SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
By Oliver Boyle
My hometown of Leicester ‘clothed the world’ in the 19th and 20th centuries; the Grand Union Canal and the Midland Main Line train tracks cradled a bustling city which in the 1930s was labelled the second richest city in Europe, all thanks to it’s innovative and thriving textiles industry, all of which are no more.
This isn’t an alien world I’m talking about; my late grandfather, an aspiring petit bourgeois and entrepreneur, owned and ran factories in which clothes were manufactured. My grandmother spoke with pride at how his apparel, the socks especially, were of such exceptional quality that they would be sold in Selfridges and Next’s across the country – she would often end with a protest at how high they used to mark them up in the shops.
Everywhere in England with a cathedral or Royal Market Charter used to ‘make stuff’.
To my north, Sheffield made steel of greater quality than anywhere else in the world, pioneering developments in crucible and Bessemer. The Chinese, so envious of this, helped to destroy it by dumping cheap steel and undercutting producers. A similar sentiment they have exercised more recently when trying to kill British Steel in Scunthorpe.
West of Leicester, Birmingham made all sorts of jewellery, buttons, pens, buckles, brassware, toys, tools and famously motorbikes and guns at the world famous Birmingham Small Arms factory in Small Heath.
The south was and still is geographically gifted, with a shared Channel with the French and Dutch. Morris Motors in Oxford and Jaguar’s and Rover’s made further a field in the Midlands, would venture down to Southampton and be sold to the continent.
No surprise, the absence of this has had horrible effects on our nation and our economy.
I want Britain to make stuff again.
While I might only be scratching the surface, for the most part the headlines of union strikes, an inflated economy and the ramifications of Brexit, be they good or bad, are more or less a distraction from the two real issues which have not just stifled growth but have destroyed the lives of countless real people. And threw my future into doubt.
We have no energy. We have no appetite.
We could reclaim our energy sovereignty and revitalise industry, somewhat, simply…
Bring energy into public hands; not under ‘stronger public control’, a signature Andy Burnham’ism which means nothing, but a real tangible procurement of our Energy structure.
Re-route funds heading for our government’s environmentally-inconsequential and poverty-inducing Net-Zero initiative, and put them to better use in nuclear generation and drilling.
Ensure energy decision-making works with the national economic considerations with which it is necessarily entwined.
And use common sense from there on…
This is all to mean that we don’t have to subject ourselves to fuel poverty, kill industry and decimate communities all for the sake of signalling our virtues on the world stage which has no real impact on the very real climate emergency facing our country.
Our Net Zero initiatives have not put food on a singular British family’s plate. Our Net Zero Initiatives have not lowered global emissions.
Our Net Zero initiatives have plunged lower and working classes further into poverty. Our Net Zero Initiatives have not spared a single African acre from desertification.
Our liberal establishment have boasted at their drinks parties while funding Putin’s war in Ukraine and subsidising the pensions of Norwegians.
Talking is not good at this point. I want you to send this to your Member of Parliament…
Click the link here to tell your MP to put a stop to this.
