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Your support makes all the difference.I've been quiet for a long time now,thinking very deeply about what I believe in. My decision to leave the Conservative Party and join the Labour Party has been carefully thought out. There are a lot of things I want to do and say and you can't do that by staying quiet. Of course the events surrounding my resignation as an MP in 1992 played a part in my reappraisal. When you're stabbed in the back and kicked when you're down, when you're very badly let down by the Metropolitan Police, then naturally you begin to wonder about a lot of things.
British society is now more divided, unfair and ill at ease with itself than at any time since the war. While the fat cats of industry and quangos screw the country for every last penny, the rest of us are told to be patriotic and either take pay cuts or be sacked. The UK is the fifth poorest country in the European Union and sinking fast. A government led by the most incompetent, purposeless prime minister in living memory is partly responsible. I do not want to be a part of a foreigner-hating, minority-bashing party in which you can only get applause at the annual conference by making more disgraceful attacks on Brussels (read foreigners) and minorities.
The moronic majority are always looking for scapegoats. What a bankrupt philosophy it is which responds to record levels of crime by giving more lethal weapons to the Metropolitan Police to break more bones more easily or by giving them more guns, and now CS gas sprays.
The fundamental problem is that the establishment controls every lever of power and wealth. The cancer of class is as entrenched now as it was 50 years ago.I shall be dancing in the streets when hunting is banned by a Labour government because it will be the first attack on this rotten lifestyle.
What we need is a radical social and economic and social revolution. Unless we identify and harness the best talents of all our people we will be out-performed by competitors without class-based ruling establishments and we will see more alienation manifested through vandalism, graffiti and litter.
Our only hope is to be a constructive and enthusiastic part of a united Europe. If the UK stays out of a single currency the British economy will be destroyed. While the fat cats blame the poor and underprivileged for our record budget deficits it is the middle classes who are bleeding the welfare state. They are disproportionately represented in higher education; they demand subsidised train fares and mortgages; and farmers expect the state to pay them for not producing anything at all.
Radical political reform is essential to get rid of the trappings as well as the reality of our class-based system, and this must include the abolition of the hereditary parts of the constitution such as the House of Lords and the monarchy.
The writer was Conservative MP for Hexham from 1987 to 1992.
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