| From Unity, 23 January 2010 |
EditorialWho is going to pick the potatoes?If anybody needs any more convincing that Gordon Brown has finally abandoned the working class—albeit not their votes—they should read his comments in the Guardian on 16 January. He stated that the driving force behind New Labour is that all people have the chance to rise as far as their talents take them. In line with this thinking, he claimed, “social mobility is not an alternative to social justice: it is modern social justice.” He wrote that “Labour focus will always be on how we help the hard-working majority not just to get by, but to get on in life.”What is “getting on”? Years ago, when there were factories, it used to be “The working class can kiss my arse: I’ve got the foreman’s job at last” (sung to the tune of “The Red Flag”). He wants to see an expanded middle class rather than a squeezed middle class, adding, “Opportunity and reward cannot be hoarded at the top, and it is not enough to protect people at the bottom.” As regards those hoarders at the top, we cannot see his governments doing a great deal about them. Indeed the real ideologue for New Labour, Lord Mandelson, has previously argued that they have no problem with people being filthy rich. He really meant that they had no problem with the filthy rich. As regards those “at the bottom” (by which we presume he means the working class; God forbid that he would have to mention that term), would he like to tell us what he has done to “protect” them? Remember the 10p tax band fiasco? He says he is proud of Labour’s record in limiting inequality, when statistics show it has increased since 1997. He argues that he wants to see a “genuine meritocracy,” whatever that is. The New Penguin Dictionary describes the term as “(a social system based on) leadership by the talented.” The whole concept of social mobility and meritocracy was described by a professor of social policy at Loughborough University as representing an “individualistic, competitive version of social justice.” Brown’s ideas are contemptuous of the working class; but if we all rise up to his sacred middle class, who is going to empty the bins, sweep the streets, drive the buses and trains? And who is going to pick the potatoes? |
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