Dear Bea,
You may remember me from Marxism Today times. We all seem to have moved in different directions since those heydays in the 1980s and early 90s.
The most disappointing thing for me is that all of you who heralded the new future through a change in direction of Left and Labour in those difficult days, now have turned resoundingly against the Labour Party and what we (because I am one of them) have tried to achieve over the last 18 years.
In particular, I find the quote above from your website particularly challenging for me. I came from a Council estate (scheme we call them in Scotland). It was a decent place in the 1950s and 60s, although the majority of my contemporaries at primary school left without being able to read or write. They were the victims of the 1950s Tory education policies and I was lucky to break free.
In the 1980s and 1990s it turned into a nightmare of place to live for everyone concerned because the then Tory Government created unemployment levels that gave rise to one single local currency – that which came from heroin, crack and cocaine.
In recent years, the estate has been transformed as a result of national and local Labour initiatives which involved investment in a combination of regeneration of existent local social housing, combined with the building of affordable private housing. This new social mix, combined with local community involvement (including my 87 year old Mum) in the design of facilities on the estate for children, young people and the older generation, has completely transformed the place I grew up in and changed it from the nightmare it subsequently became.
This has happened up and down the country and isn’t accidental. It’s happened because we had a government committed to making it happen. And yes, we’ve had to prioritise and it hasn’t always been enough but the will has been there. Don’t pretend it hasn’t.
And that’s why I really do object to the notion that Gillian Duffy “knew exactly what was different for the working class between now, and then – when her own generation could enjoy ‘great expectations’ but her grandchildren’s generation seems doomed to hard times.”
Which generation Bea? What expectations? And what precisely is this doom that you herald if not a Tory Government? Perhaps the election of a public school boy from the Lib Dems who has no real interest in Gillian Duffy or anyone from her community?
One last question. Why are you standing in Hampstead in Kilburn to divide a vote in a marginal constituency when it is a two horse race and you know that a vote for anyone else but Labour is a vote for the Tories?
Regards
Diane Dixon