Old Nick

What a curate’s egg is Nick Cohen. He certainly has his moments. But this is not one of them.

He lazily accuses "the white working class" of providing the electoral support for the BNP, which in fact comes entirely from white people who, while they may in some cases be objectively classifiable as working-class, very consciously do not define themselves as such, and therefore self-consciously always voted Tory in the past, at least in the absence of an extremely rare National Front candidate. And he seems never to have heard of Naxalism, or Irgun, or Lehi, or the Italian Red Brigades, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Nor even of the IRA and the INLA, Leninist organisations persistently described as "Catholic" by the Leninist-infested BBC.

Ah, there’s the rub. With his Communist background, Cohen is blind to many things. But not to the hatefulness, as such people see it, of those who created the Labour Movement, the reason why Britain never had a Marxist revolution, a success avenged by the Stalinists (as Cohen used to be), fellow-travellers and Trotskyists in the form of their total destruction of Labour, namely New Labour.

Some of us would vote for candidates in the tradition of the Labour MPs who defended Catholic schools, and thus all church-based state schools, over several successive decades. Of the support by national leaders of the Social Democrats for Christian religious instruction in the schools of Berlin. Of the early Labour activists who resisted schemes to abort, contracept and sterilise the working class out of existence.

Of the Catholic and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, who fought tooth and nail against abortion and easier divorce, not least including both Thatcher’s introduction of abortion up to birth and Major’s introduction of divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract. Of the Methodist and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, who fought tooth and nail against deregulated drinking and gambling. Of those, including John Smith, who successfully organised (especially through USDAW) against Thatcher’s and Major’s attempts to destroy the special character of Sunday and of Christmas Day, delivering the only Commons defeat of Thatcher’s Premiership.

Of the trade unions’ numerous battles to secure paternal authority in families and communities by securing its economic base in high-waged, high-skilled, high-status male employment. And of the trade union banners depicting Biblical scenes and characters.

But we can’t.

So we are going to have to be those candidates ourselves.