Why I shall be voting for the Labour Party on Thursday June the 8th.

Clement Attlee meeting with King George VI in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, following the Labour victory in the 1945 general election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  I am old enough to remember, just after WW II, being ill as a child and how proud my mother was that a Labour government had established the National Health Service and that she could call a GP in to examine me, in our home, for free.
 I can also remember standing, in 1951, on a busy railway station at Wootton Bassett Junction ( shut down many, many years ago now, by the Conservatives ) with a few pals to meet the train carrying people home from work with home made placards with "VOTE LABOUR"  painted on them. I was seven years old and we did this on our own initiative with the wording dripping with runny paint which I had found in my father's shed. Clement Attlee had long been canonised in my home along with Aneurin Bevan who had fought so hard against a reluctant BMA to give birth to the NHS.
 Despite having the majority of the popular vote Labour lost that election and although young I felt the hurt then that I have felt many times since when decency, justice and fairness are rejected and evil triumphs.

English: Iraq War Protesters in Parliament Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Many years later I felt that same hurt when, of all things, a Labour government, led by Tony Blair, illegally invaded Iraq and set of a chain of murder and destruction, bombing killing, hunger and dreadful terrorist vengeance that is happening on our streets to this day.
 That Attlee government created the foundations of the welfare state, nationalised the railways, steel and coal and ensured that  cheap gas, electricity and water were provided by the public sector.
 The troops, who had returned from the second World War, and the hundreds of thousands still overseas were determined to end the scourge of poverty and unemployment that had haunted the 1930s and unexpectedly rejected Churchill in favour of change for a better and more compassionate Britain.

President Kennedy and Prime Minister MacMillian meeting at the Key West Naval Station on March 27, 1961. Photo by Don Pinder. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Although the Tories returned to power in the 1950s and early 1960s theirs was a patrician party led by honourable men like Harold Macmillan, who too had seen the horrors of the pre war days, and ruled on a consensus basis labelled "Butskillism" which was a term used in British politics to refer to the political consensus formed in the 1950s and associated with the exercise of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Rab Butler of the Conservative Party and Hugh Gaitskell of the Labour Party.
 Then after a long period of Tory rule Harold Wilson won the 1964 election. He has become the forgotten man of 20th century politics but his government introduced far-reaching social reforms which included:-

the foundation of the Open University;

the decriminalisation of sex between men in private; 

the liberalisation of laws affecting obscene publications;

extending the franchise with the reduction of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen:

the ending of capital punishment;

the equal pay act;

the abolishment of censorship in the theatre;

despite tremendous pressure from the Americans he refused to send British troops to Vietnam; 

he held the first referendum on membership of the EU;

he was the first Prime Minister, since WW2, to proudly be able to tell the House of Commons that not a single British soldier had died in action anywhere in the world during the previous twelve months.

He also gave us a national holiday to celebrate May Day and his coming to power in 1964 heralded the birth of the swinging sixties and in 1966 we won The World Cup.

 When Thatcher came to power in 1979 she tried to  took a wrecking ball to much of this ruining whole communities and the  livelihoods of many. She and Reagan and successive government  in the words of Harold Macmillan, "sold off the family silver" in an orgy for the rich and powerful which Shamus Cooke defined succinctly as follows, "The essence of neoliberalism can be reduced to the following: government should be used exclusively to help big business and the wealthy with tax cuts, subsidies, privatizations, anti-labour laws, etc., while all government programs that help working and poor people should be eliminated. It’s really that simple.”   
 Now once again I have the opportunity, probably for the last time in my life, to vote in a truly reforming Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn who will transform this country from a divided and shoddy land of terrorism, cuts and food banks. Not only will they invest in our outdated roads,  rail system and infrastructure, and in so doing create millions of jobs and opportunities for British companies, but they have carefully costed the following programme (to be paid for by the richest 5% and an increase in corporation tax) which will give people hope and opportunity for the future, and dignity in old age:-

 1. Schools: increasing funding and providing free school meals and arts pupils premium.

2. Skills: introducing free further education tuition, equalising 16-19 funding and restoring EMA childcare and early years including more money for sure start. Removing university tuition fees and restoring maintenance grants.

 3.  Health and Social Care: Improve NHS spending and the provision for social care. Restore nurses' bursaries.

4. Work & Pensions: increase ESA by £30 pw for those in the work related activity group, scrap bedroom tax, implement the PiP legal ruling, restore Housing Benefit for under 21s, scrap Bereavement Support Payment reforms, £2 billion of additional funding for Universal Credit, uprate Carers' Allowance to the level of JSA.
 Double paternity pay and leave.
 Guarantee pensions tri[le lock, extend Pension Credit to those affected by changes to their state pension age since the 1995 Pensions Act.

5. Lift public sector pay cap. Introduce a Real Living Wage of at least £10 by 2020 with net scale benefits ringfenced to provide support to small businesses.

6. Recruit an additional 10,ooo police officers and provide additional border guards.