Trevor Philips & The Novichok of Politics

by Les May

I'M seventy six.  The first thing I do each morning is take a pill to lower my blood pressure.  Yesterday I forgot until mid morning.  My wife asked me what I was doing.  When I told her she said she was surprised I was willing to take a daily pill when I am usually sceptical about medication.  I replied “I’m trying to make sure I live long enough to see a proper Labour government again”.

My dad was mentally ill; my mother illiterate.  For the first eleven years of my life six of us lived in a ‘two up, two down’ on Deeplish (a district of Rochdale).   It had gas lighting, an outside lavatory, the sink was a rectangular depression in slab of stone, in other words a ‘slop stone’, and the outside wall was constantly damp in winter.  The rent was 10/6 (53p or £14.40p at 2018 prices).

In 1953 we got lucky and were allocated a ‘council house’. The rent was £1 a week which is equivalent to £27.12p (£117.52 per calendar month, PCM) at present day prices.  After 26 years of Tory governments and 13 years of Labour governments selling off council houses the rent of a now privately owned ex-council house on the Belfield estate (another district of Rochdale) is £460 PCM. These houses were built as a result of a Labour government’s 1930 Housing Act piloted through the Commons by Arthur Greenwood.

My dad worked as a road sweeper, on the bins or ‘the tubs’ (these served the outlying houses which did not have mains drainages).   When he could no longer hold down a job and went into hospital we did not starve thanks to Labour’s 1948 National Assistance Act. It’s what enabled me to stay at school until I was 18.

Unsurprisingly my political hero is Clement Attlee. In a very real sense all I have I feel I owe to the 1945 Labour Government.  I got a good education which enabled me to work until I was 67.  I had a job which did not make me rich, but it gave me a house and the security that allowed us to turn it into a home.  When an unexpected bill arrives I don’t have to ask a Wonga lookalike for a loan.  It wasn’t just the money that supported my family which allowed us to break out of poverty I’m grateful for.  I’m equally grateful that we were not viewed as scroungers. Today we would be.

I’ve voted Labour all my life because I want everyone to have the chances I had. I despaired throughout the Blair years and the Harman interregnum.  When Corbyn was elected leader I looked forward to him setting the Labour party in a new direction.  Equality of opportunity is not enough, not least because it is impossible to achieve.  We have to care about equality of outcome if other families are to have the same support that mine had.

When I read that Trevor Philips has said ‘Labour is led by antisemites and racists who basically want to essentially eliminate anyone who disagrees with them’, I ask myself how anyone can so casually toss about words that are the political equivalent of Novichok and yet in almost the same breath say ‘We have to find a way to talk to each other with respect’.

As a Labour supporter I feel tainted by Philips’ poisonous comments.  It is as if he is accusing me of being a racist.  Like so many other people who use this kind of language he produces no evidence for it.  He’s acting like the Trump of Labour politics.

What we are seeing from Philips, Umanna, Field, Regan and their ilk is self indulgence and a polishing of their egos.  They don’t care about the families like the one I grew up in.  They don’t care that ordinary families cannot find a home. They don’t want a proper Labour government which will tackle at root the gross inequalities in our society and build the council houses people need.  They style themselves ‘centre left’ and attack Corbyn for being too left wing.  Corbyn is far less radical in his politics than Attlee was.  Just look at Attlee’s record on nationalisation if you want confirmation.