The politics of hope - Owen Jones

The politics of hope: Owen Jones at the Royal Spa Centre, Leamington.

An inspiring evening at the Spa Centre on Thursday evening. Owen Jones was articulate, inspirational and funny. There was no podium, no notes, he just walked up and down the stage delivering a message of hope. He started off by congratulating Leamington residents on our activism in the last few months, citing the demonstration in support of junior doctors, the work on refugees, the anti-racist work, the exhibition of paintings and drawings by children from Syria, and many more.

Some of the points he made in his speech:

• The gap between rich and poor is getting wider. Most people living in poverty are in work - they earn their poverty by going to work.

• The government and the powers that be want us to believe that injustice is like the weather - there is nothing we can do about it. But this is not true, we can effect change by organising and resisting. He used the example of the Suffragettes, the Trade Union movement, and more recently, the demonstrations against TTIP across Europe.

• Polarisation is the defining feature of politics today. On the one hand we have progressive movements, fuelled by anger at increasing inequality, movements like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the election of Jeremy Corbyn by a huge majority of Labour Party members. On the other hand the rise of the right and the fascist parties, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Jobbik party in Hungary, Austria's Freedom Party. This polarisation is evident in the USA by Trump versus Sanders.

• Governments use the politics of fear which in effect means kicking those at the bottom and a deliberate redirecting of people's justified anger at the rich and the banks, towards the neighbour next door, the so-called benefit scrounger down the road.  In fact, the lavish benefit claimants are the banks. The real problem is tax avoidance which costs the UK £69.9 billion a year, while benefit fraud costs £1.2 billion a year. The politics of fear have another target, the refugees and immigrants.

• Those who want to improve society are branded as unpatriotic - the enemy within. The media frenzy against Jeremy Corbyn is a good example of this. And yet, what's patriotic about attacking the NHS and the BBC?

• The politics of hope is about building societies run in the interests of working people, not run as a racket for the mean and the greedy at the top. By looking at some alternatives across the world, we can challenge the inevitability of widening inequalities and injustice. The problem is that we have lost the confidence for an alternative, and this is what we need to build on. Everything we have, our rights, the welfare state,  the vote, were not given to us, they were  fought for. The Suffragettes were hated, reviled, tortured - their struggle is the perfect example of how to effect change. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we have to continue their work and not let them down.

• The Right use stories in their arguments and propaganda, while the Left use facts and figures. We are subjected to a constant stream of stories and this is what people respond to, people need stories: the refugee crisis came to the forefront of people's consciousness after the body of Aylan Kurdi was washed up on a Turkish beach. This should be a lesson to the Left.

Jones' one hour speech was followed by questions from the audience. The one that made me chuckle:  'if we were French, we would not be here listening to you, however pleasant that is, we would be out burning things. Why do you think that is?' The reply was that Britain has a  long history of resistance, starting from the Chartists to the recent strikes by the junior doctors.

A stimulating and uplifting evening.

The People's History Museum - Citizens

 

 

 

The People's History Museum, Manchester. Main Gallery Two - Citizens

 

The displays in this gallery looked at Britain after the vote had been secured for all, and at politics and protest post-1945.

 

The question that is posed in the exhibition in this gallery is this: rather than being revolutionaries, reformers, workers or voters, have we become citizens?

 

 (Go here for Main Gallery One on Revolution)

 

 



 

The implementation of the Welfare State by the Labour Government after the 1945 election reshaped British society and the tone was set for the next 34 years.




 

 

'We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders', Aneurin Bevan. 

 

 

 

 

This section was a strong reminder of how fresh, radical and revolutionary Labour was back then 

 

 

 

 

and inevitably, one could not but make comparisons with today's Labour Party. 

 

*   *   * 

 

Things started changing during the 1970s which were beset by recession, strikes, an oil crisis and the Winter of Discontent.

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In August 1976 the workers at Grunwick's film processing plant went on strike demanding higher pay (they were paid £28  per week when the national average wage was £72), and better working conditions. The strike lasted two years and had overwhelming support from the trade union movement. It was unfortunately unsuccessful and was abandoned in July 1978.

 

  

 

 

 

As the recession grew, power switched between the Tories and Labour. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives won the general election. This was a time of regression and Britain started changing again. Union activity was restricted, government spending was controlled and Labour was seen as ineffective.

 

Politics moved  to being more issue based rather than about political parties. Issues such as:

 

 

 

 

Northern Ireland

 

Women's liberation

Gay rights

the disability movement

anti-racism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

anti-apartheid

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



campaigning for peace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those were the years of the badge. People wore badges which became a symbol of identity

 

 

 



 

Margaret Thatcher changed the face of Britain and divided the country

 

the country became most polarised during the miners' strike which was a defining moment in British industrial relations, had an immense symbolic significance, and the miners' defeat significantly weakened the British trade union movement.

 



 

 

The museum's collection of banners is very impressive.

 

 

At the end of our visit we went to the music room and listened to Ewan MacColl:

I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way
I may be a wage slave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday.

 

 

 

People's History Museum - Revolution

 

 

The People's History Museum, Left Bank, Spinningfields, Manchester.

 

We spent two very interesting and moving hours at the People's History Museum while we were in Manchester. The museum has the largest collection of political material in Britain, spanning working people's demand for a better world, be it better working conditions, higher living standards, or demands for the vote.  There is a collection of over 2,000 political posters covering elections and issue campaigns as well as the largest collection of trade union and political banners in the world.

 

 

 

 

The main theme in Gallery One is Revolution and the exhibits start with the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, which led to the first reform of Parliament in 1832. Manchester, the centre of Britain's Industrial Revolution and the world's first industrial city was also one of the first cities where people tried to improve their working and living conditions. The reform meeting of 60,000 people on St Peter's Field resulted in 18 dead and over 400 seriously injured when magistrates sent in soldiers to arrest the leaders.

The displays go on to trace the birth of democratic ideas, including:

 

the abolition of slavery

 

 

demands for the vote

 

 

 

the Chartists

 

 

but also groups like the Levellers and individuals such as John Wilkes, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Cobbett, Francis Burdett and the Cato Street Conspirators.

The next section of the exhibition was about the growth of the trade union movement,



starting with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, six workers arrested and convicted for attempting to form a union in 1834. They were all pardoned in 1836 following a public outcry.

 

 

 

This section included the differences between unions for skilled and unskilled workers

 

 

 

 

 

including workers who found it hard to join a union.

 

 

 

 

And striking workers whose demands were met, like the women workers at the Bruant and May match factory in London who went on strike in 1889, demanding better conditions and more pay.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) held their first meeting in Manchester in 1868. 

 

 

 

 

We found out that in the 1850s trade union leaders wore top hats.

Following the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who based a lot of their writings on the conditions of the working class in Manchester, Socialism grew from the 1880s, and socialist groups helped form the Labout Party in 1900.

There were displays about the formation of the Labour Party in 1906,



A large section on women's struggle to gain the vote. 

 



 

 

 

Demands for the vote began in the 1860s and by 1903 a lack of success led to the adoption of militancy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Alice Nobel's arrest warrant, 1907. Ms Noble was 16 when she travelled from Leeds to London to attend a Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) demonstration. She was arrested for 'disorderly conduct' and sent to prison.

Women over 30 received the vote in 1918.

 

There was a section on the General Strike in 1926, but my photographs did not come out well

 

 

 

 

 

the Spanish Civil War

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the Second World War