I’VE BEEN listening to BBC Radio Merseyside’s Breakfast with keener attention than usual these days – because each week I write a review of the week’s news for the programme.
I compile my review as a rhyming poem and record it to be broadcast each Friday at about quarter to seven in the morning.
This Friday (16 Feb), unfortunately, due to many late drinks at Hell’s Waiting Room the night before, I was still well asleep when the poem was transmitted. I missed it in other words.
The reason I mention this is because a section of my latest rhyming review dealt with hard left Socialism - in the news because it is making half-hearted attempts to revive and re-launch itself in Liverpool.
Here’s what I wrote in the poem about the old lefties who’d been interviewed about their continuing commitment to old-fashioned, full-blooded Socialism…
“Then a reminder of fractious times past
When Militant’s battles raged full blast
Against Maggie Thatcher and Kinnock too.
Opposing everything … the Socialist few.
Now they’ve regrouped, and they must insist
For the future’s sake, you’re a socialist!
For the working classes they retain affection.
Hear Ricky Tomlinson’s wry reflection
On what might brighter and better be
If only we could be trusted to see
Like Tony Mulhearn, that defiance is best
No matter sound finance and all the rest.
So gather round the bold scarlet banner
Let’s be workers again, quick!, here’s a spanner
Chuck it in to New Labour’s black heart
‘Cos we’ve had our fun, it’s time to depart.�
OKAY, that was the bit from my poem. I just want to add that Ricky Tomlinson – fine comedy actor and nice man though he is – speaks utter poison when he craps on about politics.
The Militant era was a horrible time for Liverpool. The Militant councillors – including big-gobbed Derek Hatton –were not, as Tony Mulhearn would have us to think, working class heroes.
They were hate-filled ranters who brought shame on the city and caused a mess and a distortion in Liverpool politics that lasts until this day with loony-tune Lib-Dems in power and hiring an army of sinister enforcers to persecute smokers, for instance.
The Militants were fantasists drunk on the illusion of power, spouting emotional appeals to civil strife that truly belong to fascism rather than socialism.
As a political creed and a system of values, there is nothing intrinsically bad about socialism. Indeed there is much to admire about it.
But the sort of socialism that is good is the English sort which is about the pursuit of liberty and justice, as George Orwell defined it.
And not the continental variety, which all too often is about envy, violence, ideology, and mad obsessions with equality, corporatism and Godlessness.
If Militant and their bedfellows ever return to power in Liverpool would the last person to leave the city please turn the lights off.
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Annette Kalms wrote...
I well remember the Militant era, especially when redundancy notices were getting sent out by taxi! The Lord Mayor ceased to exist. In place was a chairman, who was on the same pay and did the same job. Nothing changed.
*** We know the truth behind all the rabble-rousing, don't we, Annette. STEVE.
Posted by: Annette Kalms | February 17, 2007 2:20 PM