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What has changed Labour presents no alternative
1935 - when angry Welsh protests forced a government u-turn
Geoff Jones
On 4 February 1935, Ceridwen Brown of Aberdare led an army of women, some carrying babies, to Merthyr Tydfil Unemployed Assistance Board (UAB) offices. They broke into and wrecked offices, burning papers and smashing telephones despite the local Labour MP trying to dissuade them.
At the same time, there were massive demonstrations including a school students strike in Blaina in the next valley where the UAB offices were only saved by massed police baton charges. These battles followed a day of mass protest in the South Wales valleys where around 300,000 people across the area of the Welsh Coalfield had marched.
What caused this near insurrection? The 1929 crash and the ensuing slump hit industrial areas in South Wales particularly hard. The big steel works along the heads of the valleys all closed, as did most coal mines.
The town of Brynmawr claimed an unenviable record of 90% of insured men on the dole. Merthyr Tydfil had so little money to run its services that it was proposed to remove its borough status.
In the City of London, investors rushed to withdraw money and argued that only cuts in government spending could save the situation. This meant cuts in benefits to the unemployed.
A 'National Government' comprising Conservatives, Liberals and some right-wing members of the Labour Party, came to power in 1931 with a huge majority - their first action was to cut Unemployment Benefit by 8% and tighten up 'means testing' for benefits.
Anyone out of work for more than six months could have their 'assets' examined by inspectors who had the right to enter homes. Not only 'luxuries' such as cooking pots were considered but also the earnings of anyone else who lived in the house.
How did people survive? Families had to rely on Public Assistance Committees (PACs) financed and run by local councils - "taxing the poor to pay for the poor". These committees had to use the hated means test but were under the control of local councillors who in South Wales were often unemployed themselves.
In areas such as South Wales, the PACs refused to employ the means test rigorously and 'anomalies' were exploited. Nevertheless, in the Rhondda in 1935, 15% of children were malnourished according to a government report.
Huge demonstrations
But those cuts did not appease City investors. Local PACs were seen as 'too generous' and the Unemployment Benefit Act 1934 aimed to set up statutory Unemployed Assistance Boards which would have no leeway for 'generosity'. It was this final blow that sparked the huge demonstrations of 1935.
Dramatically on 5 February, the day after the eruption in South Wales, the government announced that implementation of the measures would be put off for a year and a half and much modified.
This was one of the few cases where popular movements (supported by parliamentary protests led by Aneurin Bevan, MP for Ebbw Vale) caused a government climb-down.
This climb-down was certainly not caused by the wrecking of a benefits office in a town that no government member had even set foot in. But it marked the breaking crest of a growing wave of organised people's protest.
Even in those days, the Labour Party, which then claimed the allegiance of most workers, refused to support direct action. 'Left' Labour MP, SO Davies described the Merthyr demonstrators as 'scum'. In South Wales the lead was taken by the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party (a left-wing group which broke from the Labour Party in 1932) in the National Unemployed Workers Movement. These parties had many failings but they were prepared to lead the workers' fight.
More cuts
Although working people have today won a standard of living that their grandparents in the 1930s could only dream of, City of London investors still bay for cuts to push us back into destitution. Even worse than then, Labour presents no alternative and even supports cuts.
As in the 1930s, women and young people are in the forefront of opposition. But if, back then, a coalition with a majority of 500 could be pushed back, how much easier should it be to defeat today's shaky Con-Dems?
As well as a mass movement it is vital to build up a new leadership for working class people to rally behind, one that will point the way forward to a new mass party of the working class to deal with the City parasites and their parliamentary hangers-on.
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This is why I joined this
This is why I joined this site. This is what I (we?) need to see and learn from. Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. I bloody hope so!! Bring the bastards down.
Thanks for this. It has made my day.
The Labour Party offer no alternative because they can't see beyond their collective noses. They live inside an illusion and no longer offer any hope. They are a large part of the problem.
Thanks again.
Graeme.
We've all seen the result
We've all seen the result when Labour loses its way and embraces the corruption of the corporate state, as it did under Blair.
Blair, like Thatcher before him, whom he actually admired, believed that greed was good. Now up to a point he was right, because in one way greed makes us want to better ourselves, to raise ourselves above the level of the beast. In short, it begets civilisation.
The problem arises when it becomes the end all and be all, as we have seen in our society since 1979 when greed became the only virtue. Thus our civilisation has been driven backwards by the actions of bankers and financiers, who were given free rein to loot our resources with impunity, and now we all suffer the consequences.
Look at our own little neck of the woods, where Labour councillors even now are on the gravy train, lining their own pockets and defying us to do anything to stop them. Of course, we can't, because our hands are tied behind our backs. This is legalised corruption, no matter which way you look at it.
Wait until the next round of revelations of councillors' expenses and allowances comes along, and then tell me what answers Labour has to the financial debacle we are in. They have none, because they are part of the problem with their blatant milking of the system for all it's worth.
At least you know where you are with the Tories. They make no bones about the fact that they are the class enemies of working and poor people. Thus you can see the knife coming from them, and you get it in the guts.
But Labour: they pretend to be the saviours of working and disadvantaged people, whilst all the time hiding the knife from view that will stab us in the back. And that's exactly what these hypocrites have been doing on a grand scale since the advent of Blair.
That's the reason why I feel total disgust and loathing for the local Labour incumbents who are looting every penny they can out of the system whilst their constituents are weighed down by debt, poverty and despair. The whole lot of them make my stomach churn.
That article in the original
That article in the original post was a good read.
Socialist Party? LOL, that's
Socialist Party? LOL, that's what the bulk of Labour party councillors and certainly the MP's identify with and look where that's got us around here! Funny how people with socialist leanings strangley turn decidely capitalist when the opportunity to trouser appears isn't it?
We need a good independant MP and certainly councillors. But alas, there are a lot of people in Aberdare who cross that box marked "Labour" at every opportunity, else Clwyd and her minions would not have been omnipresent for the last decadia.
How come Merthyr have a booming retail park and we don't?
How come there is no scheme to put men back into work up the opencast site in Hirwaun/Rhigos?
How come every single bit of green land that has planning permission applied for gets it?
Why didn't Ann Clwyd not intervene in the row about wind turbines, despite it being a very emotive and prominent local subject?
It seems glaringly obvious
It seems glaringly obvious that these LP Councillors have little if any concept of what socialism truly entails. At the heart of the theory is one single simple aim; 'From each according to their ability - To each according to their needs' or simply put 'fair shares for all'. Around here it's been named called 'chwarae teg' for a couple of centuries which is a virtue that seems to have been breast fed to most of us in these valleys but seems forgotten in the scramble for money, power, and influence.
Many will have started down their individual paths with a loose idea of fair play in mind and calling themselves 'socialist' (especially on their election material) but, it seems to me, that as soon as people take on the mantle of 'Councillor' and enter the council chamber where the obsequious sycophantic officers wring their hands and call them "Councillor" or "Mayor" or "Chairman" they revert not to Karl but Groucho Marx. They become a parody of what they once claimed to be and the dark comedy begins.
Not all are the same though and some (usually in opposition because dissent within the LP is punishable) do fit the bill, but, like it or not they can shout as loud and long as they want to but will get nowhere and the LP machine simply rolls over them.
Time and again we've tried the party line and voted for Labour or Plaid in the main. Isn't it time to try another tactic and vote for people who are free of petty party politics and who cannot be disciplined by any party whip for non-compliance? Councillors who will actually not put their hand up because the party and/or group tells them to? Who comply with the wants, aspirations and needs of the people who elected them?
If things don't change they'll stay the same. If we vote the same we'll get the same. And, by the way, if this is seen as a call to vote Independent in next May's election that's probably because it is.
Graeme.
its all going to end in
its all going to end in tears, the chinky chonkies and russians will own everything, sold down the river by blair, brown and now bastard son of blair cameron.Woe be tide its us mere mortals will pay in the end. Labour couldnt manage a shitt at the moment.
PS sorry for the industrial
PS sorry for the industrial language
It's true. Great Britain PLC
It's true. Great Britain PLC is insolvent.
Aberdare is going to get worse and worse and worse, and in terms of employment and schooling that is almost unsurpassable as it is.
Anyone without the family ties and with the quals/skills desired would be mad to stay in this hole of country when they could emmigrate to NZ, Oz or Canada.
Immigration is out of all control now, jobs are non existant at least careers then are non existant and there is a difference between the two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypar-aVN_lo
I can feel a large wall
I can feel a large wall being built at abercynon and the whole valley becoming a large water store.
A few weeks ago it was
A few weeks ago it was reported that councilors were reading and taking in comments on this site, Well I hope they are still doing that as it's obvious that the people the R C T are there to represent are really getting Pxssxd off and from afar it looks as if the writing is on the wall for those that WANT to see.
Let's hope that people start thinking instead of voting automatically as they have in the valleys for donkey's years which has got them nothing compared to the rest of the country. Why are the valleys so much worse off than anywhere else in the country when they have contributed so much in the past to the wealth of the U K.
Labour has let you down, Just look around and see what you have after years upon years of Labour, The valleys are decaying faster than any other area of the country and they give you a new half finished road maybe every 70 years or so to keep you in check ( See Rhondda fach's Porth to Pontygwaith's New Road) and that's how it will go on as long as they know they are in safe seats and can get back year after year to their over inflated salaries and perks.
Time for change ????????
What the Labour Party want
What the Labour Party want from the electorate in Wales as a whole and RCT in particular is for them to turn out once every 4 years, put their cross in the LP box and then bugger off and leave them alone until the next time. In the meantime they represent the LP to the people instead of representing the people to the LP. And it's getting worse.
There has been public uproar about them cutting salaries and conditions for those below £42,000 but not for those above and, of course, not for themselves. Russell Roberts having 3 jobs paid for out of the public purse whilst also being 'full-time' leader of the Authority with a combined income approaching £2,000 a week! What have they done about it? Absolutely nothing apart from rejecting an Independent Remunerations Panel Report stating clearly that they should take a 5% to 10% decrease in Councillors allowances and that Russell Roberts should have his RCT salary cut from circa £58,000 to £52,000 and that he should shed his other two jobs to really be a full time leader of RCT. They (the LP members) bounced it off to the WLGA. The result? No cuts; snouts still firmly in the trough; and Russell Roberts keeping his jobs and incomes. The gravy train moves on undisturbed by the people who want it stopped. It's sickening.
OK - and here's the plug. That's why I've formed RCT Residents Action Group. Because there is no other way but to fight them fire with fire. People have become apathetic and dislocated from local politics and all that is to the benefit of the RCT LP rulers. Time for change? Bloody right it is!
We now have people wanting to stand as Independents next May. Not allied to any main stream political party they will be in that Council Chamber to represent the people who put them there. Not governed or even influenced by any party whip they are even now committed to changing what's going on in RCT and changing it for the better. For gawd's sake give it a go! What the hell have we got to lose?
As it stands right now there are LP Councillors sitting on wafer thin majorities (about 12/13 on less than 100!!). Some of those will fall to other parties but some could well fall to us. However it works out we have to at least try our best.
If you're interested please contact me on 01443 650478 or 07789761151 or graemebeard@yahoo.co.uk
Graeme.