Hunt V Flint
Back To The 70s
. I have never understood why such exaggerated respect is accorded to dead beats like Eric Hobsbawm who went on Parroting the same old Cruddas long after those with teeth and reliable continence could only giggle. Nonetheless ,if you will accompany back to the 70s,a la Life on Mars, he had a bout of prescience in 1978. Congratulating himself on the shiny crop of left wing intellectuals that was pouring out of Universities into the establishment, where they are still poisoning the country today, he noted a cloud due to spoil his aquamarine prospect…
“ On the other hand and dangerously ,” he said ..“ we have a simultaneous relative decline in the manual workers participation in the Labour Movement . The very fact that intellectuals are a rather numerous body creates the danger of divergence . There is a barely concealed contempt for the workers who do not happen to agree with revolutionary intellectuals. There is a danger that establishing ghetto in which intellectuals , while claiming to operate within the working class movement , really address each other often in terms that are incomprehensible to anyone outside “
Of course the touching faith in the importance of intellectuals, and the use of such risible terms as “ “Revolutionary “ may have us hiding our mirth politely today, but there is an unmistakeable echo of the sort of points made by Nick Cohen in his superb book .What’s Left. He comments that by the 21st century male members of the white working class ( The Likes of us ) were ..“sexist racist homophobes cultural conservatives and suspected of harbouring unsavoury Patriotic feelings “ to the Left. Intellectuals soi disant are now just the career professionals but the divide was always about money and class really . This schism been at the heart of the Labour Party right back to the eugenic fantasies of early Fabians and the vicious snobbery of Virginia Woolf. We can guess what they would all make of DCI Hunt , the Working man in all his unadorned glory.
The Last Days of The Working Class Hero
Jumping forward a few years lets visit the Yorkshire mining constituency of Don Valley just after the 1997 disaster .Caroline Flint ,clone Blair Babe sans pareill and witless human accessory , is returned .In so many ways she is emblematic of the new politics . Until that time this Constituency had been represented by a long line of manual workers who were also Yorkshire-men from a Trade Union background . Her predecessor was a Lorry Driver sponsored by the national Union of Mine workers . Miss Flint on the other hand was educated at East Anglia “ Uni”, and followed this auspicious beginning with a glitteringly pointless career in Equal opportunities ,working for the Local Authorities. She would never rebel against the Labour whip and is so ,‘switched on’, that she reportedly proposed to her partner by fax. She partly reflects the existence of only one working pit in the area and the new one member one vote system which was also crucial to New Labour`s 90s “Makeover “. She regards politics as an extension of the caring services ,but her role is a pretty face to make New Labour look “inclusive“. Typically the Blair inclusiveness , like the A list ,looks at every barrier except class ,and by doing so renders the effort counter productive tokenism .
Nostalgia ?
I have hated the trade unions ever since they turned the lights out in the 70s but contemplating sycophantic “Professionals “ like La Flint , I have an almost misty eyed nostalgia for the blue collar warriors . At least they cared about someone and with real working-class people in the House the Conservatives were obliged to engage with life . Now we have one lot of tiresome nits playing media ping pong often indistinguishably ,each from the other. Politics has become playground for the shallow and the end of “explicit” Union power is part of this development.
So what
I have begun some stories that I have not finished here . For example why it is that the left have won the secret battle for Labour and the mirror image problems of the Conservatives upon which George Walden in New Elites has tuned his flame thrower on to such effect in New Elites .In this post I have a limited aim of showing some of the deep the deep resentment between the working classes and the supposed natural party . Dare we hope that the Conservatives will not just gloat while new Lab lose out to the BNP in spots . Dare we wish that Cameron will try to address the people who have been betrayed more than anyone by New Labour deceit ?
The Time is Now
I wonder if the great affection DCI Hunt in particular has sparked , has anything to do with a sense I detect in the ether that some of his values have been betrayed ,.For all his faults he is loyal to his people . How many of the “Professionals “ in politics now in either Party can you say that about.
David Cameron ? Leave it out !!
