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‘The New Levellers’?
The overwhelming victory of the RESPECT Party in the Bradford by-election must have come as a shock to the leaders of all three of Britain ’s main political parties. Labour, of course, will have been particularly dismayed because they had regarded Bradford as a safe seat and had been looking forward to humiliating the Conservative and Liberal Parties after an unpopular millionaire-friendly coalition government budget and the scandal of cash-for-cosy-dinner-parties at 10 Downing Street !
In the event the result reflected nation-wide disillusion with both the government and the opposition. For some time I have feared that this disillusion, which I certainly share, would lead to the emergence of a charismatic ultra-nationalist, ultra right-wing leader (probably with support from the ‘tea party’ fanatics in the USA) who would promise to restore Britain’s ‘greatness’ and lead us instead – as Hitler led the Germans – to utter disaster. Fortunately, there is no sign of the emergence of such a leader in the ranks of either the BNP or UKIP, the parties whose members would be most likely to give him or, of course her, their support.
I can’t feel any enthusiasm for George Galloway and his RESPECT Party who had such a remarkable victory in Bradford . I may be misjudging them but they seem to me to be remarkably like the reverse side of the British National Party coin! I would feel even less enthusiasm for a RESPECT government than I do for our present government of millionaires for millionaires.
Surely now though, in this time of disillusion, there could be potential success for a new Political Party that would be neither ‘left’ nor ‘right’; one that would serve the interests of the whole community, ensuring that in good times or bad, we were truly ‘all in it together’. The principles of such a Party have, as I pointed out in this blog a fortnight ago, been endorsed by the leaders of all three of the existing main political parties, but have been quickly forgotten when they had the opportunity to put them into practice.
I am, of course, referring to the principles and objectives of The Equality Trust (www.equalitytrust.org.uk); principles and objectives that I realize I have supported and promoted for many years. I would though have had difficulty in explaining exactly why I did so until I read The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, first published by Allen Lane in 2009 but now, in paperback and with additional material, by Penguin books. Richard and Kate, both University Professors, have established from existing national statistics that among the developed nations, those with the smallest gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest members of their communities are better off in every respect (life expectancy, infant mortality, criminality, education, marriage breakdown, teenage pregnancy, anti-social behaviour) than those with the larger and the largest gap.
It is not only the poorest members of society who benefit from greater equality. The benefits are noted throughout the social strata, by rich and poor alike. We would all feel the benefit of living in a society in which there were no abjectly poor and no super-rich. This applies not only to sovereign nations but, in federal societies like the USA , to individual States.
It was equality of this kind that the members of the world-wide ‘Occupy’ movement, who camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral and demonstrated (until brutally broken up!) in Wall Street, New York and in Moscow’s Red Square, were seeking. I believe that attempting to achieve equality by influencing the politicians of existing parties is doomed to failure. They are all receptive of the idea, until the opportunity arises for them put words into action. They then all find themselves blinded by billionaires!
The time is surely ripe for the formation of a new political Party with the over-riding objective of levelling incomes. It could expect to recruit disillusioned supporters from all the main political parties. It certainly wouldn’t be short of idealism and intellectual weight and it could, I hope, to draw on the courage and determination of supporters of the Occupy movement. It might perhaps be called The New Levellers or the NLP, a tribute to the original Levellers of the 17th century, and a promise that its policies, practices and funding would be ‘on the level’, dependent on the contributions of its members and supporters, and subservient neither to millionaire donors nor to the Unions.
Oh dear, daydreaming about a possible political party that doesn’t, and probably never will, exist is surely an indication of advanced senility! I had even found myself wishing that I were half a century younger so that I could be an active member of that exciting (but sadly imaginary) new Political Party!
Who owns our water?
I am writing these words on 5th April, the day on which a hosepipe ban came into force for almost the whole of southern and eastern England – except for the Tendring District, England’s driest area!
Needless to say the hosepipe ban and the maximum penalty of £1,000 for flouting it has been the subject of much public debate on radio and tv today. Much of the argument related to whether or not one should report an errant neighbour who was ignoring the ban and using a hose to water his lawn or flower beds. There was discussion too about the fate of garden centres and their suppliers and of professional gardeners in a drought-stricken southern and eastern England .
Several viewers and listeners suggested that before the water companies imposed restrictions on householders and forced those dependent on water for their work out of business, they should do a lot more to stem the thousands of gallons of water that flow away to waste every day from leaky mains supply pipes and from delays in dealing with burst pipes.
During the discussion it emerged that less water is wasted from Germany’s water mains than from those of any other country in Europe*. This, it was claimed, is at least partly because water supply in Germany is a local authority responsibility, as it once was in Britain . Immediately on spotting a leak householders phone the Mayor or their local councillor to inform him or her in no uncertain terms that if that leak isn’t dealt with promptly they needn’t count on a vote from this taxpayer at the next local election! Germany ’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Margaret Thatcher. She may be equally bossy – but, unlike her British counterpart, she clearly has had enough common sense to realize that vital public services like water supply need to be under local democratic control.
Our water supplies are no longer, as they once were, under such control but are the responsibility of private companies whose first responsibility is not to the public but to the shareholders. It simply isn’t cost effective to deal with every leak the moment it is reported, and cost-effectiveness, together with productivity and profitability form Mammon’s Unholy Trinity. In an unfettered market economy, Mammon Rules – OK!
*The European country that wastes most water through leaky mains is Bulgaria Germany , it’s quite good compared with Bulgaria
The Preston Passion
Did you watch The Preston Passion on BBC1 on Good Friday? It was transmitted from 12 noon till 1.00 pm, hardly the best time to transmit a programme that demanded the whole of every viewer’s attention. I recorded it and watched it in the evening. I expect that many others did the same.
There was colourful dance routine in which scores of ordinary Preston citizens took part, the enthusiastic singing of well-known and well-loved Easter hymns and three pre-recorded playlets illustrating aspects of Christ’s Passion in a Preston setting and taking place in the mid-nineteenth century, during World War I and in the present day.
During a strike at a Preston cotton mill in the 1840s an innocent man was brought before the Mayor, as Chief Magistrate, for summary punishment and as an example to others. The Mayor, like Pontius Pilate, hesitated and then gave way – washing his hands as did Pilate after he had condemned Jesus to crucifixion.
The overwhelming grief of the mother of Jesus and of his other women disciples was portrayed by Preston women waiting at the railway station for their sons to return from the horrors of the trenches in World War I – and learning that they would never come home again. An example of willing self-sacrifice was demonstrated by a pre-teens Preston girl who sacrificed herself, and her meagre savings, to support her sick mother and to make sure that her siblings didn’t go hungry.
It was all very moving and very worthwhile. Perhaps it was right that the viewing public should be spared a depiction of the full horror of a 1st Century Roman crucifixion; the stripping and flogging, the mockery and deliberate humiliation, and the long, slow and agonising death of the victim, nailed to the cross. Goodness knows there have, even in recent years, been torture chambers in which untold horrors have been inflicted on our fellow men and women. If there are any today they are kept secret. I was about to write that there is – happily – no present day equivalent of public torture and execution providing an entertainment for some and a warning to others.
It wouldn’t be quite true though. The public stoning to death of women accused of adultery (I haven’t heard of male adulterers facing the same fate, but perhaps they do) is surely comparable with crucifixion. The victim is buried to the waist and stones hurled at her until one merciful stone ends her tortured life. This was the practice in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and is still the practice in some other parts of the world today. Like crucifixion itself though, it is something that we prefer not to think about and not to see on our tv screens.
God sees it though – and weeps, both for the suffering of his human children and for their wanton cruelty to each other. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done them unto me’, said Jesus Christ.
A Question of Priorities
Have you been watching any of the many tv programmes inspired by the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912? I have found Len Goodman’s commentary particularly gripping. He, it appears, had been a welder in Harland and Wolff’s Belfast dockyard before embarking on his career as a dancer.
A feature of the Titanic story that I found fascinating was the imaginative and single-minded way in which the White Star Line had served the interests of its shareholders and done its best, in the face of disaster, to save the company. It would surely have brought joy to the hearts of our present Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Having spared no expense to ensure that 1st Class passengers would have every luxury to which they could possibly have become accustomed, how wise it must have seemed to save money by having less than half the number of lifeboats that would have been required to accommodate all the passengers and crew. They would never be required. The Titanic had been declared to be ‘unsinkable’ but having a few lifeboats visible to all on board would surely reassure even the most nervous passenger.
Then there was the ground-breaking decision to sack all surviving crew members with effect from the moment when the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves. It would really have been absurd to continue to pay members of a crew whose sole raison d’être lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean ! It was no concern of the White Star Line that surviving crew members would find themselves unemployed and penniless in New York . There were surely charities to deal with that sort of thing. It makes our present government’s actions to make it easier for an employer to sack employees seem positively philanthropic.
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