I've been enjoying Bob Holman's study of Keir Hardie for various reasons. Professor Holman was one of the finest teachers I had at Glasgow University. Much of Hardie's life was lived in and around Cumnock, in Ayrshire, where much of my own childhood was spent. His background in mining, and the importance of the mines in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire resonates with my own family history in which back to 1860 on both sides, my own family were predominantly miners. And therefore his passionate outspoken criticism of wealth built on low wages and dreadful housing, of inherited privilege and its political protections, and his compassion for poor labourers, destitute unemployed and all but abandoned elderly poor likewise fires my own political and ethical opposition to injustice that is systemic and the valuing of human life on economic and financial scales.
An intriguing series of parallels with Jeremy Corbyn makes it even more interesting. Hardie was mocked and verbally abused for daring to come into Parliament dressed in workers' tweeds; he was not prepared to validate the class elitism of the monarchy and on numerous occasions was outspoken about the cost of the monarchy, the indifference of the royal family to the plight of workers, and the validation of the Czar by a royal visit seeking trade agreements; he was vehemently opposed to militarism and especially the recruiting of working class young people to fight in the interests of Empire economics abroad. It would be too far to say Corbyn has modelled his political style and actions on Hardie, but there is strong DNA evidence of a common ancestry of ideas.
Reading this story shows the vast distance that the modern Labour Party has travelled away from its social, ethical and ideological roots. In some ways it has had to adapt and develop, reshape and reinvent, in a rapidly changing world. But you are left with the question: If the blade of my spade wears out and I replace it, then the handle breaks and I replace it, do I still have the same spade - indeed, depending on what I replace the aprts with, do I still have a spade at all?
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