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Left standing like schoolboys — 8 Comments

  1. The left as a group of middle class intellectuals with English public school accents smacks more than a little of caricature.

    I think of the multitudes of brave men and women from all backgrounds who have patiently worked to build a labour movement to confront the interests of wealth and property with an alternative vision of human flourishing. In Ireland and other countries they have delivered a better life for millions over the last 100 years. Of course the job is never completed, because greedy human nature continues to drive some to ruthlessly seek their own advantage – original sin, perhaps? Now I think we are in a period of reaction in which wealth and property seek to preseve what they can in the crash their own greed has created, at the expense of the rest of us.

    I wonder why you should set up such a straw man. Surely our Christian faith should lead us to oppose the forces of reaction, to choose the option for the poor?

  2. Being a working class student at the LSE, that is how they appeared to me.

    Since the equality legislation introduced by the Wilson Government of the 1970s, the Labour Party in Britain has not delivered much of substance. A minimum wage was introduced, but it was very minimum, and even a right-wing in Ireland government managed better. The chief object during the Blair years was simply to retain power (and, bizarrely, to engage in small wars in faraway places).

    An option for the poor demands more than columns telling us what is wrong, which is all we are being offered at present. There need to be viable alternative proposals that have some potential for being realized – I firmly believe that Jesus would have been a gradualist and not a revolutionary.

  3. Those “socialists” were only a collection of opportunists trying to follow whatever bandwagon was on the roll. And socialism is great if you can push yourself into the system,and get working for some quango. It is even a more pleasant existence that working in Daddy’s old firm.

    Whatever happened to those student opportunists ? Oh, yeah they became New Labour – the Middle Class takeover of the British Labour Party….and when they took over they absorbed the worst ideas of the left and the worst ideas of the right and provided a downright awful government…….Britain is bankrupt. And you seen it happening decades ago.

  4. The gap between the rich and the poor has actually widened in recent years and working people are having to pick up the tab for the reckless greed of very rich people.

  5. You know as well as I that most of us start out as lefties and end up as pretty right wing (grumpy old men in commn parlance). Both sides rail against the percieved norm, but to no avail. Poor David Mac is well past his sell by date, I’m afraid. You have made this point before.
    I have said it here before, but surely the Church should be the body to be speaking out? Individual members may not have either the power or the ability to voice their concerns, but their organisation, the Church, should do it.
    Of course maybe all the members are happy with the status quo, happy to limp along to pension times and tea or coffee after service.
    I think Jesus may have a word or two on the matter of standing idly by.
    An unbeliever.

  6. I’m worried at the suggestion David is past his sell by date – he is a good deal younger than I am.

    I don’t believe the church will ever speak out about anything that is not in its own interest. I’m beginning to agree with the Anabaptist writer Stuart Murray’s contention that the church lost its way in the time of Constantine and has been compromised ever since.

  7. Dearest Ian. You sound more anglican than ever. With your new world in wonderful quiet pastures coming up soon I’m not sure if I envy you your quiet pen. I mean pen in two definitions of the word, writing instrument and enclosure.
    Onwards.
    K

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