Labour must offer full employment, small business support and choice

By Jason McCrossan

I felt a bit let down when I heard John McDonnell’s words about Margaret Thatcher – that he would like to go back to the 1980s and assassinate her. Not because I hold Lady Thatcher in high esteem – I don’t. It was the fact that his comment was nasty, unnecessary and also that he felt, even as a potential Labour leader, that would be an acceptable thing to say in the first place.

I’m sad because I like John McDonnell. I feel that he is a bridge to a group of people and an area of debate that the Labour Party has turned its back on – the working classes. It’s almost as though Labour ministers were too busy slurping down grande skinny cinnamon dolce lattes whilst chatting to our big city friends to notice that manufacturing was struggling and declining; that a lack of affordable housing was a massive national problem for all people in our society; and that immigration was squeezing the jobs and livelihoods of many millions of British people, whether they were originally from Manchester or Mumbai.

I was therefore disappointed with John’s remarks and, contrary to what he said, (here is the controversial bit) I’m glad Margaret Thatcher took on the Unions. I’m glad she whipped Arthur Scargill’s rear end. It wasn’t just Margaret Thatcher who ultimately betrayed the working classes – it was those unionists whose positions were so entrenched in a ‘fight to the death’ mentality that rather than seeing a need for reform and change, rather than admitting that certain industries were on the decline and struggling to stay afloat and therefore accept job cuts, they walked straight in to her hands by downing tools and attempting to paralyse their own industries, the country and the general economy of the day.

Thatcher didn’t pull the rug out from under all those workers all by herself – she didn’t have to; there were enough union hands tugging at the rug to ensure a clean swipe. If the Unions had boxed clever – things may not have turned out as bad as they eventually did.

However, Margaret Thatcher doesn’t, of course, get off the hook: she had her own ‘fight to the death’ mentality and cannot be forgiven for her part in the sacrifice of various British industries; the creation of ghost towns; her flogging off of the family silver in the form of our council house estates; section 28; the poll tax – and I could go on.

Thankfully, Labour does now have an opportunity to reconnect with the working classes – those that we left behind for too long. Labour, through its new leader and its orgaisation and policy, needs to show that it is just as willing to support the job of a car manufacturer or little cake shop owner as much as it is prepared to protect the job of a banker.

Now, we must re-establish our credentials as the party that is on the side of full employment. We need to readdress the balance between substantial profits for the benefit of the company as a whole and profiteering by a small bandit of Directors at the company’s expense. And we must support and encourage small businesses.

There are dark days ahead of us and already some public sector workers are starting to feel that their jobs are less important than those in the private sector. Some of us will see our pay decrease; some of us will see our taxes increase; some of us may lose our jobs. It must be the Labour Party that offers up the solution and the choice.