Sunday 4 June 2017

Jeremy Corbyn was right so many times


When we look back at the 1980s, when Jeremy Corbyn was a controversial firebrand left-wing MP, we find that he was on the right side of history while the political establishment was in the wrong.

Jeremy's progressive attitudes were considered outlandish back then, but with the benefit of hindsight we can see that he was right on so many issues, and has continued to be right on a range of fundamentally important issues up until the present (Iraq, Libya, Austerity dogma, pubic safety ...).


Back when young Conservatives were producing "Hang Mandela" merchandise and vociferously supporting Apartheid racial segregation in South Africa, Jeremy Corbyn was at the forefront of the campaign against it. It's now over two decades since the racist Apartheid regime was consigned to history; Mandela is remembered as one of the world's great peacemakers; and virtually nobody would claim that Corbyn was wrong to campaign against it.

From the 1980s onwards Jeremy Corbyn was a vocal gay rights advocate [source - Pink News]. At a time when people were still regularly being attacked, abused and harshly discriminated against for their sexual orientation, Jeremy Corbyn stood with them and demanded gay equality.

The passage of gay marriage legislation through parliament in 2013 under a Conservative government (despite fierce opposition from a large number of David Cameron's own MPs) was a huge step towards full gay equality in the UK, and a vindication for people like Jeremy who have consistently opposed homophobia. Who now, other than the bigoted fringe, would dare to argue that Corbyn was wrong to support gay rights in the 1980s, back when it was still deeply unfashionable?


Jeremy Corbyn's most controversial campaign in the 1980s was his effort to talk to politicians from either side of the conflict in Northern Ireland, both Irish republicans and Ulster loyalists, in order to try to get them to sit down and negotiate with each other towards a political solution.

The Tories and their attack dogs in the right-wing media have dug up this past "controversy" as a desperate effort to smear him into submission, but the evidence of history proves he was absolutely right. The Good Friday Agreement came about because the belligerents eventually did as Corbyn always encouraged them to, and negotiated a political solution.

Although power sharing in Northern Ireland has been a rocky road at times, who could possibly argue that things aren't better now that the bombings and killings have stopped?


In 2003 Jeremy Corbyn was one of the leaders of the campaign against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This time he had public opinion on his side, and he helped organise the biggest ever protests in the streets of London, but the Westminster establishment didn't listen, and Tony Blair, backed by the votes of Tory warmongers like Theresa May, triggered unspeakable chaos and suffering in Iraq that the world is still paying the appalling price of now, as Islamist terrorists have thrived and multiplied in the power vacuum that was created. Just watch the short extract from his speech at the Stop the War demo in London and tell me that his words weren't prophetic.
In 2011 Jeremy Corbyn was one of just 13 MPs who voted against more warmongering in Libya because he feared the creation of another power vacuum, and another breeding ground for fanatical Islamist terrorists. Six years later and Libya is a terrorist infested nightmare, and a British born terrorist who was radicalised there just committed a grotesque atrocity in Manchester. Who could say that he was wrong to express his concerns about us creating yet another mess in Libya in light of recent events?

In May 2015, 
after five years of coalition chaos, Labour somehow contrived to lose a general election that they should have absolutely romped to victory in. They lost because they came up with the idiotic strategy of weakly imitating Tory austerity dogma instead of confronting it head on as the failing, economically illiterate and downright dangerous hard-right fanaticism that it was, and still is. 


In the wake of this pathetic defeat (in which the architect of austerity-lite Ed Balls famously lost his seat) Jeremy Corbyn was propelled to a landslide victory in the leadership election because the Labour membership understood far better than the cossetted Labour Party MPs that Britain needed actual opposition to the toxic Tory austerity dogma that was strangling the economy through lack of economic demand (unprecedented wage repression and severe government investment cutbacks in a post-crisis recession will go down in history as a textbook example of grotesque economic incompetence driven by delusional ideological zeal).

In November 2015 Jeremy Corbyn, as Labour leader, strongly opposed the ideological Tory cuts to the police service being enforced by Theresa May, saying that "By pressing ahead with these cuts the Government is failing in its most basic duty – to protect our citizens. The planned cuts pose a direct threat to the security of our own people". Jeremy Corbyn could clearly see that the Tories were putting their zealous Austerity fanaticism above public safety, and he spoke out, but yet again the political establishment wouldn't listen. They were far too ideologically blinded by their fanatical austerity dogma to care.


The crossroad

Now we stand at a crossroads in British history.

We can either stand behind the man who was consistently on the right side of history (at times earning himself the visceral hatred of his political opponents that has burned away for decades).

Or we can stand behind a woman who voted for the Iraq invasion catastrophe in 2003, and demonstrated that she had utterly failed to learn her lesson from it by voting to create another terrorist breeding power vacuum in Libya in 2011. A woman who was a key figure in David Cameron's economically ruinous austerity government, and who ignored Jeremy Corbyn, and all of the expert advice, to impose her savage ideologically driven cuts on the police force and the UK border agency.

Of course the mainstream media are pushing you with all of their might to back the woman who failed to learn the lesson of Iraq, and who let her fixation with austerity dogma overrule her primary duty to protect public safety.

Of course the establishment want to slam the door on Jeremy Corbyn. They want you to reject him because he's been a constant thorn in their sides.

Theresa May is their puppet and Corbyn is their nemesis.

So it's up to you. Will you admit that Corbyn has been right so many times when Theresa May and the Tories were so wrong, or are you actually going to go out and vote for more short-sighted warmongering imperialism, more economically ruinous austerity dogma, and more ideologically driven cuts to public safety?



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