20 years ago, the participants whined and whined about the supposedly heavy-handed policing of the Countryside March. That event had barely been policed at all when one considers its size and the fact that, extremely unusually in Britain, it had been organised by a lobby that was armed to the teeth. But on and on they went about it, and some of them are still doing so. At best, the reaction from the Left has always been, "Welcome to our world."
In the intervening decades, and across a range of issues, much the same people have come to complain, justly and otherwise, about lack of media coverage, about lack of political representation, about cliques of media types installing and protecting political leaders who might as well have been on the other side, and so on. Welcome to our world.
And now, they are openly accused of collusion with the Kremlin, and of being in receipt of Moscow Gold, by the people who really did have Michael Stewart and Sam Watson on the payroll, and by the people who are still paying heaven knows who. These accusations come from a very specific and very entitled political tendency that is sore beyond words at Trump and Brexit, at Sanders and Corbyn.
Trump supporters and Brexit campaigners, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club of the first Labour Government, of the General Strike, of the wave of strikes in Western Europe in the late 1940s, of the anti-colonial movements in the post-War years, of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s, of the peace movement in the 1980s, and of the NUM. Welcome to the world of "Comrade Corbyn" and "Agent Cob". Welcome to our world.
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