arrive on time when the bell rings because one day they will have to arrive on time at work. The teachers try to instil respect into the children because the working class needs to know its place and show respect for the employer - so let's teach them that at an early age.

Why does the working class not object? Largely because they can see through the con and ignore the teachers. Children are taught by their parents not to make waves and just get it over with. That's how the parents got through school, and that is what they instil in their children.

This does not mean that we as a class are anti-education. Parents can remember when education began at the age of 15, when a child left school and started an apprenticeship. The unions used to have education departments and many people, myself included, went to the local redbrick university's extra-mural department to take classes.

Some of us went on to university in later life, and I will never forget my parent's pride the day I left Manchester to drive to Ruskin College, Oxford, in 1983. Those same parents had been completely indifferent to my school life because they recognised it for what it was, but Ruskin was different: Ruskin was about education.

So, the education industry works fine at what it does. It provides jobs for the boys and teaches the children to obey the rules and keep their mouths shut.

Update:

In an unrelated piece, Neil Clark argues:
This rather reinforces my point: the education system works fine

The warwanking fraternity just love attacking George Galloway, the Respect MP. How their hearts must have beaten just that little bit faster when The Guardian reported that the Serious Fraud Office had recomended that a prosecution be brought against him over his alleged dealings in Iraqi oil.

There is only one problem with the story: it's a complete fabrication.

If any warwanker is reading this, I have a question. What's it like being a loser, time after time?

What to do with young people who don't want to go to school? Let them go to work, says one former headmaster, in an article that will arouse teachers' wrath.

Actually, the fellow has a point. Why should 14 and 15 year olds be compelled to attend an institution that they loath? They take out their anger on those around them, which means that nobody learns anything.

Surely it would make more sense for these people to drop out of school, if they have found work?

It won't happen, of course, because far too many middle class types have their snouts in the educational trough. Thjey have to justify their positions by claiming that it is all for the good of the kids. Actually, it is all for the good of the teachers and penpushers.

Guido Fawkes managed to get one bit of gossip slightly wrong when he claimed that the "Totty count includes Louise "Barking" Bagshawe," for one safe Tory seat. She may very well be up for the Conservative nomination, but her nickname at Oxford was "Barker" and not "Barking".

A scurrilous and no doubt unfounded Oxford rumour has it that Louise Bagshawe's favourite sexual position was doggie style, and that she would complain if her partner decided he wanted it some other way. For this reason she was known as "Barker" throughout the university, and the name stuck afterwards. The denizens of the Oxford Union bar would occasionally shout "woof-woof" when she came in to hack them, or make low growling noises in their throats. The story goes that she never twigged what they were on about.

After she began writing a union drunk did a textual analysis of her first handful of books. Sure enough the sex is doggie style.

Barker was involved in a Yahoo! discussion group about three years ago, and managed to drive quite a few other people out of it with her strident pro-Americanism.

Basically, she had lived in the USA for that long that she had gone native and had become a cheerleader for Bush and the GOP. She was given to calling opponents of the war against Iraq "liberals," which was rather funny when you consider that her main tormenter was a Monday Club hanger and flogger.

She claimed that she was as American as she was British; something which the punters in whatever constituency that selects her may wish to know.

She further claimed that the American soldiers who were killed in the war's early days - the ones displayed on TV - were the victims of a war crime, even though it was obvious to the former army officers on the site that they had been killed in action.

Viewed overall, Barker came over as a person who was not much interested in debate. On the other hand she could just be an old fashioned girl who believes in America, George W. Bush and taking it like a bitch.

Update: Guido has changed his posting and now gives the correct monicker.

The British local elections will be held next month and NuLab if facing a humiliating meltdown. Rather than face up to the reality of the situation, which is that working class people see nothing worth voting for in NuLab, the Blairites are casting around for scapegoats. They seem to have decided that the British National Party fits the bill nicely. Unfortunately, being Blairites, they cannot see the truth that is staring them in the face.

The BNP is exploiting a growing sense of frustration with genuine problems: the lack of affordable housing, the increase in low-level crime, the failure of inner-city schools, the loss of a sense of identity among white working-class men following the collapse of traditional industries.

Following on from yesterday's posting about the Euston Manifesto, I see that this is not the first time that this collection of chancers has tried to start a front organisation. However, as Crooked Timber pointed out, all previous goes have, well, gone:

The “decent left” who brought us Unite Against Terror, Labour Friends of Iraq, Democratiya, Engage and any number of other internet fronts, have now launched their Euston Manifesto . Together with lots of general commitments to motherhood and apple pie, there are the usual obsessions: Iraq, Israel, the alleged anti-Americanism and anti-semitism of those who disagree with them.

A new front organisation appears to have been set up, probably as a way to keep Blairism alive after the deluge to come. It is called The Euston Manifesto, and aims to unite the "socialist left" with "egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment".

This was the aim of Blair when he was leader of the opposition, and talks took place between him and Paddy Ashdown, the then Liberal-Democratic Party leader, towards that end. It all got put on the back burner when the Tories self-destructed in 1997, but as support for NuLab sags the idea seems to have been dusted off again.

I doubt if it is a properly organised front - the old Communist Party would be needed for that - rather it looks like a marker for the future that has been put down by some Blairites. It can be expected to swing into action when Blairism is finally repudiated by the Labour Party. Then it will act as a forum for those who wish to unite Blairism with the Lib-Dems and the Tory left.

At the moment the Euston Manifesto is linked to Bloggers for Labour, a stooge organisation of true believers that acts as an electronic cheerleader for Blairite scabbery.

That said, its roots do seem to be American. Reading the actual manifesto, the American habit of switching an "S" for a "Z" seems to be the norm, thus we are treated to such delights as organizations, globalization and democratization. We are also given to believe that the plural of forum is forums. Sometimes the standard English is idiotically mixed with the American variant, and this is why we get to read of the International Labour Organization. It looks to this cynical eye as if some semi-literate was given the job of proof-reading an American original and ballsed the job up.

Reading through this rubbish as a whole three paragraphs jump out and hit the British reader in the eye. The first is this one:

We are committed to democratic norms, procedures and structures - freedom of opinion and assembly, free elections, the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers, and the separation of state and religion. We value the traditions and institutions, the legacy of good governance, of those countries in which liberal, pluralist democracies have taken hold.

The year was probably 1967 and I would have been 11 years old on the day in question. It must have been that year because that was when Parliament voted to decriminalise homosexuality. Obviously the bill was making its way through when I heard a snatch of conversation between two men as I walked down a street in Manchester with my parents: "There'll be puffs walking around if this gets through," said one to the other.

I was old enough to know what they were talking about, but too young to have an opinion about it. For some reason that sentence has stuck in my mind all these years. That fragment of a conversation, heard almost 40 years ago, forms the basis of what I believe is wrong with socialism today.

Working class people join unions and vote Labour for economic reasons. What they want from the Labour Movement is basically economic. Economic security comes at the top of the list; control over the work process would probably come in at a close second. Nationalisation is certainly on the list, but it is unlikely to be at the top. British working people are a pragmatic bunch and have shown no desire to proceed to full-blown socialism over the past decades. I think that it is fair to say that so long as our people have a long-term job, with a decent wage and a union to ensure that terms and conditions improve every year, most of them will be happy with that.

The middle class types who join the movement tend to be people who are motivated by social or moral issues, rather than economic ones. Often this leads to some confusion in their little minds because they assume that as they have some issue with state policy, and as working class people also have issues outstanding with that same state, then all those issues are the same. Well, that is not the case because working class people tend to be economically radical and socially conservative. Middle class types tend to be the other way around, and the time has come when this circle can no longer be squared.

It could be squared in the 1960s, which is when I heard that bit of conversation. It could be done then because there were plenty of issues that could be traded off to keep everyone more or less happy. The types got some of the social legislation that they wanted, and we got more holidays, stronger unions and more control at work. We could live with their agenda because more of ours was being implemented.

The problem only came to a head in the early 1980s when government attacks on the unions, high levels of unemployment and a Labour Party that seemed more concerned about social issues all came to a head. Labour began to lose votes in election after election because the party seemed to be trying to copy the American Democratic Party, and had become a party of conflicting interest groups. Rights for this group or that, be they women, minorities, homosexuals or whatever, all became the buzz words of the day, as indeed they are now. Labour still had an economic agenda, but it got drowned out by the caterwauling of middle class types, as they pursued their own agendas.

Now, of course the Labour Movement must support increased rights for working women, that goes without saying. However, assuming that all woman share the same values simply because all woman have vaginas is silly. Working women may want a creche at work for their children, more time off after giving birth, more flexible working hours so that they can juggle home and work. Alternatively, they may not even want to work. Why cannot a wife and mother not stay at home to care for the next generation, and be paid a wage for doing that? These are the issues that strike me as sensible for a working class body to be discussing. Instead, talk is taken up with the "glass ceiling," and similar non-issues. In the case of minorities, we are told that only a few Asians are members of the boards of large companies and no blacks at all are to be found. As if anyone in the Labour Party should care.

The point is obvious: the glass ceiling is not a problem for working women; it is a problem for middle class whores. Blacks and Asians who sit on the boards of companies are clearly not a part of labour's tribe and we should not even pretend to be interested in their desires. The Labour Movement should articulate the aspirations of working class people, and should state quite clearly that the only dividing line is that of social class: working class people on one side and two-legged cockroaches on the other.

Success at this in the early 1960s meant that Smith & Nephew Ltd, could no longer get away with paying the Pakistani workers that they had imported into Nelson, Lancashire, £6-0-0 a week when the white workers were receiving £7-0-0. The unions refused to tolerate it on the basis of class solidarity. That led to the Labour government being pressured into banning that particular management wheeze, which happened as part of the two Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968.

The failure to articulate a clear, class-based ideology has led to the indigenous working class losing faith in Labour as the vehicle for their aspirations. When Labour talks about issues that are only of concern to types, the working man loses interest in a debate that is not about him or his concerns. When councils are perceived as doing favours for one ethnic minority at the expense of the rest, all that happens is that many Labour people cease to believe in the party as a whole. The fact that many of these favours consist of middle class jobs for middle class types only makes the situation worse.

How did this unhappy state of affairs come about? There are obviously many reasons, but the main one to my mind is that types are just better at getting their agenda over than we are. Working people tend to respond to a crisis with strikes and/or demonstrations, but if there is no perceived crisis they tend to get on with their lives rather than go to meetings. Leading on from this is the fact that the people who write for newspapers and work on television tend also to be types. It became a kind of vicious circle as midde class types propounded an agenda in the political parties, an agenda that was taken up by the media and sold back not as the desires of a minority, but as the common sense views of everyone. Working class people responded by switching off from a political process that increasingly ceased to articulate their views.

How to get back the lost millions? Well, for that to even begin to happen, NewLab must first lose, and lose badly. The middle class element that has taken over the party should be discredited by this and then encouraged to go off and seek pastures new. The people who will remain within the party will be its labourite and socialist element who know that people like us have no other home but Labour.

Then, Labour must rally the tribe and that tribe will only rally if the old call goes out for jobs, strong unions to protect those jobs and a programme of nationalisation that can be presented as being about strengthening workers' rights still further. A few social issues can be thrown out as table scraps, just so long as those who propound such issues understand that the days when we took a backseat to them are over. The scraps they can have, but the feast will be ours.