Missing Links No More

I have received an email about my post yesterday making reference to the late Joan Maynard, pointing out that she just wouldn't have been Joan Maynard if she hadn't been Straight Left. Well, up to a point, that is true. But why should her rural radical tradition, responsible for much of the democratisation and social reform of the "long nineteenth century", have been diverted down the dead-end alley of Marxism, specifically Stalinism, in the first place? It was and is a far older and nobler tradition than that, and indigenous (even if not unique) to these islands, with a very strong patriotic streak, and motivated by a most visceral love of the countryside and of its communities, a love wholly alien and inimical to Marxism.

The same is true of the tradition represented by, say, the late Paul Foot. He identified himself as a Marxist, specifically a Trotskyist, and was of course in his public school element as a member of the Socialist Workers' Party, although he was one of the very few such members ever actually to have done any work. But he was really a figure of the older and nobler tradition, indigenous (even if not unique) to these islands, and with a very strong patriotic streak, of upper-middle-class or borderline upper-class radical journalism and pamphleteering, sceptical of those in power, and moved to outrage precisely by the desire to conserve and extend all that is true, good, beautiful, and therefore under constant threat. How could Foot ever have been diverted down the dead-end alley of Marxism, specifically Trotskyism, in the first place?

There are and will be many links in the chain that we are trying to put together, and will succeed in putting together. I for one very much hope and intend that these two traditions will be among them, not least so that no such dead-end diversions ever happen again. And the desire to see them and others in Parliament, rather than the unrepentant Stalinism and Trotskyism (and Fascism) currently besporting themselves on its benches, is why I am convinced of the need for a county-based elected second chamber, and increasingly convinced of the need for electoral reform in respect of the House of Commons.