Fri 6 Jul 2018, 07:29 AM | Posted by editor
Letter from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot CLP personal capacity
20 or more years ago, I had a brief conversation with Ted Grant, the former Political Editor of the Militant and later the Socialist Appeal newspapers. He stated that in Marx’s time, it was religion that acted as ‘opium’ for the masses. Today, he said, it’s football.
Trying to be a bit of a clever clogs, I replied that it might only apply to roughly half of the population. Ted’s words proved right, as many more women are as fervent about soccer as men are today.
Should England win the tournament, there would be a sense of euphoria. However, it will not be long-lasting, and Britain’s current malaise will return, because nothing will have fundamentally changed.
At the end of World War Two, William Beveridge, the principle architect of the Welfare State, aimed to eradicate the 5 greats evils that scarred 1930s Britain. They were, “disease, idleness, ignorance, squalor and want.”
These evils are greater now than probably for a generation and they will intensify unless society is transformed along socialist lines.
