Corbyn and Momentum

Is there really a fear of communism that is "the fear of this country". I will declare my own position. I see no reason to fear revolutionary Marxism taking over the country. My one caveat to any extremists, right or left, taking over government and using force would be the current government's continued attack on parliamentary democracy for what they say are pragmatic reasons. However such things a the use of Henry VIII clauses causes me to worry just as much about opening the door to the alt-right as to the extreme left.

To me it is reasonable to fear either extreme if they are trying to claim the country for themselves by force or unelected power. I have seen no signs of that except in very small numbers of the Alt-right and even those people are to be watched - not feared. They are very small in number and if we maintain a democracy they will not be able to challenge how our country is governed. That will be by the will of the majority and will change from time to time but does not, while taking into account my caveat, have to be feared.

Thatcher clipped the wings of the unions
I would say that she cut them off and left them flightless.

The power of the Unions in the seventies made life miserable .

1970 the post strike .

1972 and 1974 coal strikes , power cuts .

We had rail strikes. Bus strikes

1978 1979 the winter of discontent which was hell for the public .

The press used this union power , voters had enough , 1983 and the Labour Party lost the e,ection.

Voters feared the Unions , feared communism.

It was not as Granddad1943 claims, labour had the wrong policies in the eighties , it was fear of being dragged back to the seventies.

Thatcher clipped the wings of the Unions , she was not going to be brought down as Heath was.

Now Momentum have targeted the young, they didn't live through the seventies and eighties and this alone has increased the numbers in the Labour Party .

Anyone who canvassed for the Labour Party in the eighties and nineties know what the voters feared

It’s no good trawling back through history for slurs against the LP, especially near election time both parties look for whatever they can find to discredit the other.As do various papers and social media.
After all, it isn’t as if Labour never win any GE’s is it?
To win, Labour have to appeal to more than a core of hard left supporters though.
To do this under Corbyn, it has to be either pretended that he isn’t ( when he is!) or to try and convert voters that this hard leftness is a good thing, seems to me that a bit of both is going on.

No , you are maryeliza, you choose not to see the obvious

ab your posts are completely missing the point. Really, completely and absolutely

maryeliza, no I am not missing the point, all Eleothan lists links them to Russia, communism,

ab your post completely misses Eloe’s point. The examples she quotes ( and there are many more) are nothing to do with fear of communism but fear of having anything but a Conservative Government. Fear of having a government that believes in anything more than maintaining the self interest of the rich and powerful. The MSM in this country is a disgrace

Eleothan , your post proves the fear in this country is communism.

I believe the press and social media has become a propaganda machine and the most energetic keyboard warriors get the upper hand, dispensing their ideas of the truth.

Sites like Gransnet and any site with a comments section allows distortions of the truth.

However, it isn't one way traffic. Corbyn and co might be criticised, but any political party or figure is fair game for keyboard snipers. It happens here too.

These constant smears on Corbyn, and the Labour Party generally, is nothing new.

It has been happening since 1945 when Winston Churchill made what most commentators believe was a major miscalculation in declaring that "the Labour Party would have to employ a form of “Gestapo” to implement its policies". This was followed up by a tabloid headline replicating those words.

It continued with the vicious media attacks on Michael Foot, who some years later won substantial damages for a libellous story printed by the Sunday Times and the News of the World that he had been a KGB spy.

During Kinnock's election campaign the attacks from the right wing media was relentless, as an article by Roy Greenslade in 2002 detailed:

"By the time he fought his first election, in 1987, he was being persistently portrayed as a weak and incapable leader. But it was nothing to the demonisation of Kinnock which followed in the years leading up to the 1992 election.
............

"On the eve of his visit to the White House several papers carried a story about Kinnock attacking Bush ..... It was, a tabloid journalist confessed to the Sunday Times correspondent, "pure invention".

A common theme was that Kinnock was unduly influenced by his wife who, the Sun presumed, was far to his left: "Is Glenys a Red in Neil's bed?" ..............The Sunday Times ran a story which maintained he had contacts with the Kremlin at the height of the cold war.............Editor Andrew Neil was forced to concede that the paper's boast of "Kinnock's Kremlin connection" was inaccurate. ............Two days before the election the Sun published nine pages bearing the slogan "Nightmare on Kinnock Street", including a page in which a "leading psychic" asked dead world leaders to name who they would vote for. Kinnock got Stalin's vote; Major picked up Queen Victoria."

Then, again, when Ed Miliband fought the election, the right wing press was out in full force, using ridicule and innuendo to present him as a dishonourable figure of fun, and describing his father, who had served in the Royal Navy, as "an enemy of Britain".

With regard to Corbyn and the current round of smears and ridicule, the Huffington Press reports that he has received the following apology and "substantial" damages from Ben Bradley (the man who said unemployed men should be vasectomised):

" “I accept that I caused distress and upset to Jeremy Corbyn by my untrue and false allegations, suggesting he betrayed his country by collaborating with foreign spies.

" “I am very sorry for publishing this untrue and false statement and I have no hesitation in offering my unreserved and unconditional apology to Jeremy Corbyn for the distress I have caused him.” "

Do not kid yourselves that what we have at the moment is a "free press". It is, for the most part, a propaganda machine.

ww - as there are many powerful and dark forces that will do everything in their power to prevent this happening.

Hilarious!

Dark forces? What's this - an episode of Star Wars? I had to check I was still on Gransnet!

Whitewave, it would have made more sense to say there are many who do not relish the return to this 'radical' (militant?) hard-left form of the Labour Party. There are Marxists in the Shadow Cabinet.

It's not a vote winner. You don't need Darth Vader to stamp all over it. People can make up their own minds.

Grandad - many of the other "career politicians" in the Labour Party who do not know of or relies the deep history between the Labour party and grass roots trade union members that thankfully is very much still in existence and once again growing.

I cannot believe that anyone claiming to be a Labour supporter is not aware of union history affiliation with the party.

I am from a Labour background and like my father before me I fully appreciate workers having Unions to support them. However, the wild cat strikes and prolonged action of the Unions when they had power (and used it to hold the country to ransom) in the 70s was a shameful and very low point in their history. That sort of irresponsible use of power had to be curtailed and it was.

One has to hope Lansom and Momentum aren't looking for a return of irresponsible Union demands to further their own political ambitions.

I am in favour of Unions and always have been, but not ones tied to and blinkered by their political masters. Those of us old enough to have lived through the '70s and the awful state of the country because of union blackmail would not be in favour of the same sort of Union-Labour Party behaviour.

Far from being a good thing, if the Momentum/Union link was more widely known, it might be counter-productive for the already far left Labour Party of the present day.

It would be good if the left wing posters on here didn’t just try and derail the thread, because there is a good balance of opinion from all political sides on it.
It doesn’t need swamping with Momentum tweets or snipey comments.
If this thread has to be pulled, another thread will be started
Because the forum needs political balance and you did start the ‘Maybot’ thread ww ( and others) so allow some debate about Corbyn and Momentum, there were some good posts
From all sides until this last page when you decided to be the voice of Momentum and do their PR work.

What on earth are you talking about primrose

I asked you how you found the young man who tweeted unpleasant things. You replied “tinder” I replied because I didn’t understand what you meant by that.
Gg thought you were joking.
I replied that perhaps you were avoiding telling me how you knew the young man in question
Now you are accusing me of wanting to know about your private life. And that I’m a bully .

Good grief

That's me out for the evening.

Max Shanley sounds like a real charmer!

Are you going to continue quoting Momentum activist and blogger tweets ww rather than your own thoughts?

If you are not a Momentum supporter ( or activist) it hardly makes sense to do so.

Weren't you doing just that Primrose by admitting your visits to Tinder? As you have taken so much offence I was obviously wrong and it wasn't a joke.

Don't bully whitewave. If I want to put an opinion I will, if I choose not to it is not for you to hold me to account.

Sorry, ww, but when did I have to report my private life to you for scrutiny?

Oh! Is that what is called avoidance?

I think it was meant to be a joke whitewave.

primrose how did you find that young man?

Tinder

primrose how did you find that young man?