I'm quite scared about a new Tory government
11 May 2010
I'm not hugely political but I am genuinely scared now at the prospect of a Conservative government. I don’t, like many people, hate conservative voters (that would mean hating nearly half the country) but I am aware of what the party can do to a country. I was born and brought up in South Wales, in the eighties, and though I didn't know what was happening at the time because I was too busy watching Ghostbusters and Gremlins and Goonies I remember very well the mining strikes and subsequent obliteration of the area that has occurred throughout my life. Even though I live nearer Cardiff than the Rhondda valleys, the effects are easy to see.
People vote Tory because they believe that they should be rewarded for working hard, and I totally agree with this, but they see a Labour government as a way for people to sponge off the state, and this is not true. It’s hard for people not from an area that’s had its heart ripped out to understand quite how people feel here. So-called benefit scroungers operate on the exact same level as a well to do person from Surrey because we are all human beings, we’re all of the same species – the only difference is in the circumstances. Reverse the circumstances and you would reverse the situation. Take hope away from a rich area now, give it a couple of generations to simmer, and you will see what happens.
The last Tory government really did ruin a lot of areas, heartlessly, and these places have never recovered. People do rely on the state now, and they do have children because it means they get a bigger house or a new car (I’ve overheard such depressing conversations in the pub), and whilst it is very easy to be angry at this, if you dig a little deeper you’ll find a heart-breaking cycle that was born from the decimation of community and work.
Young people living in the sink estates of the Rhondda valleys have been brought up in an area without hope and without a lifeline. Their parents were thrown out of work and were unable to find new work because there was none and so their industriousness faded and their hope dwindled and down they swirled to where we are now with high crime rates, high unemployment and a nation’s blame barking at their doors. But this situation was created in the stale vacuum that happened when the rich upped sticks and left. The mining areas and the people who worked there were the engine that built the world and this is the reward they get.
It is very narrow-sighted to blame the effected people for society’s ills, though this is what happens, and the proof comes from the fact that David Cameron has won so many voters. Just writing this makes me feel patronizing but I feel so strongly that given a fair crack at the whip anyone can do anything that I’m going to carry on. I understand that this will come across as hopelessly naïve but it is still what I think. The problem is that people from depressed areas don’t have that fair crack and they won’t get it under a Conservative government. If Britain is Broken then we must all share the blame because we are all part of the same system, and everybody deserves the same chances.
You can’t say to people who have spent a lifetime in poverty to buck up their ideas, get a grip, you can do whatever you want if you weren’t so lazy. That’s not how it works. This is a mindset generations in the making. That’s like me saying to you that you can jump off a building and fly.
I don’t for a second think that David Cameron would act in the same way that Margaret Thatcher did - I do assume him to be more compassionate - but it will remain true that a Tory government will not offer support to people who really, desperately need it and the reason for this is that it doesn’t make good business sense. Everyone knows that the mines would ultimately have been forced out of business but the way it happened was like it was being done by a robot. There was no humanity, and nothing to take the place of the mines.
My great grandfather was a coal-miner, and his friends trusted him so much that they appointed him to be the check-weigher, the man who would supervise the weighing of the coal with the coal board to ensure the executives weren’t ripping off the miners. He saved a penny of everyone’s wages every week and built a library in a town called Trehafod. We still have the ornamental key to it in our family. That building, once filled with books, a place for the community to enjoy, is now derelict and will probably be razed and this is a metaphor for what has happened to South Wales – a once great entity has atrophied. The last time a Tory government came round the soul was stolen from good, honest areas and now it seems to me that they might come back to finish the job.
I’m sorry for a rather long blog but I wanted to write something.
1 comment
Written by Jon Unger on 11 May 2010 at 15:21:00
I share your fears. If the Tory's jump in and cut 6 billion pounds (a staggering amount of money) from public spending, how many jobs will be lost? Not to mention valuable community services. The increase between have's and have not's will only be increased, as those who can afford it will pay for education and health services and those who can't afford it will suffer.
It's not surprising that Australia has been overwhelmed with immigration applications!