I'm losing track of this...

I'm still a member of the union I joined almost 50 years ago. In the earlier times I got in trouble with the Gen Sec (Fred Jarvis) for trying to organise unofficial strikes. I got two very threatening letters from him in the mid-70s. My best union mate was Blair Peach, but his murder in 1979 knocked the stuffing out of me and I just stayed active but not an activist. He was a member of the SWP in the days when they were a real revolution party, but I didn't hold with that and I didn't join. He was the nicest, kindest and gentlest man you could wish to meet, but he was the very divil in union meetings and he never let go of his socialist principles, living his life as you'd fully expect a true socialist to live. He was also a superb teacher of children with special needs. I've always been far to the left of the union establishment but I'll die a member. I had to bite my lip when it came to my fellow teachers joining more docile and right-wing unions, but I could scarcely tolerate working with people who refused to join a union at all, and they knew it. The union movement allowed Thatcher to demolish what I saw as real trade unionism, and my view has always been that the working class in this country has been treated much the worse in consequence. We've ended up with what weasel Tories call "the flexible labour market": temporary, part-time, seasonal, sack-you-at-will, zero-hours, fake apprenticeships, rock-bottom pay, gangmasters...

I joined Labour when Corbyn was elected. He is of the left, he is unspun and he is a man of principle. After the 2017 election, in which he did incredibly well, he was perceived by the Tory populist right as a threat. So, for the next couple of years, he was unscrupulously targeted big-time, both from within his own party (all those disaffected Blairites and Brownites, not to speak of that disreputable bunch of sour-faced, lying antisemitism-accusers) and without, the Board Of Deputies (who no-one ever voted for) and the scumbags of the tabloids. Why, the actual Tory Party hardly had to do a thing. You guys who keep bleating on that Jeremy was "unelectable" always fail to qualify that by admitting that even the Angel bloody Gabriel would have been "unelectable" in the face of that onslaught. The campaign against him was unscrupulous and concerted, positively conspiratorial, and predicated on lies. I'm staying in the party, though I'm rock-solid certain that Starmer is a born follower, a born caver-in and a born loser. That's just me. Thanks for reading.