Wednesday 9th February 2011

I have just finished reading the Melvyn Bragg trilogy about Wigton which follows Joe Richardson through the post war years to Oxford. It is a powerful and compelling story. Describing, in a deeply affecting way, the changes that have taken place since, the Soldiers Return. For me the story's success was in the way it reminded me as a reader of my own childhood and progress from working class roots through academia to life in the vicarage.

It was almost impossible to imagine as a child or teenager growing up in Manchester in the 1950's that in 2011 we might have such dynamic and interactive communication as facebook or twitter. Online communities extend the sense of what friendship might be and what potential there is for change.

I first encountered the concept of the internet at a conference in Mexico. I had never heard of a 'Home Page' until I saw an example projected onto a screen. The notion that you as an individual, your local community group or church could have an online presence with a Home Page, which would be the same, in effect, as The White House or The Disney Corporation was radical and potentially revolutionary.

Recent events in Tunisia and in Egypt have been credited to facebooks' power to energise an online community into taking action. It would seem that the vision shared at that conference of a levelling out of the playing field between Government's, Corporations and individuals might be possible.

That popular change might even be managed here in the UK would have seemed unlikely but recently posts on facebook and twitter, now determined to be in the public rather than private domain, have shifted from the Lol variety, toward some serious concerns being raised about the speed and direction of the social change being initiated and driven forward urgently and some would say recklessly, whilst others would
say ideologically, by this Tory led government.

It is deeply depressing to read about the whole sale dismantling of institutions and traditions that have been part and parcel of our social fabric in post-war Britain. The most recent announcement regarding abolishing the May Day holiday is a case in part. It is small minded, mean spirited, and clearly aimed at removing a holiday that is viewed as left wing.

Much worse is proposed and the recent posts have highlighted examples such as the changes to the tax regimes affecting off shore companies.

Essentially the false narrative propounded by the government regarding responsibility for the financial disasters of 2009 needs now to be consistently challenged and a new narrative rehearsed to reposition Labour as the party of fairness and justice.