Labour's historical betrayal cannot be won back

‘Traditional voters, who perhaps at times we took for granted but had nowhere else to go, are now being offered an alternative by Ukip.

‘Our voters, if I can still call them that, see Ukip [as] a party who are offering a vision and a hope that things can be better.'

Rachel Reeves

RACHEL REEVES, like her professional colleagues, understands little of what is happening with Labour's traditional working class supporters; although she is right when she said we ignored them 'because they had nowhere else to go'. This is a true statement reflecting the arrogance and contempt shown by the Labour Party from Blair onwards, toward the very people who made the Labour Party, and whose union subscription helped keep it solvent.

            

            The Labour Party began encouraging a new voting base - migrants. The white working class saw what was happening, but the party made them fearful of speaking their minds on immigration. They had bigoted sword of racism floating over their heads ready to dropped the rules of political correctness were broken. Which effectively meant keeping their collective mouths zipped. These were not racists; for if they had been, they would have had an alternative to Labour before the arrival of Ukip on the scene - the BNP.

            

             Blair and Brown knew that immigrants would be thankful to any party that allowed them in and would remain loyal to them as they were making their way into British society. Today in many northern cities the migrant population is demographically changing the face of cities like Bradford, and more importantly London in the south. The white working class were, before the arrival of Ukip on the political stage, more or less told to like it or lump it.

            

             Then Tony Blair allowed hundreds of thousands of Poles, and Portuguese in from Eastern Europe at a time when the Schengen Agreement  (allowing for the free movement of people within Europe) set aside a seven year period of adjustment for European nations to prepare. Blair ignored this clause in the agreement and set about opening our boarders to all and sundry throughout Europe; while expressing the belief that only 13,000 would take advantage. Blair only thought of the electoral advantages…and, as a politician, he was not an original in this respect.

            

             But he saw only the political advantages to the Labour Party, and not the disadvantages to the social infrastructure - to the NHS, criminality, education, and housing shortages. All these areas are now being squeezed by an increase in the country's population artificially created by Labour politicians who silenced with charges of racism anyone who opposed them. So it is somewhat sanctimonious of Rachel Reeves to bleat on about the party 'losing its raison d'etre'
           
            The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary cannot seek to regain the trust of its traditional working class base. She and the Labour Party have sat back with arms folded, believing that Ukip was damaging the Tory Party and believing that the white working class were nothing more than a troop of trained chimpanzees wearing red rosettes; and it was only within the emotional captivity of the Labour Party that they could have any political purpose.
 
I DESPISE THE Labour Party for what they have done to this country. I am from a working class background. I failed my 11-plus and left school at fifteen; and from the age of eighteen in 1968, I have always voted Labour. Even for a brief period in the 1970s when I joined the British Communist Party…and what a mistake that was.                         
             
              So when I say I despise the Labour Party. I am not speaking as one of its political enemies, but as one of its one-time supporters who in 1997 sat up all night to see Michael Portillo loose his parliamentary seat.            

               I supported Blair throughout his premiership from 1997 until the mentally unstable Brown helped remove him from office in 2007. So I cannot, with my background, be considered a Tory. I voted Ukip and will continue to do so, partly, because the white working class were abandoned by Labour and there is no chance of Labour winning them back and Rachel Reeves must understand this.  

               The white working class have always been small 'c' conservatives. A state of affairs those on the Left of the Labour Party always sought to change. But it this intransigent small 'c' conservative nature of the white working class that has appealed to them in supporting Ukip. Such intransigence has been there for centuries and long may it continue.