Well I see that Jack Jones has died. Despite disagreeing with pretty much everything the old man believed, including that mass non-democratic organisations (which could compel an individual to join and which had no method of secret ballot) had the right to bring down democratically elected governments, he was one of the last of the ascetic leftists who used to dominate, generally for ill but for a kind of good-natured ill, the politics of this country. Let us be clear: Jack Jones was not for fat bastard MPs luxuriously feathering their own second nests with taxpayer funded porn; nor was he in favour of giving entry to government to people who had simply supported it: no, for better and largely worse, he was a leader of working people and led them according to his principles. We may have forgotten these: but in essence the word "principles" means " a set of deeply held beliefs", and Jack Jones worked with this bizarre concept, sometimes to the enrichment of his followers, sometimes to their disadvantage, but always with a view of what was right, even when it was wrong. At no stage did Jack Jones say "oh fuck it I'll just take what I can fucking get" like everyone in public life does now. Well yes he did "meet" representatives of the USSR, but what can you do? - The whole left was so utterly compromised by its half-hearted understanding of democracy that he was about as good as the bastards came (and continue to come today).
Anyway.
What if things had been different: if Jack Jones and his ilk had prevented, at the point of another anti-democratic strike, the proto-monetarist government (yes I know he supported it) of 1976-9 taking effect? What if we had slipped into outright socialism in 1976? Say at a flashpoint in the IMF thing..like, ooh, I dunno, November 1976? Around the 17th?
And from that date had the government stuck two fingers up to the IMF and embraced collective bargaining type socialism?
Come 1981, say, does anyone really think the country would have been at ease with itself? That the riots of 1981 would have never happened?
What, I wonder, would have been the case in, say, November 1981? Who would have rioted and why? Who would have got on and put their heads down?
What would have been the State of the Nation?
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3 comments:
Good God!
Sweet Cheeks has recommended you -- and I always listen to what she says! -- but I've managed to stumble in on a day where I can form no opinion!
Can you imagine!
When you said Jack Jones was dead I was thinking of the crooner of the "Love Boat" theme song, of Shirley Jones' husband (she of the original Oklahoma! and The Partridge Family) and I was thinking, "I thought he died a long time ago...:)
I'll come back when I have a legitmate comment.
Carry on.
Pearl
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