Let me begin with a historical set of memories. I have been actively involved in politics in the North East of England since I was a student at Newcastle University 60 years ago. I was very much engaged both with support for tenant and resident activists in the West End of Newcastle and with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. In the latter capacity I organized buses to take people to the famous riot in March 1968 in Grosvenor Square (in which I participated enthusiastically). This meant I went around all the left groups on Tyneside ranging from the then International Socialists and Communist Party across a range of Trotskyist sects – including the truly bizarre Posadists who believed socialism would be brought to Earth by aliens who being more advanced would inevitably be socialist and who published the only newspaper I have ever seen where the headline went onto the second page), Maoists – very odd group of very working class incomers living in Walker, and some others who combined an interest in and practice of black magic with anarchism. There were lots of them including many trade unionists of a generally left tendency and they were spread across the whole conurbation including a strong group in my native South Shields.
That was the character of the Left across the North East and one thing that was very evident was that whilst there were people active who were blow ins (very useful Irish expression) the great majority of the politically active were from the north eastern working class and they were spread everywhere. Until the defeat of the miners in 1984 there was more focus of the Left as a whole on the trade union movement than on the Labour Party as such but that changed in a kind of quantity into quality fashion towards the Blair years. Trade unions, even the wretched GMWU dominated by the Cunningham dynasty, were no longer the power players in selection of parliamentary candidates although they retained some influence and a mix of blow ins like Wood and home grown dross like Armstrong made sure that they were endorsed by unions representing sectors in which they had never worked. In the Blair years opposition to policy focused on the Iraq war and there was much less sustained resistance to the continued privatization of public services, even when through the appalling PFI, or of the removal of powers over housing and education from local government by the creation of separate management bodies like Gentoo in Sunderland for housing and academy schools. There was opposition but it was almost invariably defeated. Real estate capital was given free reign in planning issues by Blair, Brown, Cameron and subsequent Tories. This has been continued by Starmer and Reeves. The Blair and Brown governments not only continued privatization but labour had no meaningful industrial policy whatsoever.
Blair and his allies not only systematically destroyed any semblance of internal democracy within the Labour party but through the Local Government Act 2000 replaced the committee system of management of departments and the overall authority (Policy and Resources Committee) with a Leader and cabinet system where the Leader appointed cabinet members to head functional departments. This was another major erosion of democratic process because in most authorities (not in Newcastle under the rule of the petit bourgeois “Labour” Beecham) committee chairs had been elected and committees were not whipped on party lines but actually discussed policy issues and changes. The 2000 act also introduced the principle of elected Mayors as Executive rulers, originally of single local authorities but this has been extended now to cover major city regions. Alongside these changes in elected governance there was a continued growth of “the new Magistry” (Stewart 1996). The Urban Development Corporations established under Thatcher which de did so much damage to estuarine conurbations were an extreme example but the Local Enterprise partnerships established in 2011 were important bodies. These have now been subsumed into the Mayoral authorities as boards. There is very little democratic element in the Mayoral authorities, only the Leaders of Local authorities who are not directly elected as such and as said before should be focusing on their own service providing authorities. Key city region decisions have no real democratic basis. The future of city regions should be a key focus of politics but is not. If we compare the Structure Plan developed by the elected Tyne and Wear County Council or even the North East Regional Strategy constructed on a corporatist basis with the kind of real estate dominated planning of Burnham in Greater Manchester (with the real decision making being done by Bernstein – the real estate very friendly former chief executive of Manchester City) we see a focus on the real needs of people and not of capitalist profiteers. If we look at what Driscoll did during his time as elected Mayor of North of Tyne, he functioned in exactly the same way as Burnham not least in his support for a Free Port in which trade union and environmental protections would not apply.
Driscoll’s selection as Labour candidate for his Mayoral role was a consequence of the desire of Labour Party members in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland to stick it to the wretched Blairite hack Nick Forbes. His failure to get selected by Labour as their candidate for the North East Mayoral Authority was both revenge for this and a consequence of his association with Corbyn’s faction within Labour. In a real democratic selection for Labour he would have had some competition from a socialist figure from the wider area, most of which was not within the North of Tyne area, and where he would have been challenged on his record in office and particularly on the Free Port issue. He is now a key figure in the “Your Party” initiative.
Driscoll is a resident of Gosforth, one of the most affluent areas in the North East, and well served by state schools but he sent his children to private schools before withdrawing them to home school to avoid embarrassment – probably not a good move since many teachers have deep suspicions of home schoolers. He has a North Eastern working class background but retired after selling his business. In everything but his smoggie origins he is typical of a breed of middle class blow ins who have assumed considerable prominence in North East politics.
Alongside this elite element there is also now an emphasis on identity politics. This has had a particularly malign effect on the Green Party where the rights of Trans men identifying as women now have absolute priority and a total lack of interest in the way politics at a city region level might be directed towards confronting the polycrisis. The Greens were always full of eco freak anti science elements, notably on nuclear power’s role in confronting climate crisis and a rejection of genetically modified crops, even CRISPR modifications which are based on the existing gene set rather than importation of genes from other species. This went way beyond any sensible precautionary principle. There are some good people in the NE Greens, notably Rachel Featherstone of Sunderland who is also a good union activist, but the party stood candidates in the 2019 election against left Labour MPs, notably Laura Pidcock in North Durham who lost when the Green Vote was greater than her losing margin. Labour have now imposed the Zionist agent Luke Akehurst in that seat so I hope the Greens are happy.
So a political scene which was dominated by working class people and working class interests and in which women played an important part, alongside people of colour in the seafaring and dock unions in the two Shields, has been replaced by one in which safe labour wards fell to Reform, I well remember when the Felling, having got rid of the vile crook Cunningham, was won back for Labour by young working class people who were part of the Militant. That area is now represented by a Labour MP who is a complete supporter of the rights of trans women identifying men against biological women. The Felling deserves better and even the Morlocks of Jarrow (living proof of the epigenetic effects of red lead) do not deserve her (I am from South Shields). Identity politics is a disaster. I write as someone whose family were among those who in the early 20th century brought the Irish working class on Tyneside into the Labour party and who has seen how identity politics work out in Belfast. The arrogant and contempt of these people for working class and indeed people in new middle income groups who do not endorse what are described as ‘woke’ ideas is extreme. In Tribune edited by Alex Niven from the Tyne Valley although describing Newcastle as his home city we find articles asserting that the Trans women identifying men are a key group of persecuted people. Niven’s book The North will rise again is not only marked by trivial but annoying historical errors – Dan Smith had nothing to do with the development of the Tyne Wear Metro – that was the TW County Council – but really does not grasp the essentials of North Eastern culture. He has neither lived experience or technical expertise.
I almost could give up when I look at the character of this absolute shower but I guess I won’t.
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