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The biggest mistake any campaigner can make is taking things personally

May 18, 2012 2:15 pm

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This post was originally published as a comment here:

Maybe there’s another story.

Labour, seduced by a false narrative on incapacity, fell for the false “evidence” that Incapacity Benefit was ballooning ( it wasn’t) and that most could work with support (possibly but Labour had no idea of what that support really was)

As the full horror of the Work Capability Assessment started to become clear, campaigners sprang up from everywhere to join those already fighting.

However, 2010 saw a change of Government and though it seemed impossible, things got very much worse. DLA came under fire, the Independent Living Fund, Severe Disability Premium, Tax Credits for disabled kids, Social Care packages and on and on and on.

We, disabled people, loudly mobilised for a fight to the death. We had nothing left to lose and gave everything to alerting the media, campaigning, lobbying politicians, Peers and Journalists.

Every utterance from Labour on Welfare met with ridicule and derision, loudly and publicly. It became more apparent that the coalition were losing the narrative that allowed them to send disabled people back 50 years.

Of course Labour made a political decision to play the good guys, but it’s ridiculous to think that no-one in the current Shadow Cabinet actually CARES about disability. I believe Anne MacGuire does very much. Cruddas is now leading the policy review, I think he cares too. Not sure Liam gives a fig, but if you actually listen to his opposition speeches to the WRB, he spoke personally and passionately at times.

The biggest mistake any campaigner can make is taking things personally. It’s not personal, these people aren’t your friends. If a politician changes his or her views, then all previous bets are off. If Labour choose to defend the disabled now, today, grab it and make damned sure they get it right. You can no more judge Labour on decisions taken by Yvette Cooper in 2005 than you can judge your teenager on his reception class homework. It’s gone, it doesn’t exist any more.

Yes, it hurts, no, OF COURSE you don’t trust them – they’re politicians for goodness sake. You push them into a position where they have to support you, which is exactly what campaigners have done. They should be proud, this is politics, and they’ve played the political game and won. If we keep playing it right, we keep winning, simple as that, and Lab have nowhere else to go.

Politicians are not old lovers, who spurned you, they only exist in the present, their opinions as fluid as mercury. That’s the nature of politics. Get over it and focus your energies on today.

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  • treborc1

     Labour choose to defend the disabled now, today, grab it and make damned
    sure they get it right. You can no more judge Labour on decisions taken
    by Yvette Cooper in 2005 than you can judge your teenager on his
    reception class homework. It’s gone, it doesn’t exist any more.

    But why have they changed when only a few months ago labour were again talking about scroungers work shy, and a chap who came to the door who was obviously able to work.

    Changing your mind and having a policy well OK, changing your mind to win votes no thanks, we have had that before.

    Miliband is playing a political game, and to be honest I do not believe him.

    • Daniel Speight

       Maybe playing the political game is the most we can hope for at the moment. The Labour part of this political class will be doing its focus groups and if it sees a disabled child or a limbless serviceman in an advert will bring in more votes, then it will use these. We must stay cynical and not allow them one inch of our trust because they no longer deserve such trust. We have seen them at their worse.

      • treborc1

         I hope not, but with Labour quick change from telling us we are scroungers to protecting us against the evil Tories was just a bit to quick, but we will see

  • Macro

    “You can no more judge Labour on decisions taken by Yvette Cooper in 2005 than you can judge your teenager on his reception class homework.”

    Now that’s what I a forgiving attitude considering the unprecedented suffering and misery Cooper and her confederates inflicted on hundreds of thousands of completely innocent sick and disabled men and women. No wonder then that politicians almost never feel moved to express feelings of remorse, or to apologise for past mistakes, since after a short period out of office they won’t apparently be held responsible for any manner of distress and harm they unleashed previously. 

    Talk about a Statute of Limitations.

    Ratko Mladic eat your heart out!

    • LaurenceB

      In fairness I feel obliged to point out that Yvette Cooper probably didn’t mean to kill people, deliberately, in quite the same way that Ratko Mladic did.

      • Macro

        “… probably…”

        Not 100% sure yourself about Cooper’s motivations, eh?

        • LaurenceB

          I think Yvette is a careerist and a political chameleon who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw her husband (with her sitting on his shoulders) but when all is said and done she isn’t guilty of genocide as you extravagantly implied in your comment. Fair dos. 

          • Macro

            Cooper was only “following orders”, eh? Well, that defence didn’t save any of the Nazis at Nuremberg did it? Oh, sorry. In this country we forgive political villains and forget about their crimes after a few years don’t we?

          • Brumanuensis

            How utterly childish. I’ve gone on record on this website to register my disapproval of the DWP’s past and present approach towards assessing DLA and ESA claimants, but comparing it to the calculated murder of 8,000 men on sectarian grounds, is just repulsive hyperbole. Get a grip.

          • Macro

            You might feel differently if ATOS had driven your damaged and very ill brother to suicide.

          • AlanGiles

            It is very sadly true that people HAVE been driven to suicide by the “work” Purnell started with Freud, even though by that time the Tories had bought Freud with a peerage – driven to suicide when they have done nothing wrong, by men who virtually stole from the public purse, and had committed offences which, had they been benefit claimants, they would have been prosecuted for.

            That is the reason that I wish prosecutions had been bought against more of the expenses swindlers. Tony McNulty for example, and Purnell. I think there was a very good chance of securing a conviction, and a custodial sentence might, at the very least, put an end to their political ambitions.

            * Mary Osborne (1921-1992)

          • AlanGiles

            A pity Cooper didn’t study the work of J. B.Priestley. She may not have intended it, but as Priestley shows in “An Inspector Calls”, every action however casual or thoughtless has a consequence for somebody else – sometimes a very serious one.

            I cannot believe even Cooper or Purnell were so witless that they couldn’t suspect that a company like ATOS who were being PAID BY RESULTS, would find it in their own interests to find people “fit for work”, just to get their money.

            If Cooper IS that stupid, then what a pity she didn’t follow Purnell’s example, once he got found out in expenses cheating, and left Parliament. She should have done the same.

            Of course, she, too, was left with sticky fingers after said expenses scandal. And to think there were people a few months ago who wanted her as party leader!

            * Thad Jones (1923-1986)

          • Brumanuensis

            I am very sorry to hear about your brother; my sister has been badly treated at times by the DWP, so I understand, if only to a much lesser degree, your anger. However yours  is still an inappropriate comparison to make. I doubt Cooper intended to cause that sort of suffering; Karadzich deliberately planned the murder of those men. There is a significant qualitative difference and you don’t need to make that sort of analogy to prove your point. 

      • treborc1

        Maybe so but a lot of serious ill people are dying.

  • PaulHalsall

    One of the worse aspects of the attack on the poor, unemployed, sick and disabled by the Colaition government is the degree to which *even people receiving benefits* will repeat the garbage in the Daily Heil.  

    I have heard people who I know are on benefits – in some cases female single parents with multiple kids (the biggest hate target in practice) – mouth off about “benefit scroungers” without, in any way, comprehending that *they* are the target.

    • AlanGiles

      Exactly Paul: They are like tourists who say such cutting things about other tourists – the very “celeverness” of politicians and journalists is that they can imply everybody is at it – “except you, of course”.

      Another problem is that from David Freud down (or up) people like Byrne, Duncan-Smith, Cooper and Grayling have never known the despair of illness or disability – they are very callow, got far too much far too early, and forget just how lucky they have been, like when Othello tells Desdemona her hand is  soft and moist, she replies “It yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow”, sadly our up-their-own-rectums politicians don’t see things this way – their hand is moist because the use Oil of Olay, bought on expenses, or mummy and daddy bought them a good education.

      If only they had not been shielded from unpleasant real life, averting their eyes as they drive in their ministerial cars, they might have a little more tolerance and understanding and compassion.

      * Remo Palmieri (1923-2002)

      • treborc1

        The sad fact is the way we micro manage the MP’s we select only a certain type of person would be good enough to be new labour, when we have a new intake we allow  Blair in to talk to them.

        New Labour is dead, long live Newer labour.

  • Brumanuensis

    I think Sue has hit upon a very important truth here. Politicians are often willing to say different things at different times, for political reasons. However who’s to say the Labour Frontbench haven’t had a genuine change of heart? I’ve met Cooper and I think she’s genuinely concerned about the effect that welfare changes will have on those affected – particularly women – and although we shouldn’t ignore any past errors she made, we shouldn’t hold them against her for eternity.

    Equally, having been scathing about Liam Byrne for some time now, I was pleasantly surprised – like Sunny Hundal – by his speech to Demos on Wednesday. If he sustains that rhetoric and it shows up in the policies he proposes, then I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. And if not, not.

    http://www.demos.co.uk/files/LiamByrneBeveridge.pdf

    • Marjorie Seaborne

      The thing is if Cooper is capable of making such horrendous mistakes and be so deaf to criticism and advice from all quarters in the past, is she of a high enough calibre to ever be entrusted with any matter of moment in the future? I would say, no.

      • Macro

        Cooper is a lousy excuse for a politician.

    • Macro

      If Cooper and now apparently Byrne are so repentant why haven’t they publicly admitted that they were wrong and committed themselves to rolling back changes that they mistakenly made that caused much pain and misery, or, if not that, then at least promise to try to reverse some of the worse changes about to be introduced by the Coalition over the next few years?

      Feigned concern and talk is meaningless without action.

      At least in the confessional you have to admit your sins before being forgiven.

      • Brumanuensis

        That’s not a realistic demand to make, Macro. Why would any politician do that, given the trouble it would cause them? I understand why you want it now, but we can’t hold these things against people for ever.

        At a certain point, you have to forgive and forget. For personal reasons, which I don’t want to get into here, I feel this very strongly about all things. I know you’re angry about your brother, but we have to deal with things as they are, not necessarily as we’d like them to be. Would I like to see more contrition? I would, yes. Am I going to make it a pre-condition of any further engagement? No. It’s hard at times, but you have to do it. I had to forgive Labour many things before campaigning for them prior to the 2010 GE. But I did and I’m glad I did. If you don’t want to forgive and forget, I’ll understand why, but with respect I won’t necessarily agree. 

        • treborc1

          Forgiving not the problem it’s making people believe that in less then a month labour has changed tack, and the only reason I can see would be to try and win over voters, or to BS us into thinking Miliband gives a Toss

          • Brumanuensis

            That’s a fair point treborc and we’ll have to see in the longer-term if this is a permanent change of tack or a short-term shift in emphasis. My point is more that we shouldn’t necessarily pre-judge a change, although obviously people are right to feel sceptical. That’s their prerogative.

      • Suey2y

        They’re not repentant for goodness sake, would you all listen to yourselves!!! They are responding to a political reality in 2012, knowing what they know in 2012 facing the campaigners and economic climate of 2012.

        Why on earth would we expect hair shirts and flowers? Don’t you want decent disability policies and a way forward? Then make them give it to you. Not a degree nicee

        • AlanGiles

          Hi Sue, Perhaps not hair shirts but at least an acknowledgment that they pursued the wrong policies as little as 2 years ago. Especially as the loathsome Byrne now makes out he is so against a policy that up until just a few months ago he was able to say that “he agreed with three quarters of the Coalitions Welfare Reform Bill”.

          The fact that all but a handful of Labour MPs made no complaints whatsoever about the Freud Report being instituted by Purnell, when both Purnell and many of those Labour MPs who hit out against the sick and disabled were fiddling public money for all they were worth, means I think that even IF they are forgiven (and I think that is open to debate) it should never by forgotten what hypocrites they are.

          One other point, and it’s this: had the Tories introduced Freud, rather than Labour, all those MPs and supporters who sought to demonise benefit claimants would have been up in arms, protesting and marching.

          It is hard to take either Byrne, or Labour’s sudden conversion seriously, and frankly, if they do win the 2015 election, I can’t see them rescinding the welfare reforms. Talk is very cheap – I remember how, in 1996/7 Blair was going to renationalise British Rail. It was a pledge, and he had a landslide. What did he do….?

          I wouldn’t trust Byrne any further than I could throw him, and I don’t believe his  mealy-mouthed words any more than I believe his expense claims.

          ———

          All my links today were of musicians who played in the Count Basie band from it’s formation in 1937 to the early 60s (though not all in the same version of the band)

    • Yorkshireman
  • Marjorie Seaborne

    The truth of the matter is that terrible mistakes in social policy made by the Labour Party have ended up demonising, pauperising, scape-goating, and even killing people. As far as I know not one single member of the political classes responsible for these atrocities has admitted responsibility, apologised, or promised to do anything to improve the situation if ever given the chance to do so. Such neglectfulness, incompetence and casual cruelty couldn’t possibly be more personal or tragic to the many who have been affected by it.

    None of this wickedness should ever be forgiven or forgotten.

  • treborc1

     Beleaguered Ed Miliband is to make a
    bold bid to boost his flagging ratings by condemning the ‘evil’ of
    scroungers who refuse to work.
    The
    Labour leader wants to shrug off his party’s ‘soft on spongers’ image
    with a major  U-turn on his stance on the benefits system.
    He will admit Labour blundered by not doing enough to combat the work-shy.
    And he will say that people should get state handouts only if they have paid their taxes first.
    The
    move, certain to be denounced by Left-wingers, follows growing alarm in
    Labour’s high command at Mr Miliband’s poor performance.
    Mr
    Miliband’s somersault on benefits will be signalled in a speech later
    this month by Labour welfare spokesman Liam Byrne to mark the 70th
    anniversary of the Beveridge Report.
    The
    report was used by post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee to lay
    the foundations of the modern welfare state – and helped earn him a
    hallowed place in Labour history.
    But
    Mr Byrne thinks Beveridge would ‘turn in his grave’ if he knew how
    billions of pounds of benefits fall into the hands of lifelong spongers.

     
    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080776/Now-Ed-Miliband-gets-tough-onslaught-evil-benefits-scroungers.html#ixzz1vLvE7kM1Now a party can change we work and hope they do change, but normally change comes over time , and normally with a change of leadership or with long drawn out debate.Not within Two weeks with a bloke like Byrne.What is going on, perhaps labour have suddenly looked and decided hello we can pull one over the Tories by doing this, I do not believe for a minutes this is anything other then a tactic.

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