Long-Bailey and my Mum’s aspirational socialism ......

My Mum was an aspirational working class Mum.

I paid the price for this.

Ballroom dancing? I had two left feet!

Elocution Classes? My accent always gave me away!

11 Plus? I failed! But borderline so I sat it again!

Grammar School? I was expelled!

But in the end my class of origin was, slowly and painfully, put behind me and I became middle  class.

I’m sure that my Mum was proud when I became a Vicar but she was probably prouder of my children when she became a Grandmother.

So in the end my class of origin and my current class didn’t really matter.

All she ever wanted was to be a Grandmother and indeed she was.

But whether she would vote for, or accept, Rebecca Long-Bailey’s aspirational socialism is quite another question,

Sure two of her great grandchildren are now at University, as were her Grandchildren, yet her aspirations were mainly for her own family, rather than for her class as a whole, so I suspect that, whilst she would be pleased to have seen us all be transformed from working to leisured class.

She would have still needed to have the arbitration of such class aspirations left to be assessed on individual achievement.

 Writing in the Guardian Tom Blackburn observed:

 Long-Bailey’s vision of aspirational socialism ...... has yet to be fully fleshed out. 

 Long-Bailey’s aspirational socialism appears to regard collective uplift and the empowerment of working class and marginalised communities as a necessary precondition (for the kind of personal aspiration my Mum had).

 Her broader point is that socialists aspire (or at least should aspire) to change society decisively for the better, and not simply to fill their own boots.

 If my Mum could have seen me last night in Messina representing the Church of England (Chiesa Anglicana) with an Archbishop to my right and in a circle with Lutheran, Waldensian, Orthodox and Catholic Clergy she might have thought ‘the boy’s done good’ and she may well have been right.

 But the fact of the matter is that Jeremy (and Tony and Gordon and Ed) have led the Labour Party into a historic cul de sac where the Tories just chant 80, 80, 80 to flaunt their majority at PMQ’s.

 So if my Mum’s aspirational socialism was just to do with her own family doing better, or as my Uncle Will expressed it at my Aunty Mary’s funeral, ‘I’ve lived in this (council) house for 28 years, it’s never been looked after, the area is a disgrace  and I have nothing to leave to my children’ how can I or Rebecca Long Bailey do better?

 I have lived long enough now to see the circles spin round, Wilson’s Government came and went, Heath asked whom Governs Britain, them or me, Arthur Scargill was the answer there, Thatcherism came and went, so I guess if the wheel of history turns, as turn it will, then Johnson may will become history and Rebecca Long-Bailey might have a future, I certainly hope so, because as we know, Wilson’s legacy was the Open University and Thatcher’s was the Poll Tax.

 I was and remain a Corbynista.

 But I also would not like to feel that I would die, probably on a Trolley in a hospital corridor, whilst Johnson, Sajid Javid and Priti Patel are still in power.

 I just want to see an end to Universal Credit, Zero Hours Contracts and Child Poverty. 

 Like my Mum I am an Aspirational Socialist and I want to see people doing better under a Government that Governs for all and not just the few.

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