RESISTANCE NEWS - LOVE IN THE CORBYN FAMILY - AND OUTSIDE

In a statement on Twitter last weekend, Jeremy Corbyn's sons - Tommy, Seb and Benjamin -  

expressed their pride in their father, He may have been the leader of the Labour Party when it experienced a crushing General Election defeat but they argued their dad had paid the price for being ‘honest, humble and good-natured in the poisonous world of politics’. They also praised his lifetime record of championing the ‘less fortunate’ and for producing the ‘most wonderful manifesto the country has ever seen’. They claimed that Jeremy Corbyn had suffered the ‘most despicable attacks, filled with hatred’. 

                                                            

                                                                Absolutely right.

Jeremy Corbyn's three sons - Tommy, Seb and Benjamin - in 2018

Here is their inspiring letter:

I wanted to shine a spotlight on their Twitter letter to widen its circulation and increase the numbers reading it. When so much of what hits our senses is angry and abusive, it is so important to be taken

back into a world of love.

And a world of rationality and truth.

Jeremy Corbyn was never complicit in harbouring a nest of Labour Party members filled with anti-Semitic feelings, expressing their dislike of Jews in words and actions. To say so is a lie. So why would you lie? I can only think that for those who do, their loyalty to the state of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, is so strong that they have convinced themselves that what the Israeli government wants them to believe is actually the case: to criticise the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinian people is an anti-Semitic act. If that were the case, then yes  - Jeremy and many other compassionate defenders of human rights, including myself, are guilty as charged.  

Jeremy Corbyn - the best prime-mister we never elected

But that is not the case. Truth matters. Resistance depends on standing up for rationality. Respect for human rights matter. Johnson and Cummings, the front bench of this radically right-wing New Tory party, its hundreds of other MPs - all will be exposed soon enough as devoid of the necessary compassion and empathy to make this country a better place and give its people a finer life. 

There is of course the one threat that transcends all others - Jeremy Corbyn was and is hated and vilified because his vision of a better country and a finer life for all its people means less for the few who now hold power and wealth and pull the strings. Socialism will be redefined as a dirty word by those who are basking in their victory and seek to consolidate their position having breached the red wall that had marked the Labour Party ascendancy across the North and parts of the Midlands and Wales. But It won't be long before the penny drops - people will find the promises are empty, the vision they have been sold false. The idea that the Tory Party is the party of the working class is an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms. 

Powerful image and message - Attlee's Labour Government (1945-51) still triumphed!

It has become a truism associated with this month's General Election that Jeremy Corby was an unpopular leader of the Labour Party for many voters. I have heard the occasional passers-by at our Labour Party monthly street stall in St Ives exclaim: 'I'm not voting for your party as long as that man is your leader' - but they were always singular voices. Occasionally, I heard a similar refrain on the doorstep when canvassing in local elections. In this General Election, I heard it more often during my time on the streets and doorsteps of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle here in Cornwall. Why should a gentle and caring politician who was remarkable in never rubbishing his political opponents - despite what he got from them - be the object of such visceral dislike?

Psychologists would offer explanations that feature ideas such as projection and transference. Clearly, stuff that didn't belong was and is being dumped on him. Read that letter from his sons again. Look for any evidence of a crack in his moral integrity. Is he a liar? Is he a cheat? Is he a philanderer? If there had been any dirt, it would have been rooted out by his opponents. They did their best in the 2017 General Election with the lies that he was a terrorist in disguise, a terrorist-sympathiser, a plotter against royalty, and a threat to national security - and got nowhere. Prime-minister Theresa May lost her overall majority and Jeremy Corby had never seemed so popular and successful. What has happened to explain this projection and transfer is beyond my full grasp as a historian and commentator at present, although I have a few ideas. But what I can conclude is that this phenomenon is very unpleasant and a stain within our political system. 

Tory lying is nothing new - their fear of socialism is visceral 

I have friends - from my university days as a Catz Oxford undergraduate - whose views on the importance of love and compassion I share. That is why we remain friends even if we naturally have differences in making sense of the world through which we have passed over the last fifty years. Yet such is the power of this contemporary anti-Corbyn meme that one of these friends wrote yesterday that he was unable to accept that Corbynism ever offered a path to justice. He continued: 'Justice and gross violence just don't go together'. 

Where did that come from?!   

Rationality and truth - we must hang on to them for dear life.