Life as a Labour Supporter - And for Good Reason

This country is getting further and further into poverty. Yeah, sure, the south are probably going to get richer, because they're predominantly Tori anyway. Thatcher destroyed this part of the country, my home, the North, mostly the North East. No matter who we vote for, where we are, we're going to get crapped on.

Thatcher, the milk snatche, turned my home town into a ghost town - and they wonder why so many of us claim dole? We're scared. How do we know the jobs we get will be secure?

The Conservatives have turned the hard working 'working-class' up here into an underclass. We can't earn money because my town birthed the railway (I'm not lying, Timothy Hackworth, creator of steam engines and railways was from my town), and Maggie took our invention from us. We have nothing. We can barely afford to feed ourselves and they're now taking our free school meals? What did we do?

I don't know what to do anymore. Don't you dare tell me that school is fair. We don't all start at the same level. We can't all afford the resources to teach our children prior to school because our jobs are unpredicatble and part-time. We can't afford the extra help, e.g., pre-school.

I can't help but dislike the Conservatives, because of everything they've done to my part of England.

In the early eighties, this part of the country was making money - money that mostly benefitted the Government and the general economy. In the early seventies, the unions pretty much brought down the heath Government, but sadly, they were also responsible for bringing down the Callaghan Government five years later, bringing in the ultra-right Tori Government, led by Margaret Thatcher, who decided to teach the unions a lesson by destroying the mine workers, and closing down my home town Railworks (who were profitable by massive amounts), apparently because she didn't like rail travel.

You should ask yourself, why do the Scottish only have a hanful of Conservative members of parlaiment? And in the North East, as well?

Could it be, that over the years, these areas have been treated with disdain? I give you an example: I live in an area where, in the nineteenth and ealier twentieth century, coal mining was the main industry. In the seventies, when the Tories came to power, they decided we were an area where no investment would be afforded, and we were classed as 'Category D'. This meant that we were left to run down and die (left to be a Ghost-Town, in other words).

Fortunately, dolomite was discovered in a our area (a main contituency for the production of steel), in the fifties/sixties, on top of the coal resources, leaving humongous coal refuse mounds, and unbelievable quarry gouges.

However, the Governments have found a great use for these scars in the Earth, by filling them with the mess of unrecycleable waste. I live next to the largest garbage dump in England, which is now, hopefully, full - hopefully, the flies will go.

Can you imagine this happening outside of Windsor, or Buckinghamshire?

Many years ago, during great poverty and unemployment, the leader of the local council used public money to pay unemployed and striking citizens money to survive, to buy food and clothes and other bare essentials. His name was Peter Lee - the name of the hometown of my current college.

But because of this, the central Government (the Conservatives, of course) took over the running of this councill, because they disagreed with this policy. Many council member lost their jobs because of their pity and kindness.

I know that I am probably biased, but if you looked at it from my point of view, and from the point of view of the people who can barely afford to feed their much loved children because of low income and high taxing, high cost of living., you would understand.

At times of hardship, sometimes the only way, other than crime, to make a living, is to join the armed forces. You will find that the people who join the armed forces in these times of difficulty, are from the North and from Scotland, and Wales and Ireland. There are next to no Tories in the Provences - and they wonder why. And yet, the officer classes are from the Southern, the richer, areas of this country.

Do you see it now? Do you understand, now? I hope so.