Nick Cohen and Johann Hari...

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Cohen's book What's Left?

Good book Spats like these are important if you want to dave an ideology from feckless windbags.

[afleitch]

(plug) Read 'After Blair' by Kieron O'Hara if you can! (/plug)

[afleitch]

However, sometimes I worry that you actually believe that someone from a middle-class background cannot be left-wing, and almost imply that you'd rather they be on the right..

I wouldn't say he does. Besides, some of Labour's greatest have came from middle class backgrounds. Michael Foot's father was a solicitor, he went to an independent school and was president of the Oxford Union. A similar path followed by many prominent politicians of all parties. I don't think anyone would, even without realising, wish to detract from great politicians simply because they didn't have the 'right' start in life.

As someone who went through the private school system at great financial burden to my parents (And, trying to refrain from violin music, were from working class ex mining stock who are now are pretty comfortable because of the opportunities they created for themselves) I was treated pretty nastily, in retrospect by some my working class (and yes adult) neighbours and friends and then embarassed by some of the 'monied' pupils at school. I was never quite comfortable in ether setting and I've always been irked by the use of class to deny or to grant access to anything. A narrowminded and misplaced 'working class pride' can be as damaging and as limiting as middle class elitism.

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I should add that what I hate above all is the tendency of many of these self-declared "leftists" to happily defend, and even glorify, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. In my view that's more of a betrayal of what the Left is/should be about than voting Tory.

Luckily it's the same circles and can be contained. The SWP mob and some left wing Labourites were positively extatic at the fall of the Shah in Iran. For me thats an historical lesson. What they failed to grasp is that the new Iran had no time for anyone but themselves and certainly not socialism and began the most hideous opression. Likewise the tendency of trade union international solidaity appears to have been lost on Israel and even the striking bus drivers in Iraq a while back were met with a wall of silence from many of the usual suspects.

However it is permeating leftist thought (as any trawl through the soundbite politics section of Waterstones will depressingly tell you) alongside possible (as it is too early to say and too difficult to confirm other than anecdotely) latent anti-semitism. I could also move into a stream of epitephs about the willing sub-ordination of some to illiberal clerical fascism reminiscent of the Iran situation but that would probably bore even me

[afleitch]

I wouldn't say he does. Besides, some of Labour's greatest have came from middle class backgrounds. Michael Foot's father was a solicitor, he went to an independent school and was president of the Oxford Union.

Foot's father (Isaac) was also a Liberal M.P. Attlee and Gaitskell came from similer backgrounds, while Stafford Cripps and the Benn's were richer still.
Even Harold Wilson wasn't working class; his background was almost stereotypical West Riding lower middle class (and later on he lived for years in Hampstead Garden Suburb).

Not to mention Smith, Dewar and to a lesser extent Irvine. They seemed to 'reinforce' each other while at Glasgow and forged quite poignant friendships with Edinburgh Tory 'contemporaries' like Rifkind (who came later) and Douglas-Hamilton. IIRC Menzies Campbell was at Glasgow the same time as Dewar and Smith. Sadly its an old art