A last eviction, and the sweet smell of success, for Annington, in Sweets Way:

Well, yes: it's all been kicking off, again, today, and yesterday, in Sweets Way. 

Always a sign of significance, when the Guardian turns up, or a film crew, or Russell Brand: the medium is the message, as ever, in Broken Barnet.

It means we are once more, as is so often the case, drawing attention to ourselves, here in this Garden of (outsourced) Eden, our easycouncil borough. 

There is a housing crisis, in this country, in this city, and here in Barnet, of course.

So: of course, here in this most rotten of rotten boroughs, we can provide the perfect examples of Tory housing policy, at its most lunatic extreme: the destruction of desperately needed social housing on public land given away to private developers, for free, to enable access to the optimum margin of profit, in West Hendon; and also now in Sweets Way, the forcible removal of social tenants from an estate due to be so profitably developed by Annington Homes. 

Yesterday the developers sent in bailiffs, the police, and even the fire brigade, in an attempt to 'cleanse' and secure their investment, in Sweets Way. Long term investment in properties once owned by the MoD, but used latterly by the council to house many previously homeless families.

A cheery greeting and a warm welcome was awaiting the bailiffs and their escorts, when they arrived, en masse, and all geared up for a battle:

As you can read here, in the article by the Guardian's Rob Booth, of the 288 new homes planned to be built in Sweets Way, after the demolition of the homes that were already there, only 20% are promised to be 'affordable' - a definition that is in itself of course meaningless, and yet means anyway that 80% of the new houses ...  are not affordable, to the majority of people.

The residents who have been removed, thrown out, evicted from their tenancies, their homes; accommodation that was social housing and a perfectly happy community, here in this estate, will be replaced by rather more privileged owner occupiers - as opposed to the present Occupiers, and housing activists who have moved in over the last few months, and who now are on the rooftops of the few remaining houses in Sweets Way that have not been fenced off, and marked for destruction by Annington.

Mrs Angry first discovered the story of Sweets Way earlier this year, in a chance encounter, in a local courthouse, with two residents fighting evictions. After listening to their terrible story, she encouraged them to contact the main stream media, and publicise their tale - and thankfully what was happening to them, and to all the other other residents, began to reach a wider audience.

In the spring, Russell Brand came along to offer his support, which made the plight of the families in Sweets Way even more newsworthy, for a time at least, co opted, as it then as it was, into the heady cult of celebrity endorsed politics.

Since then, the families of Sweets Way have been slowly extricated from their homes, and consigned to oblivion - with one or two exceptions. 

Barnet Council, which had a duty to rehouse residents, performed this role as one might expect: as they have done in West Hendon: reluctantly, offering a choice, to secure tenants only,  of perhaps some awful relocation to another 'regeneration' estate, in a property barely fit for purpose ... or the option of rejection, and therefore neatly making the resident declare themselves to be homeless. 

The last remaining original resident of Sweets Way, now,  is a disabled man called Mostafa, who uses a wheelchair, but whose accommodation needs, apparently, are a matter of indifference to Barnet Council.

Pic courtesy Sweets Way resists

Mostafa went to court again, yesterday, in order to try to stay the eviction that Annington Homes want to impose, so as to be able, finally, to move into the estate, and demolish all the perfectly suitable housing already there, and replace it with an unnecessary, but more profitable development.

Unfortunately for this last resident - and a large number of occupiers - yesterday was the day when Annington decided to try to reclaim its investment, in Sweets Way, and - armed with bailiffs, and police, and even two fire engines - moved in to the site, in order to secure the houses now emptied of all but one resident ...  and some occupiers.

After a show of strength from the developers, and a court hearing for Mostafa, there appeared to be something of an impasse: when Mrs Angry arrived there late in the afternoon, occupiers were on the roof, but the police presence had just been replaced, to the vast amusement of the roof-bound activists opposite, by a Mr Whippy style ice cream van - while, somewhat inexplicably - the firefighters remained in place. 

Today, no doubt, will see a final attempt to secure the estate by 'Terra Firma', the company run by former Tory leader William Hague's best man, Guy Hands. 

Police had to be bussed in to Sweets Way, yesterday, ironically, even though Whetstone police station is literally yards around the corner from the housing estate. Is - was. Oh: well, because yes, it is now closed, thanks to Tory cuts, boarded up and  - like every other public asset in Broken Barnet that can be turned to profit -  it is up for sale, offering yet another unmissable opportunity for private development.

Balancing rather precariously up on the roof of one of the houses, yesterday afternoon, was the familiar figure of Phoenix, the veteran of many similar events here in Broken Barnet - and elsewhere. 

Do be careful, Phoenix, called Mrs Angry, in mum mode, as he waved cheerily down at her, 

Don't worry, Mrs A, he yelled: I'm used to it ... 

Other friends from Occupy came up and explained what was happening: Mostafa's trip to court was always expected to be unsuccessful, but the story was not over, legally, or otherwise. 

Mrs Angry wondered why on earth Barnet Homes and Annington simply had not done the decent thing, and found accommodation suited to Mostafa's needs, rather than perpetuate the continuation of this stand off. 

But then, she reflected: that was the point: they want to appear tough, and uncompromising: offering a show of strength, so as to deter dependent tenants in the next phases of development in this borough from making similar, determined shows of resistance to the might of our local authority, and other developers set on acquiring other profitable sites here, that offer endless potential for profit - once the current residents are moved on, and preferably out of borough. 

Yes: let's call it what it is, in effect, and by tacit agreement: social cleansing, social engineering, and the facilitation of private profit, at the expense of local residents. Expense quite literally, as in the case of West Hendon, and in terms of the destruction of long established communities, as also in Sweets Way.

Wandering about the site now is a melancholy experience: observing perfectly decent family homes, emptied of their families, displayed behind temporary railings, like one of those zoos abandoned in a war zone, the occupants lost and wandering about a blighted landscape. 

These carcasses of grey brick, standing so forlornly on plots of land still embraced by the circle of trees which were formerly part of Mr Sweet's nursery, were once somebody's home: but the children who used to play here, perhaps attend the school just around the corner, were sent away, and now must take three buses to get to that school, or start another temporary life on another 'regeneration' estate, with no security, no continuity, or sense of being rooted in a community. 

One may assume - perhaps wrongly - that the old trees are subject to a preservation order, and unlike the homes themselves, safe from the hands of the developers. Probably not: the maximisation of profit will not be allow the protection of an awkwardly placed tree, any more than it would the inconvenient obstruction of an estate of social tenants.

A sense of belonging is no longer a right, in Broken Barnet, nor is the right to live in your home, but a privilege afforded to, and by, those who can pay a premium: the first and last tenet of the easycouncil philosophy that is now embedded in our culture - you get what you pay for: healthcare, education: housing.

You may think you have already paid for these things, through your taxes: but if you don't have the means to pay more, and more still - you have no right to protest. 

So keep quiet, and move on, or: here come the bailiffs, to shut you up, and take you away.

One of the occupiers' supporters came up to talk to Mrs Angry: an older man, in dreadlocks, who began to talk about not housing, or protest, or the occupy movement, but religion. He had been, in his younger days, he said, rubbing his beard thoughtfully, a follower of the Guru Maharaj Ji, had a passing knowledge of Kabbalah, but really wanted to speak, rather surprisingly, about ...  St Paul, and his message on redemption. Life, he said, looking around at the occupied site, was about learning, after all, and constantly evolving your opinions. 

Mrs Angry agreed. Only by continually realigning your position, especially here in Broken Barnet, where the ground beneath your feet is constantly shifting, can you find a clear point of view, and attempt to make some sense of the geography that lies before you - and behind you.

The tale of Sweets Way is almost told: the bailiffs are back on site this morning, and arrests have already been made. 

Sooner or later, the site will be emptied, the houses destroyed, and the private development will be built. News just coming from the site says Mostafa has been carried out of his home, with nowhere to go. 

If true, there could hardly be a more shameful end to his story, and the tale of Sweets Way.

But now the story moves on, to another site, and another battle in the war between profit, and need.

No, it's never just a book: a march for Barnet Libraries

A couple of days after the General Election in May there was a march, here in Broken Barnet: a demonstration organised to protest against the planned assault, by the Tory council, on our library service.

The proposed 'options' presented to councillors for consideration, and theoretically to residents for consultation, amount to a virtual act of destruction of a service that was once, before the Tories began their policy of cuts and 'restructuring', one of the best, most cost effective library systems in the country. 

All under the pretext of necessity, of course: another sacrifice on the altar of austerity, a token gesture whose financial significance is of far lesser importance than the act itself, a necessary sacrament of faith in the cult of easycouncil; itself a legacy of Thatcherism, springing up in the very place where Thatcherism came crawling home to die - a place where public service is bad, and private profit good; where the cull in public service provision began long before the myth of austerity was born. 

The savings which our Tory councillors insist must come from our public services - whilst unable to demonstrate any that have resulted as a result of the Capita contracts - and specifically here from the library budget, are devastating in terms of impact, yet minimal in scale in the context of council expenditure: £2.85 million - a sum which pales into total insignificance when measured against, say, the salary costs of the many senior officer posts created to enforce the annexation of our public services by Capita, the massive gainshare payouts given to Capita in excess of the already huge profits they are milking from their contracts with us; or indeed a typical bill for any of the many private consultancies who predate upon the outsourcing of those services.

And of course the library 'review' process has already cost £200,000 - that's one library already lost, then, or several members of staff.

The dissipation of taxpayers' money in this way, and on such indulgences as the pre-election grant of millions of pounds of Highways funding to Tory wards, or the scandalous giveaway of publicly owned land worth millions to private developers, or the curious matter of the £13 million purchase of a waste depot previously sold for £750,000 - these examples of economic decadence are always approved without criticism by our doltish Tory councillors, and money robbed instead from the funding of vital public services.

The latest example of this is the utterly indefensible, but horribly predictable proposal now sneaked out during the summer, to cut funding for meals on wheels: all done we are told, with bare faced insolence, in order to offer more 'choice' and 'independence' to already dependent, vulnerable members of society. In truth this move, for all the terrible distress and confusion it will cause, will return a mere £180,000. It should be noted that the salary of the senior officer responsible for overseeing this shameful proposal is around £162,000. 

A political miscalculation, however, to attack our libraries, here in Broken Barnet. Of all the public services that we have left, the one that is guaranteed, should it be in danger, of driving the middle classes out of their complacency and out into the streets to protest, alongside the usual local activists and campaigners, is a threat to the local library.

And in May, out into the streets came hundreds of residents, following a brass band, walking from library to library to send a message to their Tory councillors that they will not tolerate the attack on this much loved service.

Marching too were local campaigners and Labour members still in shock from that week's election results. Mrs Angry, utterly disillusioned, sickened by the repellant smear tactics of local Tories, and appalled by the factionalism of local Labour members, was one of them: inclined that morning to turn over in bed and stay there, with a pillow over her head, rather than get up and go, but how wrong she was - the march became a focus for the expression of hope in something better, an act of defiance, and a joyous experience.

Something better. Well: it seemed then to me at least that over the course of the next Tory government, things would be so intolerable, that sooner or later, there would be, if not riots on the streets, a momentum of social unrest and demand for a more radical form of political opposition.

But then God created Jeremy Corbyn.

Not the one who has been MP for Islington since the dawn of time, and has a bicycle and a jacket like your grandad's, but the socialist politician who - let me enjoy the moment - has become the leader of the Labour Party.

A socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party. Did you know? 

Of course we didn't know, on Saturday, when we met up at East Finchley library, to begin a march led by local children, a children's crusade in defence of our libraries, but a march about so much more than that. A march about hope: hope for our children's future - and for the future of politics in this borough, and this country.

How fitting, in view of the unfolding events, as we waited breathlessly for the results of the leadership contest, that the first speaker at the event should be the actress Rebecca Front, who of course played the fictional leader of the opposition in 'The Thick of It". As Malcolm Tucker described her character:

You are not a grandee, you are a fucking "blandee". No-one knew what the fuck you stood for. Political fucking mist, no substance, no weight. You've got all the charm of a rotting teddy bear by a graveside ...

As the crowd was joined by more and more people, and the children gathered with their banners and placards, local children's poet Joshua Seigal involved the crowd in the chorus of a poem on the importance of libraries, and reading: 'Just a Book' ...

It's a soldier in a battle

as he launches a grenade

it's a hunter in a forest

as she sharpens up her blade

it's a playmate, it's a bully

it's a policeman, it's a crook

but it's never, no it's never,

no it's never just a book

It's a package of ideas

it's a bucketful of tools

it's a field full of freedom

it's a folder full of rules

it's a fancy flight of fantasy 

so come and have a look - 

see it's never, no it's never,

no it's never just a book

Never just a book: something our Tory friends simply do not understand, or perhaps they understand it all too well - the indefinable, unlimited power of the written word, and the infinite range of possibilities offered by free access to education, and information. Dangerous, empowering, and free: three things that represent a threat to everything theTories stand for, of course, especially here in Broken Barnet.

Apart from the local residents, library supporters and activists who were assembling outside East Finchley library, it was a real honour to have representatives from 'Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' - subjects of the fabulous film 'Pride' - above you can see Jonathan Blake, one of the original members of the campaign, who marched with their banner all the way to North Finchley, in solidarity with library protestors. 

As we walked I chatted to Sarah Sackman, recalling the previous march just after her defeat in the general election, and we debated the significance of what was expected to be the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership vote - from slightly different perspectives. Mrs Angry tried to explain why, at what should be her respectable middle age, she was eschewing the time honoured tradition of becoming more conservatively minded, and inclined towards a more radical political position, at the barricades, slightly to the left of Rosa Luxembourg, Alexandra Kollontai, and possibly Madame Mao, largely in response to her experience of Labour grassroots politics, here in Broken Barnet. 

Always measured and diplomatic, Sarah was more in favour of supporting female politicians like Stella Creasy, and a moderate approach. We agreed to disagree, I think.

As we walked along East End Road, the news broke that Jeremy Corbyn had won. 

Mrs Angry had been talking to Frances Crook, CEO of the Howard League - and local resident - who now pointed out that he had won with more people voting for him than the total membership of the Conservative party. A truly astounding victory, delivering him an unquestionable mandate - and an absolute trouncing of everything the Labour establishment has come to represent: new Labour, Blue Labour, Red Tories - suddenly it didn't matter anymore. 

Hoorah. 

We walked on, back on the same route as the previous march, but in a different landscape.

Waiting at Church End library was a crowd of around 150 people, including, of course, the People's Mayor, Councillor Lord Shepherd:

Also waiting was the London Metropolitan Brass Band - and some particularly welcome guests: representatives of the Durham Miners' Association, including Davey Hopper, the general secretary, who oversees the annual Gala, or Big Meeting - as described in the previous post.

That the march had such support was in no small part due to not only the local campaign organiser Polly Napper, but because of the enormous efforts of the indefatigable local Unison branch secretary John Burgess, who has worked tirelessly over the years for members in Barnet, and is now standing as a very popular candidate for the Unison general secretary post. John's years of battle here, fighting the hollowing out of our local council services, in what is fondly imagined to be the flagship of Tory outsourcing, have made him uniquely qualified to take on such a role, and Mrs Angry sincerely hopes he is elected.

As you will understand from the previous post, to see the Miners' Association banner here, on this day, of all days, was an extraordinary thing. The last time Mrs Angry had seen Davey Hopper, he was on the balcony at the Miners' Gala, waving at the passing line of banners and bands, and then on the dais at the Meeting, introducing speakers like Jeremy Corbyn, and Owen Jones,  but here he was, in Finchley, as he remarked to her, (whilst kindly removing an angry wasp that was entangled in her hair), in Margaret Thatcher's backyard, on the day we elected a socialist leader of the Labour party. 

Mrs Angry could not resist pointing out that he would shortly be passing the local Conservative offices at "Margaret Thatcher House". Mr Hopper became very keen to get going then, and make sure a photograph was taken to record this momentous occasion, which was, after all, a perfect act of synchronicity in the order of time, as it is measured here, in Broken Barnet, and one which could really only take place here, in the most rotten of rotten boroughs, where Thatcher's would be heirs still live in her thrall, the last of their kind, under the protection of Capita, and an assortment of other commercial masters.

We had more speeches, including one from Alan Gibbons, the writer and library campaigner, which Mrs Angry, distracted by banners and wasps, missed, but which he later assured her was the 'usual one', but with value added hope and expectation, on account of the Corbyn coup.

And we were off again, through Finchley Central, the band playing, the banners held high:

The march stopped as planned, to pay its respects to the shrine of Thatcherism. The same spot that was taken over by Occupy, not so long ago, you may recall, but this unlikely pilgrimage, on such a day, really was too surreal for words: here instead is a picture. 

Not only the miners' banner: a triumphant greeting from 'Lesbians and Gays support the Miners',see below, being photographed by Alan Gibbons, 

and below, some footage.

On to North Finchley library, and the end of the march.

Mrs Angry spoke to Jonathan Blake and Nicola Field, from LGSM, whose characters, of course, appear in 'Pride', as they sat down on a bench outside the library, and asked what had persuaded them to join us. One reason was to say thank you to Barnet Unison, and to John Burgess, who had taken the Barnet banner to Pride this year - and been targeted for a vile, homophobic attack, apparently from neo-nazi activists, as a result. But as Jonathan explained, they felt very strongly about the cause: libraries, he said were the lifeblood of education - and Nicola wanted to make the point that the threat to this service was very definitely a LGBT issue, representing the first point of access to information for so many, including young people in the process of recognising their sexual identities. And winning the right to equal marriage is all very well, she said: but the impact of austerity hits the LGBT community just as hard, (if not harder) as any other. 

The lessons of 'Pride', and the spirit of the Gala, the idea of unity, and community, are understood and freely expressed here, in the political activism in this borough. Pride in community, united in opposition to the agenda of war on the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless: and on the public services which were created to support those in need, on a basis of equality, free of cost, as a right, and not a privilege of birth or wealth.

Time then for the Labour party here, and nationally, to stop dithering on the sidelines, and become once more the party that speaks for the people, that is to say these people, fighting for social justice. That process, we must hope, has now begun.

Former shadow Culture secretary Chris Bryant came to Barnet during the election campaign, and had nothing to say to local campaigners that would persuade them Labour, as it was then, intended to act in any way differently to the Tory agenda for libraries - supporting so called community ventures, staffed by volunteers who effectively are facilitating the de-professionalisation of libraries; and refusing to ringfence funding for the public library system, despite all arguments for the retention of this vital service: in short obediently repeating the Tory line that cuts to libraries are inevitable, and closures must continue.

At the time, Mrs Angry pointed out to Chris Bryant that Labour was missing the opportunity to profit from the huge opposition to library cuts from the public, and simply not listening to the message such resentment was sending. Of course, although he did reply, he too clearly was not listening, either, and look: Labour lost the election, Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the party, and Mr Bryant is no longer shadow Culture secretary. 

Let's see what the new boy, Michael Dugher, has to say, shall we? 

In the meanwhile, back here in Broken Barnet, the meeting that was due to take place this month, to 'discuss' the future of our library service, has been quietly postponed and moved to October 12th. As Barbara Jacobson suggested in her speech on Saturday, this is very interesting and possibly highly significant. Why the delay? Is it true that Tory councillors are unable to agree their position? We know that since the cuts have been announced, each Tory member, mindful of the fury from local voters, has been frantically lobbying behind the scenes, trying to save their own branch from the cull.

On the other hand, it maybe that the decision has already been made, as arrangements have been made to close libraries for a couple of hours one day next month, when staff will be summoned to council offices at North London Business Park, and told their fate. 

Libraries may close, or shrink in size, or see their hours slashed: they may decide to outsource the service to the private sector, or other venture - what is also possible is that buildings that are still nominally libraries will be retained, but become something other, not a service, a travesty of what is meant by a public library: staff may well lose their jobs and be replaced by the ludicrous system of 'open libraries' - rooms with a few shelves of books, and no librarians, or even assistants, to help you. 

A pilot scheme has already been tried, with  Reuben Thompstone,  the Tory councillor responsible for libraries, and the man who has already tried to cut the funding of respite care for disabled children, shortly after the Tories announced a pre election gesture of a 23 pence a week cut in council tax, primed and ready to sell any desperate decision that our elected representatives agree, no matter how apocalyptic in scale. 

If you live in Broken Barnet, and you love your local library, then: be afraid. Be very afraid. And angry: and now is the time to tell your Tory councillors, loud and clear, how you feel.

But it is not only we who should fear for the future. The strength of feeling on the library issue is part of the rebellion amongst the nation as a whole against a system of politics that puts profit before people, and has necessarily excluded all commitment to the ethos of public service. The resurgence of the Labour movement is real, and coming to a town hall near you, here in Broken Barnet, we can only hope, sometime soon. 

Saturday's event reminded us of the importance of the symbolism of the past, the reference to our common history, and bonds forged in hardship, injustice and inequality, then and now. 

From the past to the future then, with hope, and at last, a real chance to change the way we live, and the society we want to become.

Follow my leader: voting for Jeremy Corbyn, and for a better future for the Labour party

The five years or so since beginning this blog have been tumultuous, for Mrs Angry, in many ways, and yes, she is trying very hard to not to tell you she has been on something of a - God help us all - a journey: of sorts. 

Of  many sorts, in many different ways: but a process in which the old certainties of life have been exchanged for ... something else. 

One of those certainties, which have changed so dramatically, rather surprisingly, is the political landscape, a painted backdrop to the drama of all of our lives which has, incrementally, over these last few years, begun to look more and more tawdry, and out of place.

As we reach respectable middle age, of course, we are commonly expected to become more settled in our ways, more sure of our opinions: complacent, settled - accommodated in our positions, safely rooted in our carefully arranged lives, our homes, our families, our beliefs and preconceptions.

If there is any point to the travails we experiences, however, it surely must be not to remain rooted in complacency, and a fixed view of the world, but to learn from the troubles we endure, and adapt, accordingly. 

So it is, then, that as it is for all of us as individuals, in politics, in the Labour movement, we find ourselves at a moment of intense significance for all of us, and poised to make a decision that is so much more than the election of a new leader. 

Much more: we find ourselves, almost by accident, at last confronting the unacknowledged faultline that runs throught the party, a vulnerability which has exposed us to electoral failure, and threatens to continue to make us unelectable for the foreseeable future, unless we address the issues now tearing us apart.

But let us pause here, and indulge Mrs Angry in a moment of personal reflection.

Let's go back to earlier this summer, and a visit to what still feels like more of a home than the sanitised suburban home of my own North London childhood: to the home of my mother, and my grandparents, and aunts, and cousins, back in Durham.

Well, I've written about all this before: the history of our family, from the now incomprehensible degree of poverty of the 1930s, in the Durham coalfield, the trauma of loss, and hardship, of class limiting barriers to what we must now call 'aspiration' - the desire for a better life: not in terms of the new definition, in which we are encouraged to envy the material success of a consumerist lifestyle, but a rather more fundamental aspiration - to stay alive, and attain a decent standard of living, supported by equal access to education, healthcare, and support in times of need. 

The history of my family is probably the history of yours, too: the movement through generations of time from poverty to something better, only to find, despite everything we fought for, the risk of being returned to the bondage of poverty, dependence, and lack of freedom to choose the life we want.

In my family, the release from these limitations, these barriers, came only after the struggles of organised union resistance, and then the achievements of a postwar Labour government: the Welfare State, the NHS, access to education: social mobility, and a movement to what my mother and her sisters saw as a better life: a middle class, suburban life, respectable at last -but at a price, the cost of isolation from the sense of community they depended upon, in their younger days. 

Marriage, to my mother, and her sisters, and perhaps many other women of the time, presented a chance for social mobility: she chose a man with a job in the City, his own house, and car, holidays abroad: and adapted herself to her new life, stifling her Durham accent, and remodelling her carefree, pre-married self to the role of an obedient housewife.

My mother's emotional disconnection is traceable, I realise now, back to that fractured sense of belonging: of moving from the vibrant, Catholic working class background of her own family to the  southern, C of E, property owning, Conservative voting, semi-detached, nuclear family of the post war era.

She hated it, this sterile, anodyne world, however, and longed to return to the North East. Before I was born, she packed her suitcases, and threatened to leave, but didn't. My arrival, six years after my brother, sealed her fate, moreover: stuck in the south, and a marriage she clearly resented, with a new child, that is to say me, that she probably resented too: the reminder of her captivity, and exile. 

Perhaps that is partly why I learned to prefer the world she had left behind, and the working class, largely Irish Catholic, defiant, anti establishment feeling of my maternal family's background: it satisfied the need I felt for my own sense of belonging, and acceptance. 

Going back to Durham earlier this summer made me think about all this, with a new perspective. The visit was for several reasons: to see my only relative back in my mother's home town; the melancholy task of visiting family graves; to do some research in the local archives ... and to go to the Big Meeting, the Miners' Gala. But there was another motive, this time, and one which had came out of the blue. An invitation to an exhibition.

My mother used to talk about a cousin, who was an artist, and a cartoonist, with a regular strip in the local paper, who used to send cards and calendars every Christmas, featuring his own prints: an artist - a thing of wonder, in a mining family. An anomaly, a maverick: a rare creature, someone who tried to escape his lot in life, like my grandfather, a privately educated boy from Easington Lane, who spent his years in the trenches of the First World War translating for the officers who were superior to him by right of birth, and class: but his return from the horrors of Flanders securing only a guaranteed entry to a hellish fate he thought he had escaped, in the pits.

Jimmy Kays had also felt entitled to a better life. An illegitimate child: supposedly the grandson of a wealthy Englishman, back in Ireland, the family paid to clear off back to England, and keep quiet. Jimmy thought he was meant for better things: an intelligent child, and with an unexpected talent for drawing: so he asked his stepfather to pay for him to go to art school. An absurd ambition for a boy from a mining community then, and clearly this was not going to happen - and never did. 

The aspirations of young working class men like my grandfather, and Jimmy Kays, were not to be supported: social mobility was feared, not encouraged - and the class system still rigidly adhered to.  So my grandfather's classical education was abandoned for a lifetime of hewing coal, and the would be artist also went down the pit, like his half brothers, and cousins, and every other boy in his community. But whereas my grandfather invested any sense of failure in drink, and the camaraderie of his fellow workers, Jimmy Kays took his pens and pencils to work with him, and turned his experience into a creative process: an act of defiance as subversive, in its way, as the union activism which lost him his job, in the end.

Durham's more famous artist-miner, Norman Cornish, lived up the road from my family in Spennymoor, and although forced to leave school as a boy, to start work, he was able to take advantage, as did my aunt, from the art classes at the local socialist run Settlement: an enterprise viewed with deep distrust by the authorities and some of the more conservative minded residents. Empowering working class people through the medium of art? Very dangerous.  Almost as dangerous as a formal education.

In a later generation, both Jimmy and my grandfather would have had the opportunity to become something else, of course: for one or two generations, that is, because now look: here we are again: education, healthcare and all the other advantages that enabled their families to 'better' themselves are now being systematically removed from the reach of other working class men and women. 

Looking at some of Jimmy's work in the new heritage centre in Horden - saved by local artist and university lecturer Jean Spence, who has written extensively about the role of women in the Durham coalfield - was a really moving experience, in fact. 

A tantalising glimpse of a life overlooked, a legacy forgotten, even by his own family: the sardonic wit of his cartoons, written in the now almost vanished language of the mining era, 'pitmatic'. This was a language born out of toil, and want, shaped by a male sensibility, a reclamation of a way of life in which men were effectively emasculated, used like bonded slaves, commodities, their sense of powerlessness again removed, with humiliating force, by the closures that followed the strikes of the Thatcher era.

The heritage centre formerly housed a miners' welfare centre: now a lottery grant has been used to upcycle the past, and bring a new sort of community enterprise to life. The volunteers now serve tea and cakes, and welcome visitors to an exhibition celebrating everything that has been lost, now, in Horden. 

One woman sat staring out of a window that now looks on to a children's playground, and talked quietly about the closure of the pit: her husband and father lost their livelihoods, she said, and yet, only the year before the closure, the government had invested £6 million on the mine. With hundreds of years of coal left, under the sea just behind us, and the country now reliant on imported fuel, it was politics, not economics, that closed Horden and all the other Durham pits. 

Since then, unemployment, poor standards of health, and housing have marked the area, which has also lost many local services, due to the demands of 'austerity': police, fire station, schools. 

Neighbouring Easington, another former pit village, and the location of 'Billy Elliot' is often cited as the most economically deprived town in the UK, with even worse levels of sickness. 

And a letterday Billy Elliot would probably find the local community centre shut now, due to cuts in funding, if he tried to turn up for dance classes these days.

Over on the western side of the county, where my grandfather moved to, the coal was no longer so easy to find: Msinsforth, for example, his last pit, a man carrying the Spennymoor banner at the Gala told me, had closed because of flooding. 

But the Labour councils had seen what was coming, and encouraged other local industries to set up in the area, rather than allow communities to face the loss of their livelihoods. 

In other words, the intervention by state support, rather than the indifference of Tory 'laisser faire'  ideology is what made the difference between quite literally, in some cases, life and death in the these communities, after the mining era. A difference in philosophy we need to see now, from our Labour leaders, rather than a mute endorsement of the policy of austerity.

My mother's cousin Ronnie, now in her eighties, whose father was another member of the Kays family, still lives in former miners' housing in Tudhoe, near Spennymoor: housing eventually taken over by the council, and of course much of it now sold, as part of Margaret Thatcher's right to buy scheme. 

Ronnie bought the house, in line with the aspirational values encouraged by our Tory politicians, but is still a Labour voter. She didn't know why, really, she told me, making a face, thinking about the current party, and leadership, except: well, that's what we've always done, isn't it?

We talked about the Big Meeting, and her face lit up, like the girl she once was, and my mother and my aunts were, enjoying the day out, and the spectacle, and especially the music: her own husband had been a musician, playing trumpet in local bands. 

I've told the story before: but my grandfather stopped going to the Gala after bumping into his old headteacher on the bus home, one year. He wanted to know what his star pupil was doing now. When he heard he was down the pit, he was aghast. I thought you would be a headteacher yourself, by now, he said. The humiliation was too much, and he never went again.

Ronnie mentioned nearby Sedgefield, where Blair had been MP, for all those years, yet never shown his face at the Gala, to make the traditional speech expected of the Labour leader - and nor indeed did Gordon Brown attend, for all his manic pacing up and down the other day, demanding sympathy for his alleged support of the miners during the strikes.

Oh, but they wouldn't hear a word against Blair, the Labour lot over in Sedgefield, said Ronnie, with a wry smile. 

The Miners' Gala, of course, has truly become the Big Meeting: more than an act of nostalgia for something gone, it has been newly energised by becoming the biggest national gathering of political solidarity, with representation from all over the world, in fact: workers, unions, brass bands - and still the focus of pride, and defiance, by the communities whose livelihoods were destroyed by the Thatcher government, but never their spirit, nor their sense of identity.

This year, of all years, it became something else: part of the Labour party leadership roadshow, with the four candidates, in their different ways, attending, yet clearly not, except in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, who made a speech, entirely comfortable with being there, for fear of sending the wrong message. 

That message, of course, that they so worry about, would be one that might disturb the readers of the Daily Mail, whose support they so fondly imagine must be won, in order to win a victory for the party at the next election. A message of solidarity with working class history, heritage, with the unions, with the very principle of organised resistance, and ... oh no, maybe even ... strikes.

At the Gala, support for the Corbyn campaign was, as you might expect, pretty solid. Former Barnet blogger Vicki Morris was interviewed by the local news about why she was backing him:

One of my first cousins, who grew up in Durham, and saw his family background as something ... well, rather embarrassing, a brilliant student, who went to Cambridge, became a diplomat, then left,  informed us, during the Blair years, that his next career would be in politics. My father was curious: which party? The response floored him. My cousin shrugged. That was irrelevant, he said. He had not yet decided which party to join.

I never saw my father, a dyed in the wool, Telegraph reading Tory, so angry. He would not have cared which party his nephew had decided to represent, but to see such a move as a career choice, and not one of vocation, appalled him.

And here lies the problem.

Our political establishment - of all parties - has been hijacked by these people, and by this sickness: this corruption of principle, and the ideal of public service. Hijacked by those who see Westminster, or the local council, as a place for self indulgence, and personal opportunity. 

In the years spent writing this blog, I've attended several Labour party conferences, and become increasingly horrified by the extent of the gulf which exists between those who represent the party, in the shadow cabinet, and those who manage the party's organisation, and the ordinary grassroots members, the activists on the ground, in every constituency, the union representatives, and the people who are the real backbone of the Labour movement.

Sitting in the back of the conference hall, it is impossible not to notice the lack of support given in response to the banalities and platitudes offered up in the speeches of party leaders: and to note the enthusiasm given to those speakers, usually union reps or constituency delegates, who refer to the traditional values of the Labour movement, and eschew the soundbite politics and carefully groomed presentation of the Labour elite.

Two years ago in Brighton, I sat through a 'debate' in the hall, in which people like the ineffable Chuka Umanna spoke, so glibly, like all of the shadow ministers, about nothing in particular, in speeches intended only to bolster their own career prospects, and keep them in line with a natural progression towards advancement.

Len Mc Cluskey walked on stage. As he did so, Ed Miliband slipped away, into the wings, in a carefully calculated rebuff, returning just as calculatedly when he had finished. After Mc Cluskey's speech had received a standing ovation. 

As I wrote at the time:

"He woke everyone up from their One Nation reverie: he quoted Harold Wilson - if Labour is not a moral crusade, then we are nothing - if our party is to have a future, he warned, it must speak for ordinary workers, and it must represent the voice of organised labour. A radical message, which appears to have been blocked by the filtered in box of the Labour leadership's thought process.

This party, he admonished, should be proud of the link with the trade unions. He quoted George Bernard Shaw: I dream things that never were, and I ask: why not?


Indeed, thought Mrs Angry: why not?"

Afterwards, in the queue for the ladies loo, I overheard a group of older women from Glasgow talk despondantly about the debate, and the speeches made by the party leaders. They don't speak my language, said one of them, sadly, shaking her head. 

Who can wonder why Scotland has preferred the SNP to Labour? Not me.

At a previous conference in Manchester, three years ago, taking place on the very spot of the Peterloo Massacre, that seminal moment in the history of the struggle for reform, and social justice, visiting the People's History Museum, and emerging from the ephemera and relicts of the same fight for freedom, and equality, only to be confronted by a drinks reception for a bunch of public schoolboy party organisers, who had no concept of, or interest in, the radical working class roots of our movement: and so began a terrible sense of disillusionment with the path the Labour party has been following.

The same awful feeling of impending doom hung over last year's conference   - and again, only McCluskey struck a warning note to the party leadership, as recorded in this blog:

"... seizing on the result of the referendum to try to persuade the Labour leadership that it must change the course of its campaigning back to traditional party voters, ordinary working people whose interests were being ignored by all the main parties. 

Ignore them at your peril, he warned Labour. 

He dismissed the pundits in our own party who said class didn't matter, and rejected the idea of a constitution made by posh boys at Chequers. 


He called on the party to mobilise the imagination and aspiration of members determined to defeat the ruinous coalition". 

They did ignore them, and the election result proved his prediction to be entirely accurate.

As at conference, so too in the constituencies: Arnie Graf made some interesting points recently in an article on this subject.

Here he highlighted the 'disconnect' between those working at grassroots level, from those strategists supposedly running the national campaigns, and the leadership of the party.

Here in Barnet, as elsewhere, the great sickness at the heart of the Labour party is evident. Oh rose, thou art sick, and the invisible worm ... the complacency in opposition, the institutionalised apathy: the palpable distaste and even embarrassment at over links with local unions, the effective endorsement of Tory budgets, of Tory policies - a culture of defeat that avoids the difficult, combative warfare needed to attack the Tory policies now condemning sections of our society, once more, to the role of despised underclass, a return to the politics of degradation, of moral judgement, and the rule of a privileged elite. 

Almost as much as seeing the way the party leadership works, seeing from close quarters, here in Barnet, the ineptitude and fatal vacuum in leadership, and the dereliction of socialist principles in the local party system has galvanised my own political feelings, and sent me further and further towards the more radical edge of the spectrum, in desperation, and fury.

Here we are now, in a new era of autocracy, veering towards a twenty first century version of fascism, in truth: a social revolution in reverse, engineered by the great grandsons of those whose grip my grandparents' generation had thought had been wrenched from the reins of government, in the post war election.  

Their delivery from the injustice and inhumanity of the society they inhabited was wrought by the introduction of the Welfare state, the NHS, and all the other advancements and features of a civilised society, which we assumed once won, were ours forever, but are now being destroyed, looked on by an impotent Labour party, obsessed by the idea of gaining power by any means other than by being what we are, or what we were - or what we should be.

Because gaining power, for those who have invested their own personal ambitions in the place where vocation, and a burning desire to make a better society should be held - they are the ones who are intent on winning the party leadership, and maintaining the status quo, or even dragging us further into the morass, by committing us to a 'moderate' response to the Tory agenda, on the pretext of 'electability'.  

With one exception, of course, and that exception is Jeremy Corbyn. 

And yes, even if Jeremy Corbyn doesn't really exist, we have now invented him, as a means of recovery from the awful plague that infests the Labour party now.

The success of Corbyn's electoral campaign has been astounding: no one could have, would have predicted it. Most of us on the left, still reeling from the shock of the general election defeat, had resigned ourselves to at best a Burnham victory, and five more years of the same old dithering leadership, the same old arguments, and compromises, and fudging, and careful alignment of non controversial policies, ending in yet another defeat at the hands of people who, if they want a Tory government, will vote for the real thing, and not the blue Labour version.

The secret of his success is quite simple: he represents a great howl of protest from the rank and file members of the party, the traditional Labour voters, those who are disaffected from the party as it is, and who have stopped voting for the party because of what it has become. 

These people want their party back, out of the hands of the careerists, the young men in suits, the self serving spin doctors, the focus group directed policies. 

They want social justice, and yes, a moral crusade, and politicians who are brave, and inspirational: who are hungry for change, and a better society - who can take on the desperately cynical policies of an ever more cruel and punitive Tory government, and give back a sense of hope to those without it, that a radical alternative is possible, and can be delivered by the Labour party, as it did post war. 

No candidate can possibly embody such genuine aspirations, nor deliver them singlehandedly. But even if he does not win the leadership of the party, Corbyn has already delivered a body blow to the old way of doing things.

Labour must change how we apply our values as the world around us changes, said Liz Kendall, yesterday. A few days ago she dared to coopt Attlee into her campaign, and now chunders on about the Rochdale pioneers, and other carefully chosen exemplars of the Labour heritage. Our values: whose values? Kendall's vacuous right wing blatherings are not mine, nor the vast majority of the Labour movement, the grassroots movement. 

The world around us changes, but truth is eternal, and excusing a shift in principle on the pretext of application is insupportable.

When a Labour party fails to oppose in principle, and in practice, a Conservative government bill on Welfare cuts, for example: then the game is up. 

It's time for the Labour leadership to come out from behind the fenced off talking shops of the annual conference, the stage managed 'debates', and the fortress mentality, time to invite in those protesting outside the security zone, demonstrating against the killing of the NHS, the wickedness of the bedroom tax, the assault on the Welfare state. 

Time for the spirit of the Gala, the Big Meeting, the campaigners, the protestors, the grassroots activists, the founders of the Labour movement, to be reflected in the political aspirations of what was the people's party, and what must again be the party of the people, yes, of the many, not the few. 

And time for the blue Labour apologists, the careerists, the opportunists who live off the party establishment to be politely shown the door, and invited to join a party in which they will feel more comfortable.

So: I've voted for Jeremy Corbyn - for the person I believe to be the only candidate who can lead the party into a better future, rooted in the values of the past, values which should be retained, and a history, and heritage that must be remembered, and honoured. 

Perhaps then we might now leave behind the catastrophic result of the last two elections, and move forwards to create a party that will win an election, and save us all from the terrible consequences of this Conservative administration: not by apeing the monstrous inhumanity of the Tory party, but by offering hope, and support, to those members of our society who need it - and taking back control of our lives from those who abuse the power and influence invested in them for too long.