CWU support of Jeremy Corbyn

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I was not boasting I stated a fact. I will know leave this thread to your childish and petulant comments.

[Tman]

Dear oh dear, how soon those who apparently rate dear old Jezza turn to the nonsense comments when useable hard facts run out.
I'd have been embarrassed to post that strange photo in a thread on politics, or to huff off in a hissy fit.

[jetblack]

The "New Labour Project" wasn't a project baldrick, it was a reflection of the changing face of the "working classes".

Not so much a reflection, as a self serving caricature FT. Thus the collapse in the credibilty of Labour in working class communities. The Labour Party upper echelons are no longer socialists you see. They are people who go to dinner party's with Rebekah Brooks, who talk military strategy with Texas oilmen, who court the City.

We all know this - even if we don't know the detail.

As for that often cited "illegal war" it seems to be a real issue with some socialists, refusing to take collective responsibility bearing in mind the whole movement is supposed to be about the collective. Blair didn't take us into any dodgy wars, we did that,

No we f***ing well did not FT - speak for yourself son.

.. The Iraq war itself was not "wrong"

How can you say that ? A half a million Iraqi children lost their lives due to US sanctions even before the war started. God only knows the full list of fatalities post the Western invasion. But I suppose you, like Madeleine Albright, think it was a price worth paying.

How can a seemingly half intelligent working man come to that conclusion ? I'm not classing you in the same bracket as a pea brain like Tman - quite a lot of your posts are actually well informed and helpful.

How can you go along with imperial exploitation and the needless death of millions ? It beats me - and I suspect, sadly, that it always will.

[dvbuk55]

I was not boasting I stated a fact. I will know leave this thread to your childish and petulant comments.

Tut Tut no mention of the author of the easily refuted argument.

[fishtank]

How can I come to that conclusion?
I've seen the cost of doing nothing, In terms of lives lost and in terms of how it emboldens others to do the same. Syria is a case in point, those Syrian children have the same value to me as Iraqi children and I don't feel smug about taking the "righteous" path and leaving them to be indiscriminately murdered by Assad, Isis or Russian bombs. Does it give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside that we've managed to get that just as "wrong" by not getting involved as we did in Iraq or is it just ok as long as it's other people doing the murdering. Not in my name is a coward's mantra. It's all in our name.

[Tman]

"jetblack"][quote="fishtank I'm not classing you in the same bracket as a pea brain like Tman

-

QED then, on my previous post.
I appreciate it when you post things like that jet, it shows that you've nothing, other than rehashed paragraphs read elsewhere in your own echo-chamber, to come back with.
It also shows that, as we both know from way back when, I can see through you, and you've no defence from that.

[jetblack]

I've seen the cost of doing nothing, In terms of lives lost and in terms of how it emboldens others to do the same. Syria is a case in point, those Syrian children have the same value to me as Iraqi children and I don't feel smug about taking the "righteous" path and leaving them to be indiscriminately murdered by Assad, Isis or Russian bombs. Does it give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside that we've managed to get that just as "wrong" by not getting involved as we did in Iraq or is it just ok as long as it's other people doing the murdering.

I don't know what you're talking about to be honest - I think you are confused. You are comparing apples with oranges.

Its "wrong" by not getting involved ?

I can imagine circumstances where that would be the case - but Iraq/Syria/Libya are not examples of such cases.

And, while we are on the subject, its not the first time that I've been confused by the arguments you seem to have put forward. You are a Labour Party member - but you believe in capitalism, in material aspiration ? How does that work exactly ? I, for one, am very f***ing confused here - you sound to me like precisely the reason that half a million people voted in Jeremy Corbyn. You sound like you are a comfortable middle aged white man, trying to pontificate to the rest of us, who might not have been quite as fortunate as yourself, what it is that is good for us. That is, war and debt and the status quo.

Not in my name is a coward's mantra. It's all in our name.

No - it isn't.

I sense an offloading of guilt here Fishtank, on your part. Or rather, a transference of guilt.

Listen - if you've backed the wrong horse in the past, its OK, we've all done it. It doesn't mean that you have to condemn yourself to repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

[fishtank]

You are a Labour Party member - but you believe in capitalism, in material aspiration ? How does that work exactly ?

I'm not sure there's anything left to say in this thread.
Your disengagement with the reality of the genuine working class is laid bare in that single comment.

[baldrick]

I'm not sure there's anything left to say in this thread.

Well it's Tman, dvbuk and you who keep restarting it. I would answer your points but I've got to go to a hospital appointment. I'll get back to it later.

[Tman]

I think you meant "replying" rather than "restarting", but you're not really claiming that you absolutely have to respond if someone criticises Corbyn, are you?

[dvbuk55]

These people are lost in the wilderness Tman. You have an immediate uproar by them and his cabal of political supporters if anyone mentions his name without touching the forelock. The latest debacle from IRA supporter John McDonnell stated there was a soft coup against Corbyn, well funded and organised only to withdraw the statement a few days later. In which case are we to believe there is a coup or there isn't. I just wonder if there is a little bit of confusion creeping in, a bit like when I go out of the side door into the garden, going towards the sheds and I forget which shed and worse still forget exactly what it is I'm going for

[baldrick]

The "New Labour Project" wasn't a project baldrick, it was a reflection of the changing face of the "working classes". There are very few of the industrial working class left, Labour's core voters are not miners living in social housing and taking a bath in front of a coal fire, they are aspirational, they believe in capitalism even if it is flawed, they want to own things and they want to feel safe and secure, about the only thing left that tells them apart from Tories is that they don't necessarily believe you have to screw everyone else over to get what you want. Labour realised that 20 years ago and somehow seems to have forgotten it. Corbyn's tactic seems to be rather than understand that basic fact he's simply going to tell people they're wrong and he's right....on everything.

Well the architects of New Labour called it 'The Project'. It wasn't a reflection of the changing nature of the working class. The New Labour advocates believed that the 'working class' had nowhere else to go, but to support the Labour Party. So they could be ignored. They thought it was the middle classes, professional and managerial types who had to be won over from the Conservatives, and this could only be done by moving to the right and taking on conservative attitudes and policies.
In my opinion this was a result of their own backgrounds, middle class, private school and the better universities. They weren't concerned about miners, Kinnock disowned the Miners' Strike, or about social housing. Blair's Housing Minister, Lord Falconer said the market would decide on housing provision.
The miners have gone, most council housing has been sold off to Housing Asociations (private companies in reality) and developers.
The working class now have very little opportunity to be aspirational - maybe the best they can do is to become a 'team leader' or lime manager, if they are prepared to screw their colleagues. Jobs are increasingly low paid, part time, flexible and zero hours contracts. Housing is increasingly unaffordable in many areas of the country.
Blair's legacy is also the right wing careerist MPs in the PLP. During his period the majority of the old working class MPs who came through trade unions, were replaced by the professional and middle management types. They had no understanding and very little concern for working people at the bottom of society.
They believed in the individualism and aspiration espoused by the Conservatives, not in improving the conditions of the majority by class solidarity.

[baldrick]

As for that often cited "illegal war" it seems to be a real issue with some socialists, refusing to take collective responsibility bearing in mind the whole movement is supposed to be about the collective. Blair didn't take us into any dodgy wars, we did that, I remember because I was there and you could hear a pin drop in a room full of dissenters if you could fill a room with them that is, almost every politician supported the Iraq war (at the time ) as did the vast majority of the public and it wasn't because we believed a dodgy dossier, it was because we had seen with our own eyes that maniac march into Kuwait once already and watched him use VX gas ( which is incidentally classed as a weapon of mass destruction ) on thousands of Kurds. The Iraq war itself was not "wrong" even if the motivation behind it from certain parties was questionable and you have to be able to separate the two issues otherwise it's just lazy thinking.

You can blame Blair ( I have no time for him personally ) which is probably almost justifiable but what you can't do is blame everybody who voted for the Iraq war and call them Blairites just because they were around when Blair was.

'We did that'?!! I certainly didn't, nor did millions of others. There was massive opposition to the Iraq War. I was Chair of my local Labour Ward Branch at the time, and the Iraq War was opposed by the majority of ordinary Labour Party members. A million people marched through London with marches through other UK cities the same day against it.
I didn't think much of Sadam Hussain. His regime murdered trade unionists and socialists as well as the Kurds, Marsh Arabs and anyone suspected of opposing him.
But it was the US and UK who left him in power after the first Gulf War. Bush Senior urged the Kurds, Marsh Arabs and regime opponents to rise up and overthrow him, and when they did he wouldn't support them with at the least imposing a no fly zone, and the regime was able to use their helicopters and planes to massacre the insurgents.
The Second Gulf War was about oil. Blair got ithrough Parliament by claiming that Sadam Hussain had Weapons of Mass Destruction ready to launch against British targets within 45 minutes. It was a lie. Millions of people outside Parliament knew it. The UN Inspectors who had been looking for the non existent WMDs wanted more time, and didn't believe the WMDs existed.
But Blair wanted to back Bush Jnr. It wasn't necessary. The US would have done it on their own anyway. And look at the consequences now. That is probably the only thing I agree with Trump on.

[dvbuk55]

With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.

Call it what you will history doesn't lie.

The question that needs to be answered is would you prefer an electable Blairite type Labour Party or a Corbynista unelectable Labour Party against a Conservative Government.

[dvbuk55]

'We did that'?!! I certainly didn't, nor did millions of others.

Well it's like any decisions any Government take, I didn't vote for the Tories nor did millions of others but we have them in power and have to abide by the decisions they take. One of the things that is irksome is the continual wringing of hands over war. We've been in conflict almost every decade and it is what it is so get over it and get prepared for the next one and sod the consequences.