If you know your history and politics
You'll know for most of its existence the Tory Party hasn't cared for most people
It would have been too easy to stick a video of Boris Johnson, who is about to enter the Guinness Book of Record for the most lies and worst lies told by a human being.
However, it’s Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP and Minister for something called Brexit Opportunities in the video. Now, Rees-Mogg belongs in a different century. You know when people knw their place and tipped their hats to their betters. However, he is using this thing, he calls radio with pictures.
By now, you might have guessed I’m not a Tory supporter. I despise them for the most part as well as the GOP in the US, where I lived for a little more than half my life.
But it’s just not the many misdeeds and outright crimes committed by Johnson and his cohorts, it’s history that should teach most people to mistrust the Tories.
Let’s look at a few events from the last century for a start. In 1920, after the Irish declaration of independence, Winston Churchill, then secretary of war, sent in the Black and Tans to Ireland to basically tame it. Now, these weren’t nice lads.
The Black and Tans were the ex-servicemen recruited as RIC constables throughout Britain in late 1919 and constituted a force of approximately 9,000 men before the war's end. However, 'Black and Tans' also came to refer to the temporary cadets of the Auxiliary Division of the RIC, a force of some 2,200 ex-officers, formed in July 1920, and in practice virtually independent of military and policy control. Both forces were made up of veterans from all services. (Robert Gerwarth; John Horne, eds. (2013), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 202.) You could have called them Churchills Gestapo and you wouldn’t have been too far off.
As this isn’t a book, the General Strike is the next on the list. It was called on 4 May, 1926 by the Trades Union Congress as coal miners were seeing a drop in wages and increasingly hazardous working conditions. It’s estimated that between 1.5 miilion and 1.75 million workers were on strike “from Lands End to John O’ Groats.”
The population of the UK was 20 million at the time, according to government figures and the working-age population was a lot less, considering that most women didn’t work then. So, I’ll fudge that to say 10 million. so that’s 15% of people out in industrial action.
A little knock at Labour, here. The party was fearful of it’s developing reputation, considering the Russian Revolution was a recent memory and the presence of radicals involved in the TUC scared them. Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Nye Bevan, and to a lesser extent Clement Atlee, the party has been afraid of “radical socialists” and sought out leaders like Tony Blair and Keir Starmer, who aren’t socialists at all.
According to the National Union of Miners
The government put in place a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) of volunteers to maintain order in the street. A special constable said: "It was not difficult to understand the strikers' attitude toward us. After a few days I found my sympathy with them rather than with the employers. For one thing, I had never realized the appalling poverty which existed. If I had been aware of all the facts, I should not have joined up as a special constable".
Churchill, who was by then home secretary in Stanley Baldwin’s Tory Government wanted to arm the soldiers who were being used to help break the strike. Luckily, Baldwin had more sense.
Apart from 1940 to 1943, there is much to question about Churchill’s policies and attitude. I suggest Tariq Ali’s “Winston Churchill, his times and crimes” (Verso 2022.)
From 1951, actually, the Tories weren’t too bad as they followed economic policies based on John Maynard Keynes. In government, the party did things like building more houses and increasing funding for the NHS, which came into being after Labour came to power in 1945.
Let’s jump forward to 1979, and the emergence of an evil woman called Margaret Thatcher. She set out to destroy the unions and sent police to batter the striking miners. She also introduced Milton Friedman’s supply-side economics. A policy based on cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations. This was based on the assumption that given extra money the recipients would create more jobs by investing this dividend. However, that has not worked. Instead, the income inequality gap has increased, according to the Office of National Statistics,
So 10% percent of British Households own 40 percent of the wealth!
Thatcher also started the deregulation of the financial industry and we’ve seen what happened. It’s funny to think, that her father was a small-business owner, but it’s likely he would have been forced out of business by her policies which promoted corporations and greed.
I’m not against people getting wealthy. I’d like to be wealthy myself, but I can’t imagine myself avoiding taxes or hiding money in offshore corporations, like so many members of the Tory Party.
That brings us to Boris Johnson and his current corrupt and lie-spreading gang. His lies and misdeeds as well as his cabinet’s are well-known let’s just look at a few.
The £350 million pound a week that was allegedly going to the EU, that would be spent on the NHS. That would have been wonderful, if it had been true.
“Partygate!” Tories partied, when regular people died.
When Sajid Javid, the secretary of health and social care said the NHS didn’t need anymore money as it dealt with historical levels of waiting lists, a shortage of beds and a need for staff. Of course, Covid played a role. But so did poor contracts for PPE as well as Brexit, which has made this country a less desirable place for EU medical professionals to work. Prior to the farce of Brexit, this country had a joint recognition for qualifications with all the members of the EU. Now, the nation has to create recognition policy with each nation. Boris is brilliant isn’t he. He wants to bring back imperial measurements, which never really left. However, Brexit means that will be a shortage of people to pick hops as well as other fruits and vegetables,
That brings us to Priti Patel, the home secretary. Her grandparents were refugees from Uganda as Ida Amin threw all of the Asians out of the country. She seems to forget this country welcomed her grandparents. She isn’t willing to do the same to other refugees, deciding to send them to Rwanda to seek asylum, there. It’s not an easy trip accross the Channel at the best of times and people pay a lot of money to make it. Surely a nation should welcome people who show willingness and courage to get here!
That’s a short list why you shouldn’t vote Tory as Boris and Brexit have damaged this nation’s image and created a loss of respect in the international community. I believe the BBC shouldn’t sing “Land of Hope and Glory” not because it might be racist. Because this land is no longer “The Mother of the Free,” unless your a rich Russian and then you can buy your way in the House of Lords.
As an aside, “Pomp and Circumstance” is played at graduations in the US. So I’ve marched to it three times. While doing so, I sang the lyrics to keep in step.
So what’s the options, not Labour in it’s current form. However, there are other parties out there for example the Breakthrough Party.
The Breakthrough Party is one of a number of organizations seeking to end first past the post as a way of choosing a government. Much of the rest of the world, including Scotland uses proportional representation is a fairer way. In 2019, the Tories won 43.9% of the popular vote, yet, ended up with an 80-seat majority, seems almost as unfair as 2016 US election where Hilary Clinton won 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. However, using the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College, Trump won the presidency.
So what do we have to do, this time around, we should work across party lines as Labour, Lib-Dems, SNP, Welsh Nationalist and even Sinn Fein, who have never taken up their seats in the House of Commons need to come together to oust the Tories and institute proporational representive to make it harder from them to hold office until they adjust their policies.
If we don’t use our voice, we’ll lose it. That’s a scary thought, but make no mistake Trumpanzees and Boris’ Bullies want to bring facist-style dictorships to their nations. I’m a dual national, born in England of an American father and an English mother giving me citizenship in both nations, which I’m quite proud of. At their best the UK and the USA are shining lights, however, those lights are being dimmed.