What I learned from singing with Jeremy Corbyn in the Young Socialists
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Version 0 of 1. When it emerged that Jeremy Corbyn’s first act as leader was to go to the pub and sing the Red Flag, bankers flinched and Tories sneered, yet it was no surprise to me. Not the song, but the singing of it. That’s exactly what Jeremy would have done almost 40 years ago when he was chairman of Hornsey Labour Party Young Socialists. I was a much younger YS member and he was my mentor in all things political. After meetings, a group of us would go to the Irish pub around the corner from Labour’s Crouch End offices, and then back to one of our flats. Back in the late 70s there was a different kind of austerity. We weren’t talking about public spending cuts, but about an economy reeling from the Opec oil price shocks. The existence of the Bilderberg group was yet to be discovered, but we all knew that the European Community was just a cover for transnational companies to do what they liked. We would talk all night about the coming collapse of capitalism. And we would sing songs. Protest songs, folk songs – all kinds of songs. Whatever else we sang around the kitchen tables of north London, Irish protest songs were the backbone of the evenings. I still remember all the words to songs like Off to Dublin in the Green and The Wearing of the Green. 'Marx had a soft spot for entrepreneurs,' Jeremy told me Once these sessions started Jeremy would also usually insist on at least one round of that rather repetitive ditty – One Man Went to Mow about farming a meadow. He would really get into it – racing down the numbers from 10 men, nine men, eight … to one man and his dog. Looking back on it now, that song was an early indicator of Jeremy’s views about entrepreneurs and the self-employed. He celebrated them. The Conservatives will continue to claim that his policies are bad for the economy, and the Institute of Directors will say he will be bad for business investment. But the speeches and policy statements during his successful leadership campaign emphasise Jeremy’s support for small business and entrepreneurship. Self-employment in the UK is now at its highest since 1975, according to the Office for National Statistics, and despite Jeremy’s high-profile nationalisation plans, much of the incoming Labour leader’s business policy will be organised around this fact. How do I know? Because the thing I learned from Jeremy that has most stuck with me over the years was Karl Marx’s attitude to entrepreneurs. Marx’s surplus theory of value states that the capitalist steals from the worker by making a profit. The surplus between the cost of the raw materials plus the added value put into it by the worker – that represents profit. And profit is why capitalists are bad. Related: Unifier or ideologue? Jeremy Corbyn could learn a lot from Ken Livingstone | Hugh Muir “But Marx had a soft spot for entrepreneurs,” Jeremy told me at one of our post-meeting get-togethers. Entrepreneurs, unlike other capitalists, add value to the product themselves through their own bright ideas – spotting a new product or a market gap or an opportunity nobody else has seen. Their profit is largely from the sweat of their own brows, not the workers’. Jeremy’s older brother Piers – a self-employed weather forecaster – was a prime example. Leaving aside fears of entryism, which will soon be settled one way or the other, I believe Jeremy Corbyn will be good for Britain. At last there will be a real debate about nationalisation, income inequality and the damage inflicted by the financial sector. It is precisely because this debate has been stifled for the past two decades that his victory was made possible. Even a fall in house prices, which I think would be inevitable if Jeremy ever assumes power, would be a good thing for the economy in the long run. I base that forecast on a conversation with Jeremy back when I still lived with my parents in Muswell Hill and he was already a Haringey councillor. He told me his plan was to hand the school playing fields opposite our house to a group of Gypsy families. He said with a smile and a twinkle – a large part of his charisma lies in saying unpalatable things in a charming way. Indeed I laughed because I thought he was joking. But I think, looking back on it, that he was completely serious. The Fortismere school playing field is there to this day. But if Jeremy ever becomes prime minister then I forecast that a very large number of Britain’s green fields are going to be repurposed to build off-grid homes. Which is a good thing. The intellectual justification for Corbyn’s desire to cover the countryside with homes goes back to the 15th-century enclosures. Labour’s bookish new leader has nothing personal against the country’s largest landowners. It is just that he feels their fortunes are based on a land-grab. And it’s never too late to reverse that theft from the people. |