3037 days ago
Being a member of the Labour Party is so much fun. Seriously it is the cheapest form of entertainment going. Okay, when I say entertainment, it is rather like having front row seats at an illegal dog fight where both contestants emerge bloodied and unfit for anything but, now that fox hunting is illegal, if you like blood sports join the Labour Party.
One of the joys are the almost daily emails from all levels of the party and from the competing factions. Each sender competes with his or her rivals or superiors and inferiors in the party hierarchy to be the most sanctimonious and pious on issues that no-one on this planet cares about, with an occasional undertone of sheer nastiness sometimes about the Tories but usually about fellow Comrades.
The other joy is, of course,
3906 days ago
The veteran Labour politician Tony Benn has this morning died aged 88. As is the case, even for Bob Crow, his family have my sympathies. So what to make of Wedgie? This may rather surprise you.
Anthony Wedgwood Benn was an aristocrat who renounced his seat in the Lords to fight for what he believed in from the House of Commons. And he certainly had strong beliefs. During the 70s and 80s as Energy Minister in the appalling Callaghan Government and then in opposition he tried to swerve the Labour party violently to the left and he almost succeeded. He did his part in making Labour utterly unelectable and thus gave the blessed Margaret a good stretch in office. For that he deserves our eternal gratitude.
My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was a Bennite. After retiring from the Civil Service he was for the first time in his live, as head of the National Trust & War Graves Commission, able to speak his mind. And thus in the 1975 EU referendum campaign he found himself now and again speaking on the same platform as his hero. Their reasoning for opposing staying in the Evil Empire was that it was a construct to make rich farmers and industrialists richer at the expense, largely via food prices, of the working classes.
I am not sure that I follow their logic but at least I could agree with my Grandfather and Benn on one thing, the EU was a bad thing.
In his declining years Benn came to be seen as a bit of a National Treasure.
