The left wing not-very-good journalist Owen Jones has once again tried to rewrite history regarding the cult figure leading the Labour Party. Older readers may recall Margaret Thatcher’s repulsive Tory government introducing the odious Section 28 legislation which set back the cause of LGBT rights immeasurably. I am not sure Jones was even around when it became law but he insisted today that it was Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott who led the revolt on behalf of Labour. Have I got news for him.
Jones suggested that it was the heroic efforts of Corbyn and Abbott which overturned this the worst of Thatcherism. It was heroic because at the time, he said, the fight against Section 28 was regarded as a fight by the loony left, implying that anyone not from the hard left was in favour of doing nothing. This simply isn’t true.
I was involved in trade unionism at the time of Section 28 and it certainly was not the hard left leading the fight. It was the mainstream left. I cannot recall a single instance of the hard left making anything more than token efforts. My local Labour Party wasn’t unduly bothered, I know that. They were far too busy preparing the ground for revolution being plotted by the Militant tendency.
In fact, it was the Blair government which in 2003, after a long fight, saw to the end of Section 28, just as New Labour lowered the age of consent and introduced all manner of equality enshrined under law for LGBT folk. This would be distressing news for Owen Jones to discover because it would prove once again that actually that under the Labour government of 1997-2010 things really got better, much better.
By contrast, Corbyn stayed where he was most comfortable, sitting on the backbenches, achieving absolutely nothing and attending meetings attended by people who already agreed with him and certainly not at the coalface actually doing things to make people’s lives better.
If, for just one moment, people could stop the whataboutery of “Iraq!!!!” every time the name Tony Blair is mentioned and examine the reality of what his government actually achieved for people who needed a Labour government.
Owen Jones is one of those people who would rather have a hard left so-called principled Labour Party in opposition rather than what he would refer to us a Tory-lite Labour government. Another way of saying that is to wish upon the people a Tory government free to do whatever they want to do forever and a day. So, no tripling of NHS spending and the end of waiting lists, no Sure Start, no Minimum Wage, no new schools, no falling crime, no peace process in Northern Ireland and no removing Section 28 from the statute book.
Jeremy Corbyn did not end Section 28: the prime minister, the leader of his party, Tony Blair, did that. It may not fit in with the narrative of the hard left, but who gives a toss about that?
