How things have changed in 102 years ...

by john of gwent

In a year or two "Not Flash, Just Gordon" is going to have to face the electorate. I think that every night David Cameron goes home and just before he crashes out, I bet he kneels at his pillow and offers whatever God he worships ANYTHING in return for keeping Gordy safe from harm and a heart attack for just a little while longer, for let us be honest, in the same way that Tony B-Liar was Al-Quaeda's recruiting sergeant, Gordon Brown is working miracles for Tory Opinion Poll ratings.

My, my, how things have changed. I was reading a fascinating article on "The Political Compass" website showing how the parties have moved over the past ten or twenty years. It's interesting reading. And their chart is eloquence itself.

Click To Enlarge Image
See How the Liberal democrats have swung as if on a pendulum between a slightly libertarian. centrist left/right party and a strictly neutral party with right leaning tendencies.

See how Ted Heath really did run a party of the middle way, which Maggie swung hard to the authoritarian right, from which is has apparently recovered, but not before a leader who showed "something of the night" took them back to Maggie's Abyssal Depths.

And look how New Liebour has swung from the left-leaning anti-nuclear anti-business pro-union pro-striking pro-communist party it became after Sunny Jim Callaghan lost the key to Number Ten to one more Authoritarian than anything elseon the block and more Right wing than Ted Heath. Harold Wilson would turn in his Gannex Mac.

But as the New Liebour Spin Doctors relax after a hard session promoting the NHS which is now more heavily bribed than it ever was in Nye Bevan's day, I thought I'd go back to the party roots. And look what I turfed up. Click the image below so you can read it properly.
This is the Manifesto on which KIER HARDIE sought re-election to Parliament in 1906.

Well, Well, Well.

In 1906 Kier Hardie complained that the government of the day neglected the aged poor. Today the party he founded stands and wrings its hands while pensioners fear the onset of winter and the choice of starving to death or freezing to death through being able to eat, or light a fire, but not both.

In 1906 Hardie protested that slum conditions prevailed while land for housing went to waste. Today Big Construction Companies lay off builders and leaves houses half finished, or not started, as they cannot make the killing they expected from their inflated waterside developments. And the little man has been squeezed out by their rapacious appetite for land purchase. And NO council builds housing any more.

In 1906 Hardie said Traders and Shopkeepers were overburdened with rates and taxes. No change there, except that these days cobblers must now also pay to put facilities in their shops to cater for a visit from a man with no feet.

In 1906 Hardie said wars were being fought to make the rich richer yet underfed schoolchildren were neglected. It does not need saying, does it ? Only Gordon Brown could deny that we are still fighting such wars. And our schoolchildren are not underfed, but overfed fatty junk instead of the proper, nutritious stuff I was fed at school. No Turkey Twizzlers for me. Proper meat and proper veg cooked and served by proper cooks.

But look what comes next. Kier Hardie says the (Conservative) Government of the Day defended the use of foreign - CHINESE - workers in preference to the indigenous population which "ENRICHES THE MINE OWNERS" (because then as now imported ethnic labour was cheaper and thus left more profit for big business).

The final point is sorely familiar too. In return for demands for real jobs, the government of the early 1900's gave worthless legislation. Just like Harriet Harman's demand that employers throw white men on the dole to make room for ethnic minorities.

But who would have thought it, eh ? The Founder of the LABOUR Party stood 102 years ago for re-election - and the party WON 27 MORE SEATS bringing them 29 in all - on a manifesto proclaiming that immigrant workers were enriching the pockets of big business to the detriment of the ordinary working man. The Conservative Government - elected in 1900 - the "Khaki Election" - so called because of the return of the troops sent to fight the second Boer War - suffered huge losses in 1906 largely out of fears among the electtorate that their policies would lead to massive rises in the cost of food.

When Gordy's Stormtroopers come peddling their lies in a year or two get a printout of Kier Hardie's 1906 Manifesto and demand the little apologist explain why New Liebour have lost their way and abandoned the policies of their founders.

And tell them also that there are some fascinating parallels between a 1906 government clinging to power by the skin of their teeth not giving a toss about the electorate and Gordy's shower in power today. But probably not in power tomorrow.