A Class War Warrior. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by Robert Redmond

Red Rose Blues: The Story of a Good Labour Man. Joe Ashton. Macmillan. [pound]17.99. 358 pages. ISBN 0-333-77973-8.

In these memoirs we read the words of old Labour, the Party of the Trade Unions and the class war. It starts with a description of Joe Ashton's boyhood in the slums of Attercliffe, Sheffield. It was a tough, rough life. From there, one might try to understand why Joe comes to believe Socialism could cure all the ills of the world with the workers in charge. Attercliffe's seed and soil, he tells us, taught him and thousands of others how to hate the bosses, the ruling class, those who had made the world such a mess and those who had made lives so hard. People like him cannot believe Tories have any heart at all.

His work as a shop steward and the description he gives remind us of the industrial relations problems of 1950, to 1980 and what were called the 'two sides of industry'. No one seemed to listen when Tories argued there should be no 'side' and all should work together. Joe and his ilk hated the bosses and the bosses feared the shop stewards.

The story of Joe Ashton's selection as Parliamentary Candidate for Bassetlaw is of interest in describing the machinations which went on within the Labour and Trade Union Movements. He was successful to no small extent because the Yorkshire and Nottingham Miners 'nobbled' each other and he slipped through the middle.

Joe Ashton does, perhaps, overstate the difficulties of life in Parliament on the low pay of MPs in the 1970s. True, one had to pay for the cost of staying in London, but it was not as impossible as he says. He also refers to the 'spouse' warrants on which wives could travel by rail. He says there were three per year. I recall ten. He says John Biffen as leader of the House increased the number, but John did not get that job until the 1980s.

On women MPs, he is as class conscious as ever. Labour women are used, he tells us, to the fire of union meetings and conferences. Tories are accustomed to being treated with deference by staff, husbands and friends. Margaret Thatcher, to him, was a woman hostile to pensioners, the sick, the poor and three and a half million unemployed. As might be expected, there is not a word of credit to her for having cured Britain's industrial relations disease.

Mr Ashton is fair in the way he reminds us of the Poulson affair in which several MPs and others were found to be corrupt; to the way in which bookies lobbied to emasculate a Bill about the Tote and leads us up to Neil Hamilton. At the same time, he defends the reputation of the majority of MPs and shows they are far from being self-seekers. This needs to be said more often.

The author is full of praise for the way in which the Party Whips kept a minority Labour Government afloat even with a Bill to nationalise the shipyards which he thought common sense to save the workers' jobs from shareholders, foreign banks and capitalist running dogs. This story tells us a great deal about the working of our Parliamentary system.

Joe Ashton has little time for 'New Labour', fix-it MPs with mobile 'phones, faxes, pagers, and e-mail and is sad for those of his generation who 'rebuilt the Country after the war'. These new people never had the pride of sleeping three kids to a bed or wearing clogs to the pit. They are the sons and daughters of old trade unionists who strived and made sacrifices to send them to university. Is it not natural for parents to want to improve the lot of their children? The world has moved on since his boyhood in Attercliffe. Can he not admit it?

Mr Ashton's admiration for Tony Bean, who, in his opinion deserved to become Party Leader is worth reading. So is his description of the miners' strike of 1983/1984. He is sure that if Joe Gormley had still been President of the National Union of Mineworkers, he would have won whereas Arthur Scargill was out-manoeuvered. He believes Neil Kinnock saved the Party from the Militants, but made a mess of the 1992 General Election. Nevertheless, it was then that the party changed grievously.

On the press, Joe Ashton is scathing and one must feel sympathy for what he says. The treatment meted out to him after a silly, but innocent visit to a massage parlour has been forgotten by most of us, but it must have left a fearful scar for Joe Ashton and his family. We ought to agree that unless action is taken, the day will dawn when democracy will be destroyed in the 'Public Interest'. As he says, the difficulty is that MPs are scared of what Murdoch and others will do to them if they try to act.

Whatever one thinks of Joe and his beliefs, one has to agree that here is a book by an honest man and a doughty fighter for his beliefs even if they are misguided.

Robert Redmond was a Conservative MP from 1970 to October 1974.