{"id":205,"date":"2018-12-23T10:27:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T10:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/?p=205"},"modified":"2018-12-23T10:27:21","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T10:27:21","slug":"from-the-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/2018\/12\/23\/from-the-archive\/","title":{"rendered":"From the archive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Resignation from the British Labour\nParty.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please accept\nmy resignation from the Labour Party on receipt of this letter.&nbsp; I have thought long and hard about this\ndecision.&nbsp; Here is a sample of my reasons\nfor leaving:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>I\njoined the Party a couple of months before the General Election that brought\nMrs Thatcher into power. &nbsp;I was\n&#8216;inducted&#8217; by &#8216;Red Ted Knight in Brixton and was active in London, in Burton\nand elsewhere during the 1980s and 1990s. &nbsp;I believed that a Socialist society was the\nonly alternative to rampant Toryism of the time. Both of my parents are\nlifelong Labour supporters.&nbsp; It was in\nthe blood.<\/li><li>My\ndecision to leave has evolved since the Iraq war and the financial crisis of\n2007\u201308.&nbsp; I consider the crisis has\nexposed the contradictions and weaknesses of the neo-liberal economic\nexperiment: attempting to make global corporations and capitalism profitable by\nmaking the rich richer at the expense of working people. &nbsp;This began in the early 1970s, it influenced\nthe 1974\u201379 Labour Government; was extensively implemented by the Tories\n1979\u20131997; little modified by Labour 1997\u20132010 and has been accelerated by the current\nTory government. &nbsp;This near decade of\neconomic depression has exposed this agenda for all to see and created the\nconditions for truly radical change.<\/li><li>Any challenge to the neo-liberal agenda has now been compromised by the\nOne Nation Labour approach based upon \u2018responsible capitalism\u2019 epitomised by\nthe Union Jack emblem that would fit the Tories just as well. &nbsp;Austerity has now been accepted by the Party\nand is being implemented by Labour councils up and down the UK under the\n\u2018dented shield\u2019 rhetoric.<\/li><li>Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, elsewhere.&nbsp;\nIt&#8217;s hard to know where to start. &nbsp;I didn&#8217;t join the party shortly after the\n&#8216;fall of Saigon&#8217; expecting to find the government and it main so-called\nopposition party 35 years later pursuing Armed conflict around the world &#8211; more\nthan ever in history. &nbsp;Along with our\n&#8216;allies&#8217;, Britain has invaded and desolated so many countries that I cannot,\nwith honesty, support a party that talks peace but promotes wars.&nbsp; I believe Labour&#8217;s foreign policy is merely\nan ersatz version of the corrupting Tory (neo-con) ambition abroad. <\/li><li>I feel the austerity &#8216;Lite&#8217; promoted by the Labour leadership is\nhypocritical. &nbsp;Fighting the Tories by\nTory defined rules is simply unacceptable.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For the above, and other, reasons I am no longer able to vote Labour or be a labour supporter.\u00a0 Will you please remove me from the membership list and cancel my direct debit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5 August 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Unsurprisingly, I didn&#8217;t receive a reply.  I then went off to sign up with the Green Party. More my kind of guys\/girls.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resignation from the British Labour Party. Please accept my resignation from the Labour Party on receipt of this letter.&nbsp; I have thought long and hard about this decision.&nbsp; Here is a sample of my reasons for leaving: I joined the Party a couple of months before the General Election that brought Mrs Thatcher into power. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/2018\/12\/23\/from-the-archive\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">From the archive<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.watsonlv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}