CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM
This interview with the Lebanon based Arab News Network was about to be put up on the Exaro News website just before it abruptly closed. Arranged through Tim Pendry. then a director of Exaro, it puts the case for Exaro’s investigative journalism. It also discusses events in the Middle East and why Jeremy Corbyn became popular with the rank and file membership of the Labour Party. It took some time from the date of the original interview which took place at the end of March before it was put up on YouTube in June. It is rather long so I don’t expect you to listen to the lot.
Expect a sequel to this as I am planning to do an interview with Fabrice Bardsley on The Bunker Show for Dark City Radio on what happened since for both Exaro and Jeremy Corbyn and my hopes for the future. The broadcast is scheduled to go out on August 10.
Westminster Confidential 
very interesting David an hour well spent especially as a convert Corbynista. In process of completing long piece of writing which may help to explain why some Labour voters who supported UKIP are returning to support a Corbyn led Labour party among a wide range if issues related to whether there is real change to political engagement and it will last.
LikeLike
Thanks for listening. Your point is interesting re UKIP and Labour. There does seem to be some evidence that in Labour areas – the very place where UKIP is supposed to be targeting – the UKIP vote is going down in council by-elections. And the Labour vote is going up. It doesn’t seem to be happening in rural areas where the collapse of the UKIP vote seems to benefit the Lib Dems. Now UKIP is even more divided I expect the process to accelerate.
LikeLike
I did not vote Jeremy said to his team I was voting for Yvette Cooper and Angela Eagle although I agreed with his leadership manifesto because I knew what would happened and wanted a more feminine approach to politics which is in fact what the politics of Jeremy Corbyn turns out to be.
I have heard him speak twice once in Sunderland and once at the Gala and twice live via the internet. I attend one small rally ne his behalf with about 100 supporters 15 police and ten national front also Sunderland and most recently the MacDonnell launch of the investment bank about 100 with about 20 media people plus daily exchanges on twitter my.
There was the enterist left at the Gala pushing their literature but not in evidence at the speeches marching behind the bands and banners If you have not been I recommend essential to understand the traditional labour communities of mines, shipyards steel workers and on you feet all day labour. I spoke to several of the 100 plus Durham teaching assistant because there were so many… a middle age Councillor from Teeside area told me she loved the man as many others have also said. People respond to his limitations vulnerability and because he actually cares and wants change…. all the other contenders said what they thought would get them support and promised colleagues jobs
As Andrew Neil said the problem with the Turkish coup is was amateurish the PLP knew that I one shot miscalculated the Tory response and the strength of the man and all they are doing with each stunt is strengthen the resolve.. he more they try and crucify the stronger the support grows and like the early Christians they will have to get rid of all us or will get rid of them… nothing to do with Jeremey now or his team they have challenged our intelligence our emotions and bit like the anti Europe vote where I had expected a bigger margin to leave…. they don’t just get it
As Andrew Neil said
My main direct experience is a little canvassing during the by election after the resignation from Parliament of David Miliband together with many days leafleting where I found many in their garden or coming to the door wanting to comment in a constituency which thrived under the Labour Government as David enabled the local authority and health authority to add purpose designed Health Services, modernise every school, provided additional new capital and revenue projects. Bank crisis hit re Northern Rock and the ideological assault on local government planned in the mid 1980’s was beginning to bite hard. The region had escaped the burning and looting of the 2011 riots and the sense of being strangers in ones own land evident in London and other cities and towns was not an issue although there was spike in new people to the region from the rest of the UK and beyond because of university developments with three universities where there had been one in Tyne and Wear. The population of Newcastle which decreased 50000 students in Newcastle alone plus dance and arts and further education, a huge development in further education
People don’t read newspaper much but they do catch the news headlines 24/7 and ay attention when there is an event. Here they here to Queen and Country but as in Yorkshire and Midland and the North West they are not daft because they have an accent
Abot 300 350 bikers organised by the local Hells Angels led the Army day parade along the sea front.. and everything requires perspective as here was a huge overall to the free concert around 50000 for Lindisfarne the other Sunderland which passed on my way to a another free concert on sea shore for a local 32 piece swing band playing forties and fifties hit.. around a counsel hundred of us for that about a third of High street is now closed and but the Library writers and digital arts centre is nearly finished and the a large multi pool indoor leisure censure and gyms is thriving with the mixed summer weather, I joke the bouncers at the night clubs and bars if I pass on way home that they are there to keep the punters in not keep them out
Housing prices remain comparatively low… South Tyneside Housing has accommodation is some larger flats because of the bedroom tax . The Labour party has always been strong in terms of General and local elections and there is just one opposition councillor at present…… so how does one explain the rise in the UKIP vote and many Labour voters saying to me not going to vote. At one level local the old order the old way of doing things has changed where there was a very close community around the coal mine the shipyard and the large factory all gone with the social club 750 men playing bingo on Sunday lunch time to take back a month’s wages to one wife waiting with the Sunday lunch ready for 2 where in Jarrow the buses brought the wives and daughter from the estates to play bingo during the week times because politics had a hand in everything.
At one point independent researches knocked on my office door in the 1980s for an explanation why Home Helps visiting wardens were going back after their hours shopping collecting medication or for just a chat because the person was lonely.. the answer was simple it was a nurse a teacher the parents of school friend who they remembered as children and 1990 Comnmunity Care Act tendering destroyed that
Blair and brown were softer versions of the Tories who then lost two General Electionsns and Scotland where there close affinity as there with Ireland and where the Catholics of Hebburn ran the town and there were Orange Order marched for a number of years. UKIP offered anti Labour anti Westminster anti Europe digit raised… the expenses crisis confirm the view that all politicians are in it for themselves…… it is very different situation in greater London where one relatives like me grew up with German V1 and VII rocket falling around us some 350 because we were closed to Croydon airport recently complained I am not having Mrs Merkel tell me what to do. and who also persuaded me to take a bus into central London which I did twice to prove that English was not the main language being spoken and this is a family who were refugees in 1939 evicted from their homeland by the British government and where the language at home was Llanito ( Gibraltar).
The thing about Jeremy is his limitations his vulnerability and that he is has never been one of them with Cameron and Clegg interchangeable the Milibands the Kinnocks …. I keep meeting people as a I did at the Durham Miners Gala…..older people often woman whoI say I I met Greens when he came to speak at Sunderland. I met another Labour party member who joined like me 50 years ago when we held a rally in Sunderland and John MacDonnell could not resist a smile when 100 or so people who attended his investment Bank speech launch applauded when he referred to the money which could be save by not going ahead with Trident most of in suits or the ladies in power kit
and racisim was between different council estates sunderland and newcastle football club supporters and anyone from down south
when I arrived in 1973 and was appointed a full council meeting of 66 a councillor who like me had been to Ruskin college warned you find any ideological socialist here its si he practical reality of survival versus our more powerful and large neighbours and the region against the rest There were greater public crowds for the visit of Mohammed Ali married in a local Mosque and given a civic lunch than for the Queens’ 25th
When the coup first failed I anticipated the full might of the national press 24/7 and the Opposition would be used to stop him plus the CIA the arms dealers, Mossad the Trident … vote has lanced the GMB boil no one has had any idea who will turn up to meetings hence they have had to held in streets or with overspill gatherings all age all backgrounds all weather.. the more he is attack the more they come
LikeLike
Sorry, Colin, the Corbyn “vulnerability” argument is specious. He has chosen not to come back to Liz Davies with an explanation why he and his colleagues failed to act on the information she and her colleagues gave him about how truly vulnerable his constituents in care were.
I don’t expect John McDonnell, Seamas Milne, Derek Sawyer or even Margaret Hodge to engage with the issue. But I do expect you and David and other Corbyn supporters with an informed perspective to stick your heeads above the parapet and ask the awkward question. Instead you engage with those aspects of Corbyn and Corbynism that you find appealing while turning a blind eye to the child protection issue that you’re precisely the people we’d expect to be pressing for the truth.
You’ve both offered me explanations, but nothing I’m afraid that doesn’t remind me of three proverbial monkeys. Sorry if that sounds offensive, but I find the uncritical enthusiasm and apologism pretty offensive too.
LikeLike
So David you are have contacts in The Lebanon. How about asking the people there what they knew about Colin Peters and his time in Shemlan.
LikeLike