I need a heart transplant!

During the campaign to get Jeremy Corbyn elected there has been a great many silly arguments used to rubbish him and the left. Blair’s intervention angered many. Hence the title.

However, although many have told Blair to go back to do what he is good at; genuflecting in front of unsavoury, dictatorships around the world and taking 300 grand for a 20 minute talk to African leaders on child poverty no one, as far as I know, has analysed the implications of his arguments. He said…and you need to think carefully about this…that he would not even want  a leftwing leader with Corbyn’s ideas to win even if it was possible, which he argued it wasn’t.

Now if anyone can cast their minds back to 1995/6 and remember the reasons he gave for adopting so many Tory policies was that this is what was needed to get elected BECAUSE that is what the British electorate wanted. They did not want left wing ideas. He hid behind his interpretation of what the electorate wanted. He did NOT say he did not want left wing ideas to dominate his government. because he was opposed to them but because other’s did not like them.Many read this as a coded message that when in government he would move from being mild mannered Clarke Kent to a socialist superman. I remember this debate in my workplace.How wrong those that believed this were.

Blair let the cat out of the bag last week. Let us not forget it.

On Hobgoblins and history.

History is about change. Constant change. Sometimes big, sometimes molecular. Sometimes involving revolutions, other times ideological changes. History is a process. and it never repeats itself in exactly the same way. There may be echoes and we may make useful comparisons but never, ever is history identical with itself.

And that is why something I learnt at a conference in the early 90s came to mind today when I read some shocking nonsense from those that should know better. There are a few hundred people, on the left, who are having the same effect as the Blairites on Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for leadership-none.

Blairites warn us of “reheated Bennism”: others warn the thousands of unaligned who are flocking to join in the campaign to fight the Blairites in and outside the LP that they are wasting their time just as their metaphorical mums and dads were in the eighties.

No difference? Really? My memeory of the Benn campaign of the early 80s was that most of the far left dived into the LP. Serious sections of the hard left, including sections of the CP, and many supporters of Trotsky, probabaly 1000s,were shifting, relatively speaking, right. Is that the case today?

Context is essential in understanding everything, from one’s taste in heavy metal, the prediliction for nose studs…and the  rise of popular support for anti neo-liberal ideas however imperfect or lacking in clarity they may seem to the wise.

And that brings me back to what a leading member of the SWP, Alex Callincoes said at that conference. That you may think consistency of approach is a good thing but as Emerson wrote, he said gleefully,”consistency is the hobgoblin of the small minded”.

Reconnecting…

Well, when I set up this blog in Dec 2013 I knew it would be dificult to aim even for two posts a month reviewing books that have been and continue to be formative on my political and cultural understanding of the world and to comment on issues and debates  that interest me or I think important. But 19, 19 months on…. let’s just say..shit happens. So I  hope to begin to reconnect with the project I set myself.

Politically, the picture looks better than it did just a few months ago when a small Tory majority was elected on 36% of the vote. Therefore to return to what has been repressed in the last 19 months, I want to re-engage with some of the debates in politics, cultre and education that have shaped me and my life for the last 36 years. The aim is…I know, I know, you have heard it before, to produce at least two pieces a month to do three things: clarify my own thinking; to indicate some points that might be of interest to fellow travellers; to debate with others. Simples.

For those of you that care to read what comes next and wonder what it is all about the title piece is probably the best, if not the necessary, place to start-Reflections on a Damaged Life. 

I have decided to put something up later about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign and the exciting effect it is having on creating a renewed interest in socialist politics.

I also want to share some views on the situation in Greece as well as join in the discussion on the European Union and the referendum.

My starting point however, will be education and in particualr the changes to English Language and Literature GCSE exam specifications which kick in in September 2015 and to which end I, and the English Faculty I lead, have been working towards.

From there, I shall stick with education but this time education trade unionism and put up some thoughts on the NUT’s strategy in challenging the government’s agenda on work,pay and pensions.

So, I have set myself some targets as they say in schools. Hopefully they are realistic and achievable. Okay, I hear cynicism and whispers that I will never get around to it.

Well let’s just see.