The Irony: It Will Be A Labour Government That Makes My Dad's Past Your Future.
In 1930, during the hours when the sky sinks into dusk, working-class boys like my father dug through the rubbish bins of restaurants in Britain's north, looking for food to eat. Six million men were out of work and a poor relief of 10 shillings a week ensured that their children went to bed hungry. Great Depression kids of the unemployed were turned feral by politicians who claimed-much like today's Labour and Tory MPs- that money doesn't grow on trees.
The year my dad turned seven, Labour Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald introduced harsh austerity against the working classes to combat an economic crises created by the affluent. It pushed my father's family further down into a warren of destitution.
My dad was put to work as a beer barrow boy to help with the rent on a room his family let in a seedy slum in Bradford. He grew to believe he was a beast of burden to be used and abused by the adults who were his master.
"You feel apart from others and learn to keep your thoughts deep in a subterranean part of your mind. Those thoughts are the only thing you truly own."
At night, I'd fall asleep hungry under a coat for a blanket. My dad was beside me as we shared a flock mattress in the attic of a doss house. I stared wide-eyed at a skylight above me that leaked when it rained until I fell asleep weary from my day's labours,
I would dream I was a bird. I'd soar high above Bradford and felt momentarily free. But then I would feel a tug that indicated I could fly no higher. I looked down to see what dragged me back to earth. One of my claws was attached to a chain fastened tight to the chimney pot of the dosshouse where I lived."
The elimination of poverty was the bedrock that founded the Labour Party. But in 2023, Keir Starmer repudiated that mission when he told Britain he had no intention of removing this Tory government's two-child benefit cap. 250k children live in dire poverty because of that cap. According to Labour, they aren't worthy of a decent childhood. They don't deserve according to Keir Starmer what every Labour MP's child takes for granted each day to have adequate food and housing.
A hundred years ago, my father was born into a Britain where Tories and much of the middle class believed bairns like my dad weren't worthy of nutrition, healthcare, a place to live, and the right to be kids. They were only seen as future unskilled or semi-skilled workers to make their profits- much like a milk cow makes a farmer's fortune.
In 2023, we have come almost full circle back to that world. The Labour Party helped make this happen when they surrendered the battlefield of economic and social progress to the self-interests of the entitled. It didn't have to be that way. Between 2015 and 2019 Labour under a Corbyn leadership attempted to return to their roots and be the political party of Keir Hardy and Attlee. But a cabal of Labour MPs, the architects of the Iraq War and a news media corrupted by Murdoch decided democracy was best in the hands of the few rather than the many. The rest is history as they say written by the victors.
Any promise that everyone gets a fair shake in society is gone now. It was dissolved in an acid bath of neoliberalism, consumerist narcissism, and a news media held in the hands of the 1%. To believe voting for a Labour Party that now stands with employers over strikers, openly discusses the privatisation of the NHS, demonises refugees, attends the wedding of George Osborne, and says there is no money to help children who live in poverty will make things better for ordinary people is pathetic. To vote for Keir Starmer's Labour in the next election is as stupid, delusional and evil as those who voted for Boris Johnson because he was going to "Get Brexit Done." They have told you what they are going to do and no wishful thinking on your part will change their march towards making my dad's past your future.
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