By John Dunn
The faux ‘left’ middle class liberals in our party are having orgasmic delights as they point to ‘the working class voting Tory’ media myth.
These types, comfortable in their own smugness, have in reality, always despised the working masses, hence the 3 years of sneering condescending, patronising attacks – ‘racists’ ‘stupid’, ‘didn’t know what they were voting for’ constantly thrown around since the referendum was lost to leaving the EU.
In particular, their venom is reserved for the ‘former mining communities’ with their standard bearer being the loss of Bolsover to the Tories, with Dennis Skinner losing his seat after 48 years.
On examination their delight holds no substance, especially in Bolsover.
The writing was on the wall in Bolsover in the 2017 election when Skinner’s majority fell by a massive 6000 votes to just over 5000, despite his vote actually increasing. In the May 2019 council elections Labour lost control of the district council. The general election saw the Tory vote increase by almost 3000 whilst Skinner’s slumped by almost 8000.
So why did he lose in 2019?…
In his first election in 1970 Skinner’s majority was a thumping 20,459, this increased by almost a thousand in 1974 and peaking at 27,149 in 1997. Falling steadily ever since. So why did he lose in 2019? The answer is glaringly obvious, BREXIT!
In the referendum in 2016, a massive 70% voted Leave in the Bolsover constituency, only to find that, in the mind-set of many Labour Party MPs, their votes didn’t matter and, whilst Skinner was a devout anti-EU stalwart, the Labour Party with the ridiculous ‘second referendum, with remain an option’ position was seen as attempting to disregard that 70%. That was true of all the leave-voting areas.
On knocking on doors in the neighbouring North East Derbyshire seat, I was met with deep distrust of Labour. If they would break their promise on respecting the referendum result, how could their manifesto pledges be trusted?
Last Bolsover pit now a Sports Direct workhouse
At the end of the Great Strike of 1984/5 the number of striking miners in Bolsover numbered less than 500. Even if every one of those had voted Tory, which they did not, although admittedly some voted Brexit Party, it could not have made the slightest difference to the result.
In fact the last Bolsover pit, Shirebrook, closed in 1993 and now home to the infamous Sports Direct ‘workhouse’.
What has actually happened in Bolsover, and other former mining areas, has been a massive increase in new house-building as developers, attracted by cheap land, much of it sold by the privatised arm of British Coal, Harworth Estates.
Former pit sites have become soulless ‘little boxes’ estates populated by people with no local affinity who purely sleep and eat there, attracted by a cheap house near to bigger towns. Local shops closed, to be replaced by fast food takeaways; pubs are boarded up and working men’s clubs vanished from the scene. The phrase ‘communities left behind’ hardly describes many of these former thriving communities, abandoned seems a better word.
Add to all this the historical mistrust of Labour since the ‘white hot heat of technology’ led to massive pit closures in the 1960s under Wilson, the great betrayal of Kinnock in 84/5, the disastrous Blair years that saw working class voters disregarded as ‘they had nowhere else to go’ as Mandelson and co were being ‘comfortable with the filthy rich’.
Constant refrain on the doorstep
Under Blair the final nails were being hammered into the miners’ coffins and his government continued with the theft of the Mineworkers Pension Scheme funds.
A labour council closing community centres, libraries etc. in isolated towns and villages, implementing Tory austerity, hardly helps the situation either.
4 years of constant attacks upon Corbyn from his own MPs, together with his abject refusal to stand up to them, contributed massively, to the image of a weak leader which was a constant refrain on the doorstep.
Even the ‘Corbyn surge’ of party membership passed these areas by, with many branches being defunct. If you don’t have a bus service after 6pm how do you attend meetings? Whilst areas of London had hundreds canvassing, Bolsover had to have outside help coming in.
So the ‘Slaying of the Beast’ should be attributed to the sabotage of his fellow PLP members and, more importantly the massively changed demographic of the Bolsover area, rather than attacking the working class.
The challenge now is to find a leader who can reclaim these former strongholds.
January 13, 2020
