Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 October 2011 10:19:39
Ok if I were to list my top three politicians the list would go something like this:
1) Tony Benn, (who I see from the unofficial website is coming back to the Gala in January with his Audience With).
2) Shirley Williams (whose articles in the Guardian are worth exploring)
3) Bob Russell (whose voting record speaks for itself)
Looking at the top two you might wonder if I might have a romanticised view of the past, which is ideologically unaware or confused. The question asked is "how can you have Benn and Williams together as your heroes?"
The answer lies in why Bob Russell comes in at number 3 and why Simon Hughes who was my hero for many years disappointed me more strongly than any other Lib Dem MP during the sell out. I believe in politicians who have integrity and stand by the something they profess to believe in. Specifically I believe in politicians who really do believe in the concept of equality of opportunity, reducing the gap between the very rich and the very poor and generally for social justice.
Ben and Williams may have disagreed vhermently on how these ideals should be implemented but they still believe(d) in them.
Russell when faced with a party selling its soul to the devil has been prepared to publicly stand up and say, "I have a problem with this - I stand by the manifesto I was voted in on".
Reading through Williams autobiography, "Climbing the Bookshelves", (4 of 100), one is struck by how little detail the 400 pages actually give. What does come out of it though and makes it so readable is the way she refers again and again in different ways to the values underpinning her life and career and how those values were formed. Thus, she maintains her privacy and that of others whilst filling the pages with interesting reading. The book culminates on pages 392 and 393 with an explicit statement of these values. She writes of how she "has always been a democratic socialist, trying to hammer out a compromise between capitalism and social justice, a compromise that might attract enough public support to be viable." She continues that she is "a Christian socialist because Christ loved the poor, lived among them and spoke the Gospel to them." This approach I guess is why Williams thoughts have appealed to me so much. In addition the book tells of how she was a working single mum, making it work simply because it had to. Something else I could identify with. Until reading the book I was unaware she had been a single mum.
Reading this book I think I became more aware, in my own mind, of why I spent 20 years as a Lib Dem voter and supporter and why in recent years I have drifted (back?) to Labour. Shirley Williams was one of the driving forces behind the policies I subscribed to within the party - policies that Clegg and co have turned their backs on BUT policies which Russell it seems has maintained support for.
Like Williams in her concluding chapter I have no doubt a new kind of internationalist politics needs to emerge in our globalised world and that levels of inequality between rich and poor need to be addressed.
At the end of the book I was left with the understanding Shirley Williams like Tony Benn and indeed Bob Russell didn't and don't have all the answers - no politician does. However, I was more convinced than ever there is much to be learnt and kept hold of by studying their writings. They both have something important to say and a passion in saying it. Their values will outlive them and we need to hold on to the hope for the future they evidently have and the belief that they hold in social justice. We also need to rediscover what Christian Socialism is all about and how it drove a generation of politicians - (whilst Benn himself does not profess faith the beliefs of his mother who clearly did influenced his own value system).
We also need to get back to having more politicians like Russell who aren't "career politicians" - going from internship to party position but rather are people who have come up through the local party ranks and are truly representing "their people". Watching the You Tube clip on his home page you can tell that he has substance over image and I just hope in the next election - whenever it is - that the local constituents, including the students of Essex University, vote for the person not the party.