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I have left party that will reap a whirlwind at polls
• LAST week, I cancelled my Labour Party membership, a quiet resignation. I will continue to vote for Emily Thornberry, as I feel she is a good constituency MP.
I’m now 54, physically disabled and I’ve been in Islington, north and south, since 1981. I saw the Labour Party split (an internal view I enjoyed from Bunhill ward) and some went off to form the SDP, and so help lose Labour the next election by denting its credibility. I witnessed the 1987 deregulation of the City of London by the Conservatives and knew it would come back and bite us, industry, the poor, the growing unemployed, the low paid and people trying to improve their lot by climbing on the first rung of the property ladder. That was several recessions ago. And we, the taxpayers, have had to pay to cover others’ egotistical decisions and grave, costly, mistakes.
I swallowed my political pride by staying silent in 1997 when Tony Blair with his New Labour project took a Social Democrat party and made it a Christian Democrat one. On election night 1997 I was called by a close aide of Jerry Corbyn’s to join the celebration of a landslide victory. But after several years working as a tenants’ activist at a local level I suspected the worst. And quoted the anarchist axiom: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected.” I did not have the same view when Barack Obama won in November last year, a vote that made a difference not just to the USA’s perception but to us all.
Next month, we have European elections. For the first time since I was 18 I will vote for the Green Party candidate, and I may not be alone.
I cancelled my Labour Party membership, the final straw being MPs’ expenses, combined with the McBride/Draper email affair. I have met Derek Draper locally, and was less than impressed. He reflects the top end of the party’s lack of philosophy and is driven by a selfishness combined with childish desperation.
Ms Thornberry recently sent out a letter about the corrected “rent increase”. This was labelled as an Islington Labour success over the greater rent rise proposed by the Lib Dems. As a council tenant, I suffer from a rent rise that is well above inflation and cannot be spun in the light of caretaking-cleaning and estate management service charges separately introduced two years ago.
I live in a property Labour built to do away with slum landlords in 1946. The local party is going to reap a whirlwind of discontent and anger at the polls and drive electors away as they no longer believe what is said.
Martina Navratilova said it better than I: “The moment of victory is too short to live for that and that alone.” There are those in the party who feel this is the only moment to live for and abandon all our, and their own, principles to get their hands on power. And power for power’s sake smacks of tyranny.
It’s certainly true people are disillusioned with all politicians and the most significant figure in any election is how many people don’t vote. Many may not vote and we start to open the doors to tyranny.
PAT EDLIN Richmond Grove, N1
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