Miliband smacks down Warsi over Miners Gala


by Sunny Hundal    
9:00 am - July 15th 2012

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Yesterday, Ed Miliband attended the Durham Miners Gala – the first Labour leader to do so since Neil Kinnock in 1989.

Immediately the Tories tried to make hay, with Sayeeda Warsi issuing this silly statement:

Red Ed is using the Durham Miners’ Gala to cosy up to his militant, left-wing union paymasters.

By breaking 23 years of silence from the Labour leadership at the Durham Miners’ Gala, Ed Miliband is handing his party back to Kinnock.

I liked Ed Miliband’s swift dismissal.

If you are someone who is looking for work, whose living standards have been squeezed, or someone worried about the NHS, you’re not thinking why’s Ed Miliband going to the Durham Miners’ Gala, you are thinking what can Ed Miliband do for me.

When you see people marching past as I did from the balcony of that hotel, a march people have been doing for 140 years, I think that it is not just about politics, it is about the strengths of these communities.

The idea that the people here are a bunch of militants, as some of my opponents say, is nonsense.

Even Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome said with caution, “I do sometimes think it’s unwise for the Conservatives to be dismissive — even if only indirectly — of a major working-class gathering in a region where they struggle for votes.”

An excerpt from Miliband’s speech

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


1. Tim Worstall

That is a pathetic attack by the Tories.

Given that there are no Durham Miners any more…..

2. Chaise Guevara

I’m getting the impression that Warsi uses “militant” to mean “anything I don’t like”.

3. buddyhell

@2

Now you’re starting to get it…

4. Dissident

@ Tim, true… good that some of the community survives, in spite of the snatcher’s destruction…

@ Chaise, are you implying that Warsi is ideologically driven? Perish the thought!!

5. Richard W

At the same time another part of the left want to close down coal mining.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18841947

In no way should Ed Miliband be expected to be responsible for every part of what passes for the contemporary UK left. However, coal mining does provide an interesting contrast between the old industrial left and the modern herbal tea left.

The 1980s miners strike was the most bitter and divisive industrial dispute in my lifetime. Even if the Labour leadership was not explicit in their support for the strike, it is fair to say that the wider UK left of the time did wholeheartedly support the miners trying to keep mines open. If we could transport the contemporary herbal tea CiFers left back to that time could anyone imagine them supporting the miners in their struggle to retain coal mining? What passes for the modern left would be calling for the mines to be closed and the miners to be out of a job. George Monbiot joining miners on the picket line to keep a mine open is hard to imagine.

The contrast between then and now encapsulates what happened to the UK left as they retreated into a metropolitan bubble obsessed with single issues and identity politics, they are more interested in the blue fin tuna than the economy. Gone are the days when the UK left could claim to speak for industrial workers and those at the bottom. Nowadays the UK left are an upper middle class group speaking about whatever is obsessing a section of that group at any particular time. Moreover, they quite often are outright hostile to the interests of the group that they previously claimed to represent.

6. Bob B

Richard W: “Even if the Labour leadership was not explicit in their support for the strike, it is fair to say that the wider UK left of the time did wholeheartedly support the miners trying to keep mines open”

The 1984/5 mining strike was explicitly not endorsed by either the Labour leadership or the TUC – not least because of the refusal of the Yorkshire NUM to hold a pit-head ballot of its membership. Those who understood the facts of the situation regarded the strike as hopelessly misguided.

By the autumn of 1984, active unofficial support by other union members – eg T&GW and the NUR – had dwindled to nothing. The strike wasn’t about subsidising mining – the Coal Board was already heavily subsidised before the strike and coal output had been piling up at power stations because current production was well in excess of demand. So much coal had been stockpiled prior to the strike that it was challenging to find new places to safely stock new production. The miners in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire pits did ballot and didn’t strike.

See, too, this news report in The Economist of May 27, 1978 (p.21-23) on the prescient Ridley Report to the Conservative Party on policy for the party in government for the future of the nationalised industries, including (explicitly) coal:
http://www.co-opnet.coop/viewtopic.php?t=367&highlight=ridley+report

The Ridley Report of 1978 anticipated the likelihood of a mining strike during a future Conservative government and proposed contingency plans.

Ed Miliband represents a Doncaster constituency where many ex-miners are resident.

7. Chaise Guevara

@ 5 Richard W

” However, coal mining does provide an interesting contrast between the old industrial left and the modern herbal tea left. ”

Despite being a leftie, I am neither an industrialist nor a fan of herbal tea. I guess I must be some kind of maverick.

8. Peter Wild

Damn those militant miners, all three of them. They shouldn’t be agitating for equality and all that guff, they should be helping me not fill in my expenses forms!!

9. David Lindsay

A firsthand account of one of the most remarkable days in recent British political history – http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/big-meeting-and-big-tent.html

10. T. Hill

One would think that Baroness Warsi would keep a low profile after her cheating over her expenses and getting away with it. Most of us who do not have MP following our name would have been jailed for fraud if they did what she did. I would not deem her very wise to make such silly statements when she has just cheated the tax payers out of yet more money fraudulently. I don’t know what kind of P.M. Ed. Miliband would make, but I am sure he could not do any worse than David Cameron or George Osborne. Ed. Miliband would be more assured of my vote if he showed himself more in support of the masses and moved a little bit closer to the left. Unfortunately he has probably destroyed his chances of getting a majority in the next general election by taking on Tony Blair into the fold, I am surprised that he has not realised how much the nation turned against Blair when he took the country to war unnecessarily. The only party I can see that is more “Labour” than Labour is Nigel Farage, UKip party.

11. Bob B

Try this quote from a news report on the BBC website in December 1997 (sic):

A council at the centre of a police fraud inquiry has been criticised in an independent report for blatant junketing which cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/40990.stm


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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    “@MichaelDugherMP: RT @libcon: Miliband smacks down Warsi over Miners Gala http://t.co/y80J3uz8” very good Ed

  23. A K M Adam

    Does strike one as unseemly for a Baroness to talk trash about the politics of a body of working & unemployed laborers— http://t.co/41GA5TYz

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    “@libcon: Miliband smacks down Warsi over Miners Gala http://t.co/xHAgZNI1” – we shld be proud of the Gala and celebrate community surely!

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  32. Kate Osamor

    Miliband deals with Warsi derogatory comments. http://t.co/gQ8DuIeG

  33. Kate Osamor

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  56. Shifting Grounds

    How to engage with working class communities (Ed M), and how to engage in petty politics (S Warsi), from @sunny_hundal http://t.co/CbLLMkXX

  57. Alon Or-bach

    How to engage with working class communities (Ed M), and how to engage in petty politics (S Warsi), from @sunny_hundal http://t.co/CbLLMkXX

  58. Lee Hyde

    #Miliband smacks down #Warsi over miners gala. http://t.co/2zUhAW0R /by @sunny_hundal via @libcon ft @Ed_Miliband @SayedaWarsi

  59. Jon Chambers

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    How to engage with working class communities (Ed M), and how to engage in petty politics (S Warsi), from @sunny_hundal http://t.co/CbLLMkXX

  61. Daniel Jenkins

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  75. Robert Peaty

    Take that Warsi :P http://t.co/pecg9Vjr

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    Take that Warsi :P http://t.co/pecg9Vjr

  77. Anne Baldwin

    “@RobertPeaty: Take that Warsi :P http://t.co/HCgmA0dt” Of course Warsi won't have to travel far to see the impact her party had on miners.

  78. Robert CP

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  79. Jaikiranmaram

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  80. Damian

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  85. Rachael Chrisp

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  86. Will Lord

    Good stuff. Miliband smacks down Warsi's crass comments on his attendance at the Durham Miners Gala: http://t.co/I6BrVlBh #toryamateurhour

  87. Mark Carrigan

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  90. Col_Bogeys_Batman

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  91. Ann Lawson

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