Yesterday's Black Dog column in the Mail on Sunday was tickled by the visit of Quentin Davies to an art gallery in Manchester during the Labour Party Conference, and by his expression of admiration for the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition there. "Spoken like of one the workers", it guffawed.
Well, yes, actually.
The old working class had a very vigorous intellectual, cultural, and therefore political life. The pitmen painters, the pitmen poets, the brass and silver bands, the Miners' Lodge Libraries, the Workers' Educational Association, and so much else besides, made up a civilised and civilising world destroyed by the most philistine Prime Minister until Tony Blair.
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