Fear, Loathing, Lies and Dodgy Wikipedia Entries

My thoughts were sparked by this post on the Sky News site

"https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-voters-annoyed-at-governments-broken-promises-admits-minister-13153396"

A chap who was at the dissolution apparently the "veterans minister" (which itself shows the bloat in government, for at the time i am thinking of such things were without debate the remit of the DEFENCE minister whose remit included those abandoned by the governments of successive prime ministers since their use ended after 1945) but i digress anyway said "veterans minister" Johnny Mercer is the second person after Grant Schapps to coiunsel the voters not to give Starmer a tub thumping majority.

It all sounds very deja vu

And then with a shock i realised why. It is starting to be a repeat of my political awakening, which i realised with some surprise began not as i thought with my first income tax demand for £5 from Dennis Healey's rottweilers in the thick of his 98% tax regieme, but a little earlier

It was February 1974, and Ted Heath had woken up to find his incredible 1970 achievement of a 14 seat majority with the gain of a total of 77 seats over a crushed Labour Party led by Harold Wilson who lost 75 to fall 28 short of the magic number, destroyed, and the country acing the first hung parliament since 1929. Erosion of seats in by elections had taken a few bites from the apple before the night of the election, but he went from Majority Prime Minister to Minority Leader Seeking Coalition Assistance.

The sense of Deja Vu was heightened by a realisation of the things that drove the election.

Ireland: Republican Interference with the standing of the six counties as an integral part of the Unied Kingdom. The Sunningdale Agreement which many saw as a selling out of constitutional standing to the republic, caused a rift with the Northern Ireland Unionist parties.

Economics: Britain's economic status was down the toilet with the three day week and another round of Miners Strikes

Europe: Enoch Powell, a perpetual critic of the integrationist policy of what is now revealed as the European Union, dumped the Conservative Party and joined the Northern Ireland Unionists for whom he sat for a while as an MP warned of the choce being between  "remain a democratic nation, or become one province in a new Europe Superstate".

I remember that because i was at the time about half way through a one year intensive study of Economics intended to provide me with the background to taking, in the summer of 1974, the WJEC GCE Economics O level. I had, at the age of fifteen years and eleven months, begun my final year of compulsory education beset by bored fifteen year olds Thatcher's Raising Of The School Leaving Age causing havoc among those of us with academic ability because they had been denied the route to unskilled paid work enjoyed by their elder sibings and now langushed pointlessly in the 'E' streamed and remedial classes awaiting release in the summer of 1974 as an upward spike in the unemployment figures.

The point that i found most stark was the contrast between the Tory candidates open and enthusiastic support for their party and their chances at the time, which contrasted markedly with post election statements on Sunday politics shows such as Weekend World, where they candidly admitted to forseeing utter disaster.

The interesting point I dug up while trawling through cyberspace for help in reassembling memories of the days when my wife was merely an acquaintance whose tits were smaller than my grand-daughter's are now, was the degree to which Big Brother's dayorders have been at work.

Perhaps the starkest being a claim in the Wikipedia entry for the February 1974 General Election and repeated by the mendacious BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-29553193 that Enoch Powell encouraged peope to vote Labour and looked forward to the next government renegotiating "The Treaty Of Brussels"

I find this interesting. You see, the 1948 Treaty of Brussels en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brussels established the Western Union, later renamed the Western European Union, dissolved in 2010 after the Lisbon Treaty. This was I presume the pact so ridiculed by Orson Welles in The Third Man with the multi-agency group in the jeep, an agreement that long predated the European Iron and Steel Trade Cnnfederation and Euratom Treaty groups whose fusion would form the nascent European Economic Community nine years later with the Treaty Of Rome. It is clear from the LSE Blog assessing Powell's words on Europe in the context of the 2016 European Referendum here blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/06/03/how-enoch-powell-helped-to-shape-modern-tory-euroscepticism that tye thinking now is that Powell was having a go not at the military and economic co-operation set out in the treaty of brussels, but the expansionist policies embeddded right from the prelude in the Treaty of Rome

But more than that, i wonder if my deja vu will continue in 19 days time with all manner of ex-MP's now seeking work having been thrown off the gravy train who now need to give credibility to their ramblings that they saw Sunak for the greed and power driven disaster he was from the moment he conspired to steal Liz Truss's place in history gained by being The Only Tory In The Building

Interesting Times