Monday, November 26, 2007

Interventions For Intervention

The US mortgage crash, Northern Rock, Eron, the fiasco over child benefit data, the depth of third world poverty with its starvations and exploitations, military adventurism and religious and political fanaticism all spell out the need for planning, democratic interventionism, co-operation and social justice at home and abroad.

If there is to be a sea change on our doorstep within the Labour Party to dispense with its continuing anti-social ideology of New Labourism ,then it will need more than just mobilisation on the Hard Left. What is left of our intelligent media and socially conscious opinion leaders need to stand up and make the case for at least some openings in the direction I have suggested.

Here are a couple of examples of what is needed - Will Hutton and Johann Hari. We need a sign that the Government, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the wider movement are picking up such messages.

3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Nominate your person of the year at newstatesman.com

Harry Barnes said...

Bob: I will not bother. I had a subscription to the New Statesman for the first year after I retired as an MP, but I never renewed as I could only ever find bits and pieces that were worth reading. I used to be an addict in the days of Kingley Martin, purchasing the air mail edition on rice paper in Basra in 1955-6. But you can let me know if the paper ever decides to adopt a democratic socialist perspective again, or even runs a telling book review section on a regular basis.