Fri 26 Jan 2018, 06:41 AM | Posted by Mark Langabeer
I’m sick and tired of the Tories banging on about how Labour under Corbyn would return Britain to the ‘bad old days’ of the 70s. I know that it is easy to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles. Fashion may have been a little suspect, but I think that applies in every decade. Many young people today buy jeans with holes in them.
In all seriousness, on things that really matter, I am unable to think of anything that is actually better today, compared to the 70s. The charity, Oxfam, reported that in 2017, 82% of all new wealth generated went to the richest 1% of the world’s population. The poorest half of the globe saw no increase during the same period.
Oxfam believes that this was due to tax evasion, the influence of companies on government policies, the erosion of workers’ rights and cost-cutting. The report concluded that the system is failing. The system they refer to is capitalism.
I think it was Marx who stated that the prevailing ideas in society are the ideas of its ruling class. This explains the obsession with the claim that the 70s was a ‘dark period’ in history. The 70s wasn’t all hunky dory, however. It was a period where the trade unions had more teeth, the super-rich paid a top rate of tax of 83% and the welfare state gave a degree of dignity to those in need.
These are the reasons why the Tories revile the 70s. Pat Wall, a Labour MP and a supporter of Marxism, (sadly passed away at a relatively young age), described the 80s as a period of counter-revolution on the shop floor. In my view, he was not wrong on this assessment.
The return of mass unemployment weakened the ability of unions to defend their members and I would argue that if the majority of the Labour and Trade Union leaders showed the same resolve in defending working people as Thatcher did in defending the bosses then the course of history may have been different. Back to the 70s-? Bring it on!
