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Post by finsobruce on Mar 9, 2023 20:49:33 GMT
And if he had survived, he would have been much likelier to remain in the Labour Party than Desmond Donnelly on a long-term basis. It took Labour a long time to recover from their defeat there in 1970. I agree but I suspect that unless he got into the cabinet or similar, that he might well have opted for a media career like John Freeman and Brian Walden. |
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graham
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Post by graham on Mar 9, 2023 21:18:54 GMT
And if he had survived, he would have been much likelier to remain in the Labour Party than Desmond Donnelly on a long-term basis. It took Labour a long time to recover from their defeat there in 1970. I was born and grew up in Pembrokeshire until leaving for university in 1973. Donnelly built up a considerable personal vote as reflected in the 1970 result when he received a 21.5% poll share and well over 11,000 votes. Had he resigned and forced a by election in 1968 - as Dick Taverne did at Lincoln in 1973 - I have no doubt he would have had a big win. In the event, the Tories took the seat by 1,231 votes - polling 19,120 to Labour's 17,889. It was almost universally assumed - even in local Tory circles - that Labour would win the seat back in 1974. The failure to do so probably relates to 3 factors - - far less of Donnelly's 1970 vote switched to Labour than most people had expected - a first term incumbency boost for the new Tory MP - Nicholas Edwards - the 1973/74 Liberal upsurge. In the past a strong Liberal performance had tended to hit the Tories rather than Labour -as reflected in the 1951 and 1964 results there. That led some to expect that to occur again - but the dynamics were probably different in that times had moved on by that stage from the era of Gwilym Lloyd George and the Tories had the advantage of incumbency for the first time since the 1920s. That probably made their vote more sticky than in earlier elections.
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 9, 2023 21:39:18 GMT
My current choice of film for 'Carlton's Essential 1000 Great Films' is 'No Love For Johnnie' based of the novel of the same name by the former Labour MP here, Wilfrid Fienburgh 1951-1958, who died in a car accident in 1958 before publication or production of the film which is set in immediate post-war Labour Politics and touches upon many pertinent issues of the time. Fienburgh was a most interesting man and a Jewish member for this seat. I had always assumed that Fienburgh was Jewish (because the name Fineberg, however spelt, is almost always a Jewish surname), but had never been able to find confirmation, so I am obliged to accept your word for it. His predecessor, Leslie Haden-Guest, was a convert to Judaism. There are currently two of these in the House, Andrew Percy (Brigg & Goole, C) and Charlotte Nichols (Warrington N, Lab). I confess that I do not know that he was Jewish but was told in the 60s by anecdote that he was by people that knew him, and then there is the name and the interment at Golders Green Crematorium. It was also said that he had a bit of a racy side to him and that his continuing service in the TA as a major in the Intelligence Corps might well have suggested that he had what is now termed a spook side to him? There were also some questions about the nature of his fatal accident. |
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 9, 2023 21:44:20 GMT
My current choice of film for 'Carlton's Essential 1000 Great Films' is 'No Love For Johnnie' based of the novel of the same name by the former Labour MP here, Wilfrid Fienburgh 1951-1958, who died in a car accident in 1958 before publication or production of the film which is set in immediate post-war Labour Politics and touches upon many pertinent issues of the time. Fienburgh was a most interesting man and a Jewish member for this seat. Wilfred Fienburgh narrowly failed to unseat Gwilym Lloyd George at Pembroke in 1945 when he lost by just 168 votes in a straight fight with no Tory standing. Had there been a Tory , Fienburgh and Labour would have had a good majority - as indicated by the 1951 election result there when Labour won by over 9,000 when facing both Tory and Liberal opponents. It makes me wonder about fate - in that had he been elected MP for Pembroke in 1945 , it seems much less lkely that he would have fallen victim to the 1958 car accident. Who knows? But he would have had a flat in London at least, and been driving in the same manner, for the same purposes! |
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Post by batman on Mar 9, 2023 22:09:19 GMT
I had always assumed that Fienburgh was Jewish (because the name Fineberg, however spelt, is almost always a Jewish surname), but had never been able to find confirmation, so I am obliged to accept your word for it. His predecessor, Leslie Haden-Guest, was a convert to Judaism. There are currently two of these in the House, Andrew Percy (Brigg & Goole, C) and Charlotte Nichols (Warrington N, Lab). I confess that I do not know that he was Jewish but was told in the 60s by anecdote that he was by people that knew him, and then there is the name and the interment at Golders Green Crematorium. It was also said that he had a bit of a racy side to him and that his continuing service in the TA as a major in the Intelligence Corps might well have suggested that he had what is now termed a spook side to him? There were also some questions about the nature of his fatal accident. well if he did indeed have ancestors called Isaac & Hyams, I'd say it's a dead cert that he was Jewish. (Hyams is essentially a part-Anglicisation of Chaim.) |
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Post by mattbewilson on Mar 9, 2023 22:24:42 GMT
I confess that I do not know that he was Jewish but was told in the 60s by anecdote that he was by people that knew him, and then there is the name and the interment at Golders Green Crematorium. It was also said that he had a bit of a racy side to him and that his continuing service in the TA as a major in the Intelligence Corps might well have suggested that he had what is now termed a spook side to him? There were also some questions about the nature of his fatal accident. well if he did indeed have ancestors called Isaac & Hyams, I'd say it's a dead cert that he was Jewish. (Hyams is essentially a part-Anglicisation of Chaim.) we're all children of Isaac  |
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Post by stb12 on Mar 15, 2023 8:41:23 GMT
No, Graham, it cannot reasonably be blamed on Starmer. Instead, blame it on people like me, who have had in great sadness to point out the increasing number of ways why he can no longer expect to be able to stand as Labour. His refusal to take down that tweet which said that antisemitism had been exaggerated, and expressed not even the tiniest bit of solidarity with the UK Jewish community in general and Labour Jews in particular, was deeply upsetting to Labour's Jewish members and I for one will find it very hard to forgive him for it. That on top of the Mear One mural, his "hand of Israel" comment, and in general his implicit insistence that basically we are all lying or exaggerating when we have attempted to describe the level of antisemitism which we had to face as Jewish Labour members, not exclusively but particularly during his leadership of the Party. I was a big, a huge supporter of his leadership bid, it all ended in tears and if you want to focus on how rotten his treatment was in your eyes, fine but try & remember what we went through. It was not nice & I would not wish it on my worst enemy. In that period I either wasn’t on the forum or only reading it now and then but this surprises me a bit. Even without anti-semitism issues you don’t especially strike me as someone who’d be on the harder left of Labour, although I guess considering the number of people that voted for Corbyn he maybe had a wider range of support across the spectrum than many would think? |
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Post by batman on Mar 15, 2023 8:54:49 GMT
I was on the factional left for decades. It was Corbyn's leadership primarily that has made me think again, although not just that. My support for CND for the same decades was based on the belief that having nuclear weapons was more dangerous because it made us a target. But in Ukraine, the state agreed to get rid of its nuclear weapons, and look what has happened. This has caused a serious rethink & I can't support CND any more either. I was in effective charge of the mostly (though not exclusively) social media group Red Labour during the 2017 general election, and I must have done something right, as our posts had a reach of 10 million. It was in the next year when my support for the factional hard left started to wane. I still have high opinions of some MPs on the factional left, but now dislike quite a few of them, though none as much as Chris Williamson with whom I actually worked until 2017 and has now proved himself conclusively to be a complete scoundrel. So nowadays, although the good burghers of Red Labour would tell you different, I am not really aligned with any particular faction, and in my own CLP I have been forced to vote in successive AGMs predominantly for the more right-wing candidates for most positions; if I'm close to any faction at all, however, it would probably be the soft-left Open Labour although they deny (not very convincingly!) that they are a faction. I'm not a member of it though. The only internal Labour group I have formal membership of now is the Jewish Labour Movement, which for the benefit of those who find these things confusing is the more politically orthodox of the 2 Jewish factions in the Labour Party, the one which while hugely critical of the present Israeli government and, even more so, some of its fascist ministers is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation & to the British Board of Jewish Deputies. I joined JLM in I think 2019, or possibly 2020. Jon Lansman has gone on a not dissimilar political journey to me & is now a JLM member too, though I would have been regarded as even more left-wing than him in days gone by. My ideology does remain very left-wing indeed, I just no longer regard many of the leading lights of the left as suitable for bringing it about.
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Post by batman on Mar 15, 2023 8:59:07 GMT
Having said all that, all the members of my immediate family, and my first cousin, voted for Corbyn as Leader in 2015, except my wife who is pretty smug about the fact she didn't, and of those none is generally aligned with the factional left. Corbyn did attract some pretty surprising votes in his leadership elections, not least because his opponents fought such rotten campaigns.
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stb12
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Post by stb12 on Mar 15, 2023 9:08:48 GMT
I was on the factional left for decades. It was Corbyn's leadership primarily that has made me think again, although not just that. My support for CND for the same decades was based on the belief that having nuclear weapons was more dangerous because it made us a target. But in Ukraine, the state agreed to get rid of its nuclear weapons, and look what has happened. This has caused a serious rethink & I can't support CND any more either. I was in effective charge of the mostly (though not exclusively) social media group Red Labour during the 2017 general election, and I must have done something right, as our posts had a reach of 10 million. It was in the next year when my support for the factional hard left started to wane. I still have high opinions of some MPs on the factional left, but now dislike quite a few of them, though none as much as Chris Williamson with whom I actually worked until 2017 and has now proved himself conclusively to be a complete scoundrel. So nowadays, although the good burghers of Red Labour would tell you different, I am not really aligned with any particular faction, and in my own CLP I have been forced to vote in successive AGMs predominantly for the more right-wing candidates for most positions; if I'm close to any faction at all, however, it would probably be the soft-left Open Labour although they deny (not very convincingly!) that they are a faction. I'm not a member of it though. The only internal Labour group I have formal membership of now is the Jewish Labour Movement, which for the benefit of those who find these things confusing is the more politically orthodox of the 2 Jewish factions in the Labour Party, the one which while hugely critical of the present Israeli government and, even more so, some of its fascist ministers is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation & to the British Board of Jewish Deputies. I joined JLM in I think 2019, or possibly 2020. Jon Lansman has gone on a not dissimilar political journey to me & is now a JLM member too, though I would have been regarded as even more left-wing than him in days gone by. My ideology does remain very left-wing indeed, I just no longer regard many of the leading lights of the left as suitable for bringing it about. Interesting and detailed summary, much appreciated |
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Post by matureleft on Mar 15, 2023 9:34:39 GMT
Having said all that, all the members of my immediate family, and my first cousin, voted for Corbyn as Leader in 2015, except my wife who is pretty smug about the fact she didn't, and of those none is generally aligned with the factional left. Corbyn did attract some pretty surprising votes in his leadership elections, not least because his opponents fought such rotten campaigns. He did indeed. I looked on in amazement. It wasn't his well-known opinions, for example on Iraq - of course those had a lot of resonance. It was his utter unsuitability for the leader role. 1. He had terribly narrow interests, utterly ignored most matters of concern to the wider population and was almost proudly ignorant of economics. 2. He'd ploughed his lonely furrow for many years. There was nothing fresh about him. The suggestion that he brought new thinking staggered me. 3. That lonely furrow had been very lonely. He had a very narrow group of associates - not even all of the Campaign Group took much interest in his issues. It was hard to see how he could build any sort of team. 4. He was no orator and lacked charisma - something I got wrong. He actually made a merit of those facets and, in 2017, maxed their appeal. 5. His baggage for the right-wing press to explore was voluminous. Again, I initially got that wrong - their first efforts were clumsy and had little feel for anyone under about 50. Constant talk about his contact with Sinn Fein really meant nothing to those who saw that party sharing power in Northern Ireland. The 2017 scare (and his own, charitably, foolishness and obstinacy) gave them a second chance. |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 15, 2023 9:42:19 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves.
Listen to us next time, OK?
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Post by batman on Mar 15, 2023 10:02:15 GMT
I think David & some others are omitting one other thing. Labour lost the 2010 election with a leader seen as belonging, essentially, to the soft right of the party, and again in 2015 with a cautious leader who appeared to have some affinity with its soft left. There was a very strong desire for something different as other types of politics had been tried but failed, and some of the policies coming from Corbyn had considerable popularity - though there were others that most certainly didn't. I still think that if the left had been better led, with someone with a great deal less baggage than Jeremy Corbyn, it could well have ended a lot better than it did; having said that, it's likely that a more convincing left-wing figure would have failed to get on to the ballot paper. I will certainly be more choosy about who I support in internal elections both at national and at CLP level, but here in my own CLP I could not possibly have voted for the left's nominee for Chair after I resigned, and it's not much of a secret that I voted for the right's candidate, with whom fortunately I get on pretty well. So I'll continue to decide when the different alternatives are presented to me and will not align myself with either major faction. The veteran CLP secretary, who will soon be able to enjoy a much-merited retirement, is a very good friend who has remained in post for much of the last 20 years, and he is very much a Progress supporter. He has done an excellent job and will be hugely missed when he changes constituencies later this year, when CLPs are reorganised according to the new boundaries.
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Post by matureleft on Mar 15, 2023 10:02:27 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves. Listen to us next time, OK? I didn't vote for him, needed no advice on his faults and shared my views freely. However I think a careful reflection on the tactics used, candidates fielded and the lacklustre offerings of the alternatives will also tell you much about why he had such appeal to people who hadn't been close observers (and that's most of the Labour membership, let alone others allowed to vote). I think the learning should be pretty evenly shared among the various mainstream factions. And I'd imagine the hard left has learned a few things too, one of which is, should they ever get near to control of the party machine, be more ruthless if they can. |
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Post by stb12 on Mar 15, 2023 10:07:20 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves. Listen to us next time, OK? I didn't vote for him, needed no advice on his faults and shared my views freely. However I think a careful reflection on the tactics used, candidates fielded and the lacklustre offerings of the alternatives will also tell you much about why he had such appeal to people who hadn't been close observers (and that's most of the Labour membership, let alone others allowed to vote). I think the learning should be pretty evenly shared among the various mainstream factions. And I'd imagine the hard left has learned a few things too, one of which is, should they ever get near to control of the party machine, be more ruthless if they can. You’d have had something of an advantage having served in parliament with him in making a judgement? |
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Mar 15, 2023 10:11:16 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves. Listen to us next time, OK? The "decent" wing - it's really laughable. Decent to who? Your arrogance is truly astounding. |
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Post by matureleft on Mar 15, 2023 10:29:54 GMT
I didn't vote for him, needed no advice on his faults and shared my views freely. However I think a careful reflection on the tactics used, candidates fielded and the lacklustre offerings of the alternatives will also tell you much about why he had such appeal to people who hadn't been close observers (and that's most of the Labour membership, let alone others allowed to vote). I think the learning should be pretty evenly shared among the various mainstream factions. And I'd imagine the hard left has learned a few things too, one of which is, should they ever get near to control of the party machine, be more ruthless if they can. You’d have had something of an advantage having served in parliament with him in making a judgement? As I said, most party members aren't close observers of the performance of individual MPs (unless it's their own) and Corbyn was pretty obscure - his interests meant a lot to a small minority and were ignored by most. I was never interested in his stuff so had few encounters with him. But that, in itself, is indicative. How was he to build an opposition team when he knew little to nothing about their focus and had spent almost all of his time in parliament very deliberately outside the circles in which they moved? Most of the Campaign Group had a far greater interest in mainstream issues than he had. His very disengagement from the mainstream both in terms of people and issues gave him a strange aura that must have appealed. |
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 15, 2023 11:07:21 GMT
I think David & some others are omitting one other thing. Labour lost the 2010 election with a leader seen as belonging, essentially, to the soft right of the party, and again in 2015 with a cautious leader who appeared to have some affinity with its soft left. There was a very strong desire for something different as other types of politics had been tried but failed, and some of the policies coming from Corbyn had considerable popularity - though there were others that most certainly didn't. I still think that if the left had been better led, with someone with a great deal less baggage than Jeremy Corbyn, it could well have ended a lot better than it did; having said that, it's likely that a more convincing left-wing figure would have failed to get on to the ballot paper. I will certainly be more choosy about who I support in internal elections both at national and at CLP level, but here in my own CLP I could not possibly have voted for the left's nominee for Chair after I resigned, and it's not much of a secret that I voted for the right's candidate, with whom fortunately I get on pretty well. So I'll continue to decide when the different alternatives are presented to me and will not align myself with either major faction. The veteran CLP secretary, who will soon be able to enjoy a much-merited retirement, is a very good friend who has remained in post for much of the last 20 years, and he is very much a Progress supporter. He has done an excellent job and will be hugely missed when he changes constituencies later this year, when CLPs are reorganised according to the new boundaries. These posts are very interesting and informative. I have long considered Labour activists to be wrong to be so obsessed with the finer points of policy when considered in terms of the electorate. Islington North might be a very rare exception to my point because of the electorate demographic? But, generally I believe that the electorate is using quite crude and general heuristics and an array of 'signifiers' to make electoral choices, and most will have a default option they rely on to avoid the need to think about it at all. The voting intention will heve been laid down over years of accretions of small influences with an overlay of just one or two massive inflences (family tradition, union membership, religion, education and social milieu). Most of us morph very slowly and continually or in discrete ratchets following upon 'events'. The policies matter to insiders but to most other people it is past usage, habit, inertia, the tone and mood of the moment that prevails. |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Mar 15, 2023 11:17:32 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves. Listen to us next time, OK? And you needed to listen to those who voted for JC almost *solely* because of how utterly dire the alternatives were. (I didn't, because like matureleft I was very cognisant of his failings - which ultimately did for him even if it took longer than some might have predicted) This isn't merely a "historical" thing, either. The "grown ups" seem to be securely in charge of the party again now - but without learning the apposite lessons, what happened in 2015 could well occur again in the future. Most party members don't actually expect much, just not being gaslighted and having their noses rubbed in it really. |
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 15, 2023 11:19:53 GMT
Perhaps you sense the frustration of the decent wing of the Labour Party who had assumed in 2015 that all this was perfectly manifest (or would be once anyone actually looked at Corbyn's record) only to find so many people so willing to deceive themselves. Listen to us next time, OK? I didn't vote for him, needed no advice on his faults and shared my views freely. However I think a careful reflection on the tactics used, candidates fielded and the lacklustre offerings of the alternatives will also tell you much about why he had such appeal to people who hadn't been close observers (and that's most of the Labour membership, let alone others allowed to vote). I think the learning should be pretty evenly shared among the various mainstream factions. And I'd imagine the hard left has learned a few things too, one of which is, should they ever get near to control of the party machine, be more ruthless if they can. We have lived through the shared experience of what amounts to a communal political nervous breakdown that resulted in Brexit, Corbyn, Johnson and Truss. Much of that is now looking like deep cathartic gut revulsion at the imperfections of normality and the safe pair of hands approach. The great white hopes of Blair and Cameron were shown to have serious flaws from which many inferred there to be serial flaws in the system itself and in the establishment, as perceived. Of course, whatever is done becomes the new orthodoxy and the new men become the new establishment, and the distrust and dislike feeds upon itself. We have bred ourselves into a near incohate state of affairs from which it is hardly surprising that a Sunak and a Starmer emerge to restore all that had been rejected in the dull safe pair of hands again. |
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