I would like to share this letter that I sent to Ed Miliband a number of weeks before the budget. I am not ashamed to use the word desperate, because indeed, it was sent in desperation. The desperation I felt then and still do feel, I know is shared by so many others. This is evidenced in the response from across the county that Dean and I have had to our actions of refusing to vote in even more deprivation to our city. My reply came a number of weeks later; indeed it was the day after the budget vote before I received a ‘bland’, procedural and in my view dismissive response. I feel that the tone and essence of my words reflected someone who had sent it in all good faith and with absolute honesty, clearly this was not valued enough to warrant even a modicum of attention.
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To Ed Miliband
I ask that you please take some time out of your busy work schedule to read this letter, frankly because it is written in desperation and I do not say this lightly.
Until I retired from work in 2010 when my position and service was ‘cut’ by the LibDem administration, I had worked in various areas of Social Care for almost thirty years predominantly in Children & Family Services. This involved having a huge amount of input with those with few life chances and opportunities; indeed second and third generations of those experiencing the destruction reeked upon them by Mrs Thatcher and her government’s policies.
I am also a parent and grandparent who along with my husband struggled to bring our children up through the miners’ strike; the three day week and having to undertake two and three jobs each simultaneously, to ‘keep the wolf from the door’.
From a positive point of view, I also consider myself to be extremely lucky in that I was one of the ‘cod-liver oil and orange juice’ generation. I was born into the ‘Spirit of 45’ and had no idea that my free health care, free education and other benefits of being a ‘child of that time’ had not always been ‘the norm’.
In 2010, inspired by the Leader of Hull City Councils rhetoric and promises around fighting the cuts and challenging the Coalition Government, I was one of the ‘army’ of Union members who worked tirelessly and campaigned passionately to help secure the Labour victory in Hull that year, later becoming a Councillor myself in 2011.
Through the years I have alluded to previously; I always saw a future for the next generations; I always had hope. Now having been suspended from the Labour Group last year for not in all conscience being able to vote in a budget that was in my view, being bailiffs for the government; being agents for their ideological strategy to roll back and destroy the welfare state and the public sector.
I now find myself once again being directed to carry out cuts that are far worse than the ones we criticised and vilified the previous Leader and his LibDem group for carrying out. Our leading Labour Group members are making decisions to outsource many of our services to arm’s length companies. This I feel is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ and opens the door the more privatisation; loss of terms and conditions and job security.
In light of the above, which I hope gives you a flavour of who I am, that I am not a militant, revolutionary or the naive idealist, some of the descriptions that were circulated about me when I voted against the budget last year as many in the Group tried to attach a rational around my actions. I am a lifelong Labour supporter who was brought up with its values at the core of our family. I am a loving and family member and a loyal friend; I am a hardworking and conscientious local Councillor, who has the best interests of my Ward and my city at heart.
I fail to understand why in the Labour Party; a party that has its roots in needing to stand up against oppression and whose history resounds with giants of our movement who questioned the status quo and broke far bigger laws than I or my colleagues have ever done. Who by breaking those laws built a party that we are proud to state stands up for the people, can in all sincerity remove me for having a conscience; using my small status to challenge this government’s inhuman polices and for being true to myself. Surly there is room in a party and a movement of the stature, history and reputation of ours for views, values and non-negotiable to cover a wide spectrum? Surly we are allowed to work in and with the party despite our being on various points of that continuum? Suspending, expelling and driving me from the party must be counterproductive as I am Labour through and through.
Thank you for your time and I look forward to a victory in the near future where we can once again bring hope to the people who surly deserve it.
Yours fraternally
Gill Kennett
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They totally fail to recognise that the majority of the public are desperate. Desperate, that word again, for him and his party to give some hope, some leadership and some alternatives; they fail to ‘take on board’ that if they did this, then the country would be ‘theirs’ at the next election. This Shadow Government are failing to understand the need to give us faith for a future that is different to the one we now dread.