Marxist. Trade Unionist. Socialist-feminist. Author. Poet. Speaker. Tutor. RMT ex-Exec. Workers' Liberty. Autie. Bi. PUFC fan.
From the disastrous 2015 election - where the Conservative Party won an outright majority, defying expectations, Labour failed to mobilise support due to its timidity and the taint of Blairism and was wiped out by nationalists in Scotland, the anti-immigration UKIP boosted its vote although won only one seat, and a fair few "left" votes went to the Green Party, which also won a single seat - through the 2017 and 2019 elections, with more to come!
Isn't this a heartland too?
We have poundshops, pawnshops, boarded-up shops
and industries replaced by social services
We too have schools with leaking roofs
and youth in gigs and gangs and anguish
Isn't this a heartland too?
We have hearts and we have lands
Hearts that beat on rundown streets
and lands blemished with landfill
and corporate-municipal scandal
I contemplated emigrating
or moving out of town
I'd spend my weekends walking dogs
my weekdays knuckling down
My grandmother was Scottish and
my great-grandma a Jew
And while some borders still stay down
perhaps they'll let me through
Or I could hump my tucker bag
and pitch up in Australia
(Though on that points-based entry test
I'd probably score a failure)
At RMT’s Annual General Meeting in June 2015, I proposed an emergency motion for the union to back Jeremy Corbyn, then an outsider in the Labour Party’s leadership election. These are the notes of my speech.
He snarls, he gnarls
Perhaps he'll bite
His skin is thin
At least it's white
He's aggressive, recessive, possessive, regressive
And really, not all that impressive
His director's description may sound ugly
But it fits his politics rather snugly
Though I see the appeal to the floaters
I have thought through just what it all means
And I won't join their surge or their voters
Although some of my best friends are Greens
No moaning from Blair's bottom-feeders
That the Green Party's lit people's flame
The class traitors among Labour's leaders
Have only their own selves to blame
This article was published in Solidarity 360.
By Janine Booth, co-Chair, TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee (personal capacity)
Venue: Student Central, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY View Map
Chair Sean McGovern. Speakers Include John McDonnell, Marsha de Cordova, Francesca Martinez, Micheline Mason, Barbara Lisicki, Richard Rieser, Janine Booth, Kirsten Hearn and others to be confirmed.
If you don't want a Blairite bottom-feeder
If you want to fight cuts not give in to greed or
Tack your policies to a Daily Mail reader
If you want to back a winner and not a conceder
Vote Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader!
A sonnet written on the occasion of Lord Alan Sugar's resignation form the Labour Party:
So who invited that spiv to the party?
No, we don't want his cut-throat sort round here
His anti-social manners are so nasty
He's nicking all the food and selling beer
He's telling all my mates that they are fired
And acting like he bloody owns the place
His snotty, bossy, snobbery is tired
I'm losing friends who hate this public face
He came in with another party crasher
And now he's gone but not cleared up his rubble
He's got a better offer - somewhere flasher?
And now we're spared the need to take the trouble
- To turf Lord Cuckoo out of Labour's nest
- Which leaves the task of turfing out the rest
Written on the day that the Conservatives won the 2015 UK General Election:
A search for silver lining
Is a needle-haystack quest
Fear grows and hope declining
Greed wins and stuff the rest
McVey and Farage splendid fall
But barely dulls the pain
The silverest lining of them all:
We live to fight again