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Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Thread

laughingboy said:
This test of purity - only Real Men who do Real Work qualify outright, everyone else needs to serve a penance first - gets no-one anywhere. For example, it would have excluded
It's difficult to see how the Labour Party or its predecessor, the Independent Labour Party, would have come into being without these people and their movements.

It's not the world you come from, it's the world you want to see that matters.
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It also excludes the current leader of the Labour Party.
 
laughingboy said:
This test of purity - only Real Men who do Real Work qualify outright, everyone else needs to serve a penance first - gets no-one anywhere. For example, it would have excluded
It's difficult to see how the Labour Party or its predecessor, the Independent Labour Party, would have come into being without these people and their movements.

It's not the world you come from, it's the world you want to see that matters.
Click to expand...
Most sensible post for a while amidst so much gibberish and trolling in this thread.

Many years ago Denis Healey was debating the late Paul Foot. They didn’t come much posher than minor aristo and public schoolboy Foot. Yet he renounced his privileged background and dedicated his life as a journalist to highlight gross miscarriages of justice and expose the nauseating corruption and hypocrisy of our rulers.

In the heat of debate, Healey snarled that he wouldn’t take lessons on socialism from “this posh, privileged, public schoolboy.” Foot retorted, quite brilliantly, “yes Denis, we’re both traitors to our class.”

The idea that you cannot subscribe to socialism, or even aspire to a more just society if you were not forged in the world of manual labour, is the sort of nonsense that endorses the ‘we’re all middle class now’ argument. The world has changed. The western working class is no longer to be found down coal mines and in shipyards. They can now be found in call centres, hospitals and schools. We are not rigidly defined by what accent we have, or what newspaper we read, or how high was the tower block we grew up in. Toffs such as Paul Foot and Tony Benn were amongst the most effective and committed socialists the U.K. has produced, and many working class people vote Tory.

There’s nothing pre-ordained or automatic about how your political orientation or interest in social justice and equality is shaped.
 
Finnegan said:
Most sensible post for a while amidst so much gibberish and trolling in this thread.

Many years ago Denis Healey was debating the late Paul Foot. They didn’t come much posher than minor aristo and public schoolboy Foot. Yet he renounced his privileged background and dedicated his life as a journalist to highlight gross miscarriages of justice and expose the nauseating corruption and hypocrisy of our rulers.

In the heat of debate, Healey snarled that he wouldn’t take lessons on socialism from “this posh, privileged, public schoolboy.” Foot retorted, quite brilliantly, “yes Denis, we’re both traitors to our class.”

The idea that you cannot subscribe to socialism, or even aspire to a more just society if you were not forged in the world of manual labour, is the sort of nonsense that endorses the ‘we’re all middle class now’ argument. The world has changed. The western working class is no longer to be found down coal mines and in shipyards. They can now be found in call centres, hospitals and schools. We are not rigidly defined by what accent we have, or what newspaper we read, or how high was the tower block we grew up in. Toffs such as Paul Foot and Tony Benn were amongst the most effective and committed socialists the U.K. has produced, and many working class people vote Tory.

There’s nothing pre-ordained or automatic about how your political orientation or interest in social justice and equality is shaped.
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Yes, but the big fallacy of the authentocratic argument is that you are not allowed to break out of your background in the docks, the factory, or whatever, to do something else. It is an argument that constrains working people rather than widening opportunity.

And as you say, the factory that I worked in for many years and the industry it supported, no longer exist.
 
laughingboy said:
This test of purity - only Real Men who do Real Work qualify outright, everyone else needs to serve a penance first - gets no-one anywhere. For example, it would have excluded
It's difficult to see how the Labour Party or its predecessor, the Independent Labour Party, would have come into being without these people and their movements.

It's not the world you come from, it's the world you want to see that matters.
Click to expand...

Years ago I studied this period of social and political history in Leeds as part of a WEA research group. We thought that the rise of a professional middle class of teachers (numbers grew quickly after the 1870 Act), civil servants and what we would now call in general the public sector was at least as important in the formation of the ILP and similar organisations at the local level as organised labour.

Sorry that was a very long sentence!
 
vince rocker said:
Years ago I studied this period of social and political history in Leeds as part of a WEA research group. We thought that the rise of a professional middle class of teachers (numbers grew quickly after the 1870 Act), civil servants and what we would now call in general the public sector was at least as important in the formation of the ILP and similar organisations at the local level as organised labour.

Sorry that was a very long sentence!
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It has always been thus! Even the Peasants Revolt was led by an educated priest with an artisan class in the vanguard. The revolution that led to the Ming Dynasty in China had grass roots origins (I think) but elsewhere socialism has had decidedly middle class roots

(which is not to say that the Ming Dynasty had anything to do with socialism, obvs)
 
Of course there is an opposition. What people have to do who whine about the tories is support it, unless they're happy with the tories.
 
ks.234 said:
Yes, but the big fallacy of the authentocratic argument is that you are not allowed to break out of your background in the docks, the factory, or whatever, to do something else. It is an argument that constrains working people rather than widening opportunity.
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When did I say I was against social mobility?

ks.234 said:
And as you say, the factory that I worked in for many years and the industry it supported, no longer exist.
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Sexing chickens?
 
ks.234 said:
How can you support Starmer?

He goes on ‘luxury’ holidays, owns a multi million pound house in a very ‘nice’ part of the country, and goes to London to watch football.

By your own definition, Starmer is a ‘champagne socialist’ and demonstrably not you’re ‘kind of socialist’
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Erm I thought your big gripe (your word) was that Starmer isn't really a socialist or as hard-left as you would like or think he should be...the breaking of the pledges, the pandering to the Centrists etc? More like a champagne social democrat then?
 
hifinutt said:
we have a BIG jubilee even tommorrow at the community centre , face painting , bouncy castles an a lot more . should be fun if weather ok
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Thank you for posting about Her Majesty's Jubilee and not posting silly nonsense about socialism and Sir Keir Starmer.

Please keep it up and don't, for example, paint socialist slogans on the kids faces tomorrow and don't hand out socialist pamphlets on the bouncy castle. People don't want that nonsense during a Jubilee event. Not the time. And not the place.
 
laughingboy said:
Oh, come on, man, make an argument; don't just snipe.

Personally, I think the word 'socialist' is next to useless. It runs the gamut from things like the NHS and social security that have been shown to work and improve people's wellbeing to, on the other extreme, the worst kind of authoritarian regimes. Who'd want to associate themselves with the latter?

What was your point again?
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Mmm...not sure I'm the one who is sniping. You can do better.
 
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