Looking Back at Blaenau Gwent

Rather like watching a documentary on dinosaurs, two lumbering beasts clashed horns. One was the Labour Party, moribund from years of being unchallenged at a local level. The other was the Labour Party, shorn of all the values and ideals that made it what it was, with a bright shiny new leader determined to remould it to reflect the moral values of the new age ... or in other words, Thatcherism.

In most places the fight was over before it had begun. Labour's new values prevailed; for in order to become electable, the Labour Party had no choice but to adopt the values of middle England, and Labour MPs either changed their values to suit or were replaced by candidates with those new values. But in some remote valleys where Labour votes were weighed rather than counted, the hierarchy of the old beasts still held sway. Peter Law would not stand aside in favour of a candidate parachuted in from middle England. He stood as an independent, won, and Peoples Voice was born.

In terms of policies and ideas, People's Voice didn't have many. Those who were elected—Peter and then Trish Law, and Dai Davies—were probably just "more Labour than Labour" and were elected more for their hearts being in the right place than for having any distinctive policy platform. For me, the one good idea that stood out was a proposal to make public transport free ... it was lifted from the Scottish Socialist Party, but no less good an idea for that.

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Meanwhile the bright shiny Labour Party simply carried on regardless; even though the shiny bits got tarnished and rusty, some bits fell off and had to be replaced, and the well oiled machine ended up looking like a collection of spare parts with only a trace of anything human remaining. How could one AM or one MP hold out for long? They didn't, and on Thursday next week the assimilation of Blaenau Gwent into the collective will finally be complete. Resistance was futile.

     

Apparently Labour are going to change things in Blaenau Gwent so that any future displays of independent thinking will be crushed before they get a chance to develop. They've started with the name; it is now going to be known as the Blaenau Organized Regime, Gwent. They strongly deny that the BORG will become one of the greatest threats mankind will ever face.