Oh But I Was So Much Older Then I'm Younger Than That Now: In just a few, tumultuous weeks Britain has found itself cast into a political version of Life on Mars. Questions that have not been put to those in power for 40 years are about to be asked again – and by a man who, unbelievably, was there the first time around and remembers them all.
AND SO IT BEGINS. According to that house-journal of the
British Conservative Party, The Telegraph: “John Mills, Labour’s biggest
private donor, said he would stop giving money to the party in the wake of Mr
Corbyn’s election and instead fund the MPs plotting to oust him.”
The response of the British Establishment could hardly be
clearer. Be it Mr Mills and his millions, or the Blairite heavy-hitters who
have resigned their front-bench positions rather than serve under a socialist
leader, the men and women who have worked so long and so hard to deny British
voters a genuine choice between alternative futures, are peeling away from
Corbyn in anticipation of all-out war.
Looking back through British history, it is difficult not to
seize upon the moment when King Charles I, accompanied by his family, and
joined by his closest political allies, deserted London for the Royalist
stronghold of Oxford. It was there that he raised the Royal Standard against
England’s Parliament – thereby setting in motion the English Revolution, and a
civil war that would kill more Britons – per head of population – that World
War I.
Over the top? Maybe. But only “maybe”. Because, whether they
realise it or not, the quarter-of-a-million Britons who voted for Jeremy Corbyn
were also voting for revolution in the UK.
Revolution? Really? Yes, “really”. What else would you call
a political project committed to toppling the economic and social status quo? A
project determined to roll back 30 years of neoliberalism? A project which
openly proclaims its objective of bringing into being a mass, nationwide
movement for radical social democracy – and equipping it with state power?
Some people get it. Here, for example, is the response of
Rob Williams from the National Shop Stewards [union delegates] Network: “The
victory yesterday by Jeremy Corbyn has changed everything. The vote we saw
yesterday was a political revolution. We must build a mass movement against
austerity and the anti-union laws. The message must be simple – Cameron: we are
going to take you down. Your anti-union bill and your cuts, you’re going down
because we are mobilising against you.”
And then there’s this, from Mark Serwotka from the powerful
Public and Commercial Services Union: “If we are going to see any of those
policies realised, we will not get that just through what Jeremy Corbyn and the
Labour Party do in Parliament. If Jeremy Corbyn wants to win on those policies,
he absolutely needs a mass vibrant movement in the country… He needs the
six-and-a-half million trade union members to ensure that we have that vibrant
campaign through strikes, demonstrations, local campaigns, occupations and
everything else ….. We have the ability to stop austerity in its tracks, to
topple this government and to ensure we get a fairer society.”
It is statements such as these that prompted the British
Prime Minister’s, David Cameron’s, terse response to the Corbyn landslide. “The
Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security
and your family’s security.”
Just pause for a moment and absorb the meaning of those
words. Think about all the other individuals and groups which, over the
decades, have been described as “a threat to national security”. Recall, if you
can, the sorts of measures the British “secret state” (most particularly, MI5)
felt entitled to take against these many and various “threats”.
Were they not long out-of-print, I would recommend two books
– Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, by Stephen Dorrill and Robin
Ramsay, and The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatchers and Their American Allies
Tried to Overthrow the British Government, by David Leigh – as useful
guides to the likely fate of any Labour leader who steps beyond the boundaries
of what the British Establishment deems to be politically acceptable.
Alternatively, you could watch the excellent 2006 BBC docudrama The Plot
Against Harold Wilson – which covers much the same ground.
The events described in the books and the docudrama all took
place the 1970s. Jeremy Corbyn was a young man in his 20s when the decade
began. As a middle-class boy steeped in the history and traditions of the Left
(his parents had met each other in the Spanish Civil War!) Corbyn soon gave up
the life of a half-hearted Polytech student to become a trade union organiser.
Living in the capital city through the drama of the 1973 Miners Strike; the
fall of Edward Heath’s Tory Government; the sudden resignation of Harold
Wilson; the IRA’s bombing campaign on the British mainland; the tragic 1978-79
“Winter of Discontent”; and the ominous rise of Margaret Thatcher; he could
hardly fail to absorb the political lessons of that most querulous and perilous
of decades.
Perhaps it was the fact that he did not go to university
that saved Corbyn from the trahison de clercs that saw the CPGB
stalwarts behind Marxism Today end up singing the praises Tony Blair’s
“new times”. Then again, it might simply have been the grounding effect of his
day-to-day trade union work. Whatever it was that steered him clear of “New
Labour’s” siren song, Corbyn remained true to the mass-based, radically
democratic and very public politics of the era in which he came of political
age.
He had seen this politics at work on the streets, in the
factories and down the pits, and he had realised how much it frightened the
powers that be. He’d also witnessed the lengths to which those same powers
would go to demobilise and demoralise the ordinary people who are the only
reliable drivers of progressive economic and social change. If Jeremy Corbyn’s
politics were forged in the 1970s, they have been well-tempered in the
treacherous decades that followed.
Labour’s new leader, and his enemies, are both acutely aware
of the power of the political genie the party’s leadership election has
released. In just a few, tumultuous weeks Britain has found itself cast into a
political version of Life on Mars. Questions that have not been put to
those in power for 40 years are about to be asked again – and by a man who,
unbelievably, was there the first time around and remembers them all. They are
not easy questions – many of Corbyn’s younger followers have never heard them
asked before – and the answers are likely to prove painful for many and, for a
few, very costly. But only in the asking, and the answering, of these, the most
fundamental of questions: about Justice, and Equality, and Liberty, and Love;
can the Matter of Britain be moved forward.
And did those feet
in ancient time
Walk upon
England’s mountains green:
And was the holy
Lamb of God
On England’s
pleasant pastures seen!
And did the
Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon
our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem
builded here,
Among those dark
Satanic Mills?
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 14 September
2015.
