George Galloway (not technically Labour but of that tribal background):
For a certain class of Englishman every Catholic is a Mick and every working-class Scot is from the Gorbals.George Foulkes has made similar claims.
So allow me to clear something up for insular West of Scotland Labourites.
Almost no one outside of Glasgow, Belfast & Possibly Liverpool* could care less about the religious background of Michael Martin. If the Conservative Party can elect catholic leaders like Iain Duncan Smith and catholics like Ann Widdecombe are being touted for the speaker's chair then where exactly is this concentration of sectarian bias?
The criticism of Michael Martin has no more because he is Catholic than criticism of Gordon Brown is because he is Presbyterian.
* There isn't much current evidence for a sectarian divide in Liverpool as far as I know, but there did used to be, see the history of the Liverpool Protestant Party for example.
16 comments:
Nah, it's because he's an overweight, working class Scots git.
"Almost no one outside of Glasgow, Belfast & Possibly Liverpool* could care less about the religious background of Michael Martin."
Until I read this post, I didn't even know he was a Catholic!
Speaking as a Roman Catholic it's because he's a fat, incompetent, trough snouting inverted snob.
And crap at the job!
Perhaps you're a self hating catholic Gregg.
"Until I read this post, I didn't even know he was a Catholic!"I've only ever heard people mention it the context of "first catholic since the reformation" and charges of sectarianism.
As a child in South-east Scotland - many miles from Glasgow - I witnessed regular playground battles between rival supporters of Celtic and Rangers.
The hard-line Protestant Rangers supporters refused to join the green-uniformed cubs; they went to the Boys' Brigade, leaving the frustrated Akelas with a handful of Catholics (and a few baffled incomers whose mothers made them join).
It seems bizarre looking back on it now, but it was an accepted fact of my childhood and that of many other Scots.
Actually, I think his class background counted for him rather than against him, given the time & context of his ascendancy.
There were too many like him in the 70s- but now, I think the pendulum has swung too far in favour of wonks who have never done any real work & are subservient.
We should have more working-class MPs. They offer a perspective which the careerists in New Labour can't. The Tories have businessmen & managers in their ranks, rightly so, but there should be a counterweight of people who've been on the other side, having done a rank & file job & balanced a slender budget just as their adversaries have totalled up a firm's balance sheet.
It is a bit worrying that, by definition, a working-class person would take a massive pay rise to become an MP & might understandably be tempted. Many go native within days.
But it is my view that discussions on welfare reform & taxation would be enriched by the presence of folk who have been unemployed & done a low-paid job.
The problem is that with the demise of the unions & the rise of graduate tossers into management, those who start at the bottom are now likely to stay there. But the Tories insist on private-sector experience for their candidates, we might just be better off if some of the same happened on the left.
PS-
Yes, I am aware this will be a hard task to actually achieve in the real world. Just saying that, in the drive against the likes of Scargill (to whom I am certainly no friend, as if that weren't obvious), something was lost.
Got a bit depressed while typing this out actually- sense of futility descending as I considered that the PPE brigade are likely to stay dominant for some time to come...
Shite like the 10p debacle & the tax credits fiasco would have been avoided if someone had known what effects it would cause... maybe.
The two problems are:
1. Many of the ones who get in are, in fact, not very good, & that may be as a result of a process which selects only tossers.
2. It's hard to see how someone from the rank & file could get into a leadership position these days without setting up on his own, as traditional avenues up into management or through unions have been closed.
Yes- I suppose I am just having a vague moan.
"... outside of Glasgow, Belfast & Possibly Liverpool ..."
Manchester is not without its history of Catholic v. Protestant sectarianism either. We just get on with hating each other in our dour Northern way and don't make such a bloody fuss about it. Mind you, I still can't bring myself to support Manchester United even after all these years, the left-footed bastards.
"2. It's hard to see how someone from the rank & file could get into a leadership position these days without setting up on his own, as traditional avenues up into management or through unions have been closed.".
That is probably one of the explanations behind declining social mobility.
Dead right, but an awful lot of us cannot forgive him for being a teetotaller.
Asquith's comments about the social composition of the House and the selection processes are spot on.
"It's hard to see how someone from the rank & file could get into a leadership position these days without setting up on his own, as traditional avenues up into management or through unions have been closed."
Mr. Cameron [mirabile dictu!] is opening up the Tory party candidates' list, and if it works, it may allow someone with Real World experience into the Commons.
One can only hope so, as I do.
Mind you, I did rather adore George Galloway's lousily-worded bit:
"...the first manual worker to sit in that ancient seat and the first Catholic since Cromwell to surmount the still considerable prejudice."
I'm sure that the Guardian's shareholders are delighted that such erudition and unambiguous prose is being published at their expense.
Correction: at the expense of every local education authority's council tax payers, who fund the advertisments that keep the Grauniad alive.
Yes, the background-obsessed shoulder-chip-nurturing Glaswegians (by no means all Glaswegians, I should say) are utterly unable to understand that their petty obsessions aren't shared by everyone else. Back around that "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" nonsense, one of them suggested to me that the English hate the French out of resentment over the "Auld Alliance" between Scotland and France. I had to explain to him that the only English people even aware that such an alliance existed were the ones living in Glasgow listening to his crap.
It's far worse in Western Scotland than Northern Ireland, by the way.
"Mr. Cameron [mirabile dictu!] is opening up the Tory party candidates' list, and if it works, it may allow someone with Real World experience into the Commons.".
I'm not sure how it can possibly work in practice though. You'll end up with people of unsure convictions.
"It's far worse in Western Scotland than Northern Ireland, by the way.".
That surprises me.
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