Tweet If A Trot paper of the type I used to sell in the 1980s had accused Margaret Thatcher of ‘bourgeois triumphalism’, it would have been laughed off the pitch for resort to boilerplate cliché of the worst kind. But the formulation was famously first levelled by traditionalist Tory Peregrine Worsthorne in the pages of [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Class’
The changing class make-up of Britain
Apr 3rd, 2013 by Andy Newman.Tweet The recasting of categories of social class trumpeted by the BBC today, based upon research by Mike Savage from the London School of Economics and Fiona Devine from the University of Manchester is not an earth-shattering revelation, based upon what we already know about the changing nature of society; but their emphasis on access to [...]
Len McCluskey: the Left needs you
Mar 5th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Tweet There are two ways to look at Len McCluskey and his campaign for another five years as General Secretary of Unite. One is to look at his record within Unite and the TGWU before it, and at his future plans for the direction of Britain’s biggest union. What will he do for his members? [...]
Owen Jones on austerity, class and the prospects for capitalism
Feb 18th, 2013 by Newsdesk.Tweet In the first of their Radical Voices interview series, Anticapitalists.org spoke to Owen Jones about austerity, class, ideology, and the socialist alternative in the 21st century. The Anticapitalist Initiative describes itself as “a network that enables anti-capitalist activists to debate current political issues. Where possible it aims to unite these activists to fight against [...]
The class politics of CLASS
Nov 8th, 2012 by David Osler.Tweet After decades in which the very word ‘class’ has been virtually unmentionable in polite Labour Party circles, the symbolism behind the acronym that arises from launching a body under the name of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies is entirely obvious. Even some of those sympathetic to its birth argue privately that the [...]
Happy Birthday Keir Hardie
Aug 15th, 2012 by Carl Packman.Tweet The 156th anniversary of the birthday of one of the Labour party’s finest minds, if not the finest, should be a day to celebrate – for without him we wouldn’t have had Attlee, Bevan and Castle and the soul of the party would have been different. The post-war settlement, the NHS, the only woman [...]
Forget “hard-working families” – we need to talk about class
Aug 11th, 2012 by Kieran Dodds.Tweet “There is only one hope for mankind – and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it – and that is the Labour Party.” The words of Aneurin Bevan – Labour hero, British hero – are worth reminding ourselves of from time to time. They remind [...]
A business class hero is something to be
Jul 18th, 2012 by David Osler.Tweet So you are a reasonably successful business person with an interest in politics, but you lack the elementary ideological commitment actually to take out a Labour Party membership card. Well, you’re in luck. Ed Miliband will today unveil his plans to make you a Labour councillor, or even an MP. The news comes just one day [...]
Working class heroes: a Labour MP is something to be
Jul 16th, 2012 by David Osler.Tweet Labour, the Times reports this morning, is on the lookout for more working class MPs. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett – whose parents’ occupation is not listed in standard sources (though he was himself a plumber before he was a full-time politician) – is in charge of a programme expressly designed to get more proletarians [...]
Tory privilege
Apr 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Words that we will never hear again will continue to resonate the caustic hypocrisy of Tory politics. ‘We’re all in it together’, a piece of flagrant brazenness when it was first trailed by Osborne in 2010, has now become a millstone around the Tory neck. Everything they have done in the last two weeks [...]
