I was recently asked a question: why did you
join the Labour Party? Thinking about why I did took me back to the early years of my life and it was all my grandpa's doing...
I loved listening to my grandpa when I was a little girl - he died when I was 9 - and he was a lifelong socialist, having joined the army at 15 (having lied about his age), been shipped out to France in WW1, saw what "the nobs" did to the troops, and came home totally disillusioned with the army and those in charge of the country.
Having been gassed in the trenches he was bedridden by the time I was born, and I used to sit and listen to him talk about the old socialists, about how he wasn't able to speak out against exploitation of workers for fear of losing his job as a tram driver - which with a wife and 4 kids would have meant homelessness and penury, about the desperate situation of families in the 1930's depression when there was no work and no money coming in, about having to pay to see the doctor if you were ill, about the setting up of the welfare state, about Nye Bevan and the creation of the NHS after WW2, about houses being built to replace slums, and about the fact that he had an old age pension to live on until he died at the age of 67.
His words are still with me and he profoundly influenced my thinking and my political views.
When I left school and started work in a local shop (at 16) I joined the shop-workers' trades union and then the Labour Party in Kendal. I served on Kendal trades council, and helped canvas with the Labour Party for local councillors before moving to London to work for USDAW, and later for another smaller transport trades union. I was very much involved in trades union campaigns in London in the 1980s, attended and spoke at USDAW conferences as a delegate, and canvassed for Labour in Ilford, Camden and Hackney in various elections.
I listened to, and had the pleasure of meeting, Tony Benn at one of the fringe meetings during the miners' strike in 1984; I set up and ran a food collection point for Kent miners from our union office during that strike; helped raise money to send to the women of the Greenham Common Peace Camp; took part in endless marches and demo's in Liverpool and London against the privatisations that were happening under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government; and stood in vigils outside the South African embassy against apartheid (I wasn't there at the time Jeremy Corbyn was arrested but I remember it happening and seeing the newspaper coverage of it) and outside the American embassy against Cruse missiles.
In 1986 I moved back north with my new baby son and dropped out of political activity to become involved in small village life. I found that it is very easy to forget that the rest of the world moves on when you live in a rural area where little changes year on year. I hated seeing what was happening in the Labour Party under Blair's leadership so I walked away and thought I would never come back if it was going along that road. For me the change to Clause 4, and the invasion of Iraq were not compatible with Socialism, and as time went on I could see little difference between New Labour (as it became known) and the previous Tory government.
In 2010 when the Tories and Lib Dems formed the coalition government I had no idea that things were going to get worse. My local MP is a LibDem and he has always been a decent-enough chap who seems to work hard for his constituency, but then things started to decline. Friends elsewhere and locally started sharing petitions about cut backs and closures; the pension age for women of my age group suddenly shot up from 60 to 65, then 66; hospitals were threatened with cuts; social services were slashed; libraries were closing; schools were becoming academies; student university fees rocketed from £3,000 pa to £9,000 pa; and the welfare benefits system seemed to be all but dismantled, with horrendous bullying of claimants leading to mental illness and suicides in many cases. What was going on? It was enough to shake me out of my rural bubble and make me take more notice. I signed petitions, wrote letters to the aforementioned MP, and started talking about politics again.
Then in 2015 another disaster happened: the Tories were re-elected with a majority so they no longer need the LibDem support to make a government, which was just as well for the latter, as the LibDems had lost all but 8 of their seats, presumably as punishment for doing the 2010 deal with the Tories. I was in shock: how could this be? How could people vote for a party which cut vital services? A party which hounded sick and disabled people so that they committed suicide rather than face that terrible system. A party which claimed that austerity was the only way to sort out the country's financial situation, whilst still wanting to spend billions of pounds on a weapons system that will never be able to be used! The Labour Party clearly had not made its opposition to the Tories clear enough: being Tory light isn't what opposition is all about, and the electoral result showed it. I was close to despair!
Then a man called Jeremy Corbyn hit the headlines; I listened to his speeches and he re-lit my fire. I remembered him from the 1980's newspaper coverage back in London, so I signed up as a supporter and paid my £3 so I could vote for him then, as I didn't get any papers from that (although my husband and son - who signed up after me - did get them), I joined as a full member on the last day I could prior to the leadership election. I am so glad that I did! I got my ballot papers, voted for JC, and did my bit on social media to help raise awareness of him. On the day the announcement was due I was sat shaking like a leaf in a gale, desperate for Jeremy Corbyn to win and dreading what would happen if he didn't. I saw the ballot result and promptly burst into tears, such was my relief, and cried for half an hour!
Since then I've attended local CLP meetings, volunteered to help with the website/social media team for the CLP, leafleted in support of our local council candidate, and I am helping set up a Momentum branch for the area. Am I back? Yes! Why? Because I believe that with a Labour government, under the leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, people will get a far fairer deal out of life.
I do not support austerity, which causes a downward spiral in the economy to the detriment of public services and people's lives. I do not support cuts in services, or privatising NHS services, or bullying people off benefits, or testing small children to make the schools look good in their league tables, or selling off social housing. I don't want to see people living in fear of the DWP, or worrying about how pay their rent/mortgage or feed their kids, of choosing whether to eat or have heating. I do support everyone being entitled to a decent standard of living and for society to treat everyone equally.
The mark of a decent society, my grandpa used to say, is demonstrated by how the old, the weak, the sick and the vulnerable are treated within it. Under that yardstick the Tories have failed miserably, but Labour under Jeremy Corbyn can and will succeed, and I'm going to help him as much as I can!
