[ssf] Blair's pledges

[Dan]

Labour reveals election pledges

The pledges so far:

1. Your family better off
2. Your family treated better and faster
3. Your child achieving more
4. Your country's borders protected
5. Your community safer

Wow.  Couldn't get very much more individualistic than that, huh?  Let's 
compare that to:

"I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom 
compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers 
were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember 
when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing 
trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were 
free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable 
diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was 
blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact 
freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor."

[Clement Attlee, election broadcast 1945.] (And of course all of these 
things still go on - but apparently, none of these issues are vote-winners!)

"This generation has grown up ignorant of the fact that socialism is as 
old as the human race. When civilization dawned upon the world, 
primitive man was living his rude Communistic life, sharing all things 
in common with every member of the tribe. Later when the race lived in 
villages, man, the communist, moved about among the communal flocks and 
herds on communal land. The peoples who have carved their names most 
deeply on the tables of human story all set out on their conquering 
career as communists, and their downward path begins with the day when 
they finally turned away from it and began to gather personal 
possessions. When the old civilizations were putrefying, the still small 
voice of Jesus the Communist stole over the earth like a soft refreshing 
breeze carrying healing wherever it went."

[Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism 1907]


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