He helps to fund this.
Labour MPs with views like that have views like this.
And now, so has the party's largest donor by far. Having already demonstrated that it is Classic Labour that is both the pro-business and the anti-EU position, he is now demonstrating that it is Classic Labour that is the party for those who would:
- challenge the discredited left/liberal cultural orthodoxy and change the terms of debate.
- provide a strong basis for mutual support and association for centre-right [ho, hum, you have to know your audience] and other dissenting voices who work in the broad cultural arena of the media, academic, educational and cultural worlds.
- affirm and celebrate the canon of Western cultural achievement and our own national history, rather than resile from them in ill-considered shame and embarrassment.
- promote a new flowering of excellence in the arts, motivated by aesthetic honesty, not box-ticking or political indoctrination.
Well, it's hardly the other lot, is it? In fact, this is all very Old Labour indeed. They were the ones who held out against the destruction of these things in this country by That Woman, unlettered and uncouth, and by her borderline illiterate associate in the United States. That is before we even mention Blair. Or his buddy in the White House.
David Crausby, linked to above, upheld the traditional definition of marriage all the way to Third Reading, and would doubtless take up the fight again if the House of Lords ever sent that Bill back down the corridor.
Look at the Labour MPs who have never voted for it. They are almost, if almost, all on the Left, as a check against other Division Lists such as that on the post facto legalisation of workfare will confirm.
Look at the Labour MPs who have never voted for it. They are almost, if almost, all on the Left, as a check against other Division Lists such as that on the post facto legalisation of workfare will confirm.
Someone like Roger Godsiff was classifiable as right-wing in the 1980s when he was battling against the loonies on both sides, Thatcherite and Trotskyite.
But is anyone seriously suggesting that Ronnie Campbell, or Jim Dobbin, or Joe Benton, to name but three, has ever been on anything other than the traditional Labour Left? In Campbell's case, the pretty Hard Left.
But is anyone seriously suggesting that Ronnie Campbell, or Jim Dobbin, or Joe Benton, to name but three, has ever been on anything other than the traditional Labour Left? In Campbell's case, the pretty Hard Left.
The Labour Left has always been more than accommodating of such views. The late and much-missed David Taylor, who would certainly have opposed this Bill with every fibre of his being, was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.
Bob Wareing and David Drew belonged both to that and to the Labour Representation Committee, which has managed to sign up every organisation listed here to a constitutional commitment to the election of a Labour Government, and which signed up a considerable number of people as Labour Party members when it looked as if John McDonnell might stand for Leader.
When David Taylor died, John paid fulsome tribute to him on the LRC website, so he was either an LRC member or very close indeed to it. In any event, David Drew has been reselected at Stroud, a seat which Labour is practically guaranteed to win back in 2015.
It seems almost a shame that, if UKIP continues its past practice, it will not field a candidate against him, since that would have made his return to Parliament even easy. But it would have happened, anyway. He is of course signed up to Labour for a Referendum, chaired by John Mills.
In the meantime, John McDonnell should keep Andrew Pierce and the Daily Mail stimulated by giving a House of Commons pass to someone from each of the LRC's affiliates.
Whatever some of their essentially nostalgic names, none of those is dedicated to the destruction of our entire way of life, after the manner of the think tanks and campaigning organisations that are routinely given the run of the place by Conservative, or even remnant New Labour, MPs.
Quite the reverse, in fact: they spend their actual campaigning time seeking to save from those people everything on which Middle Britain depends for its very existence economically, socially, culturally and politically.
Bob Wareing and David Drew belonged both to that and to the Labour Representation Committee, which has managed to sign up every organisation listed here to a constitutional commitment to the election of a Labour Government, and which signed up a considerable number of people as Labour Party members when it looked as if John McDonnell might stand for Leader.
When David Taylor died, John paid fulsome tribute to him on the LRC website, so he was either an LRC member or very close indeed to it. In any event, David Drew has been reselected at Stroud, a seat which Labour is practically guaranteed to win back in 2015.
It seems almost a shame that, if UKIP continues its past practice, it will not field a candidate against him, since that would have made his return to Parliament even easy. But it would have happened, anyway. He is of course signed up to Labour for a Referendum, chaired by John Mills.
In the meantime, John McDonnell should keep Andrew Pierce and the Daily Mail stimulated by giving a House of Commons pass to someone from each of the LRC's affiliates.
Whatever some of their essentially nostalgic names, none of those is dedicated to the destruction of our entire way of life, after the manner of the think tanks and campaigning organisations that are routinely given the run of the place by Conservative, or even remnant New Labour, MPs.
Quite the reverse, in fact: they spend their actual campaigning time seeking to save from those people everything on which Middle Britain depends for its very existence economically, socially, culturally and politically.
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