HAVING read Aileen Campbell’s article on the UN report on British poverty in Sunday’s National (Why we’ll fight the corner of those failed by Tories, November 18), and the letters in response from messrs Hinnrichs and Clark, whilst I agree with most of what they say, I feel that they all miss the most important, and most chilling, observation from Philip Alston’s Report: that in Britain “poverty is a political choice”.
We are faced with the stark reality that under the Tories and their reserve team Labour, the poverty we see so starkly highlighted by the UN Rapporteur is the result of deliberate government policy. It is therefore vital that we come to understand, and accept, that poverty in our society is not an accident, an unfortunate by-product of austerity, or an unintended consequence. Quite the opposite – it is coldly and deliberately intentional, the result of calculated decision-making by the Westminster system with the express purpose of impoverishing the majority of the British population.
Mr Alston concludes that austerity is itself a choice amongst policy options and implemented for a purpose, telling us that “the evidence points to the conclusion that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving radical social re-engineering”. He also tells us that “through it all, one actor has stubbornly resisted seeing the situation for what it is. The government has remained determinedly in a state of denial”. However, this is where I take issue with Mr Alston’s conclusion, because the government is not in any kind of denial, it knows exactly what it is doing. So, why would any government embark on such calculated cruelty?
READ MORE: Why the SNP will fight the corner of those failed by the Tories
To the Tories, economics is a weapon, designed to enable certain goals to be reached and consolidated. We must never forget that the UN has already damned the Tories for what it called “grave and systematic violation of the rights of persons with disabilities”. Note that these violations are systematic and we can recognise a pattern that is again revealed with respect to poverty. In an interview with The Sunday Times in May 1981, Thatcher stated that “it isn’t that I set out on economic policies; it’s that I set out really to change the approach, and changing the economics is the means of changing that approach.
If you change the approach you really are after the heart and soul of the nation. Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”.
Thus, by her own admission, the Thatcher project was the utilisation of economic policy for the purpose of social engineering, and I am the first to admit that Thatcher was particularly successful, not only changing the heart and soul of the nation, but destroying that heart and soul and producing a heartless and soulless society that not only tolerates the poverty that Thatcher so relentlessly pursued by her policies, but in far too many sectors of our society actually applauds it.
This demand for social engineering is also the driver behind Brexit, and what the Tories mean by taking back control. The impoverishment of the British people is not solely on economic grounds, it includes depriving them of their fundamental rights for benefits, employment protection, environmental protection etc, producing a submissive and malleable population that will never be able to be in a position to prevent them looting the national treasury at their will. To the Tories, poverty is a method of control, a means to an end, a political choice that utilises economic policy to cement their dominance. Mr Alston’s report is the best argument yet for Scottish independence. It must be our political choice.
Peter Kerr
Kilmarnock
IT is always good to see people writing, talking and marching for John Maclean. Kevin Brown added a positive contribution with his “In memory of the most dangerous man in Britain” (Sunday National, November 18). I hope that the march on the 30th to commemorate the 100th anniversary of one of his five releases from prison is well supported and I fully intend to be there. The release in 1918 was special and was the culmination of a massive campaign to release him including a mass meeting in the Albert Hall where a huge “RELEASE MACLEAN!” banner was unfurled.
We should remember also that he was the most dangerous man in Britain on two counts – to the British state and also to the British left (the new Communist Party of GB) after the war, as he challenged their British parliamentary road to socialism. They both went for him in their respective ways and he gave back as good as he got.
It would be remiss not to mention that the John Maclean march has been going strong for nearly 50 years. Unlike Tom Anderson’s march that went from Eastwood Toll to the graveside, the modern march goes from the graveside to the cairn in MacLean’s memory in Pollokshaws arcade with the famous inscription: “He forged the Scottish link in the golden chain of world socialism.” This was the march to inaugurate the cairn in 1973 and was led by his daughter, Nan Milton. Another Mr Anderson, Donald, has been one of many to keep this going.
This march will take place this Sunday. I hope that Kevin and Alan and their friends (and even their dug) can be there. There have been two books written about John Maclean over the past year or so. Henry Bell’s excellent book as cited in Kevin’s article and my own, The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John MacLean.
There will be two marches and other activities and it would be great if Scotland’s radicals came out to bring him hame tae the Clyde!
Gerry Cairns
Glasgow
READ MORE: In memory of the most dangerous man in Britain – John Maclean
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