I’m no historian of the Conservative party, nor have I any wish to be. However, in thinking about this feature, I looked at the idea from the posh boy anti-establishment-lite Monty Pythons with their sketch of ‘what have the Romans ever done for us’, in terms of the Tories. They are the oldest political party, which is not surprising given that it was very hard during the 19^th century for labour to get organized never mind form a political party; it was the Liberal Gladstone who increased the suffrage to include working class people in 1884, and it wasn’t until 1906 that the Labour Party had its first formal meeting, finally taking power in 1924, albeit having to rely on the support of the Liberals.

So what have the Conservatives ever done for the likes of us? First off, they killed many many Irish people during the protracted so-called Troubles, and used Unionist paramilitary groups to their own illegal ends. Similarly their imperial and colonial endeavours have killed unknown amounts of people in the countries of Africa, South and East Asia. Obviously, they have continually restrained, if not tried to completely wipe out, the Trade Union movement; the ironic hypocrisy of this historic relationship recently came in the setting up in 2015 of the Conservative Trade Union and Workers (named: Tory Workers). The party’s mantra of free trade has forever been to line their own land with the hedgerows of wealth that separate the worker from the landlord, landowner, businessman in similar pre-industrial ways.

Then, since the setting up of the Welfare State by the Atlee government, they have continually tried to dismantle it, not only from their small state ideology, but in order to spend as little on people who are most in need by lowering the taxes of the most well off So, we knew it all along, but now it’s official; the Tories kill poor and disabled people. It may not be murder, nor manslaughter, if only in the eyes of the beholder of laws they invented themselves. The new austerity age of the past seven years or more, has seen many people die as a direct result of Tory policies on welfare. In a Grauniad article recently, the following facts were put on bloody display: 90 people a month die in the UK as a result of being deemed fit for work; in 2015 there were 30,000 excess deaths, the greatest rise in mortality in fifty years; suicides in prisons reached a record high with a 40% drop in prison officer numbers. I could go on, but we’d never get to the poem, and it’s all very depressing.

Therefore, to cheer you up, I give you the wonderful Janine Booth with her wonderful “Mostly Hating Tories”. By the way, she has a whole oeuvre of Tory hating poetry. Check them out here.

Janine Booth is a Marxist, trade unionist, socialist-feminist, author, poet, speaker, tutor, former RMT Executive member, supporter of Workers’ Liberty, aspie, bi, Peterborough United fan!

 

 

Mostly Hating Tories

What shall I do on this fine day?
There’s so much on my list
A mix of work and rest and play
I’m sure you get my gist
And maybe I’ll compose a rhyme –
But my unwritten law is
That every day I’ll spend my time
Mostly hating Tories.

I’ll go to work, some bills I’ll pay
That’s if I’m feeling rash,
To see her through to payment day
I’ll lend my friend some cash,
I’ll probably make my kids some tea
And read them bedtime stories
Of homeless piggies one, two, three
And why they hate the Tories.

I’ll hate them for the bedroom tax
I’ll hate them for the cuts,
For living off the workers’ backs
I’ll hate their very guts,
Look, see the depths to which they’ll sink,
They don’t know where the floor is,
That’s why I’ll spend my day, I think,
Mostly hating Tories.

What’s that you say? That hate’s not nice?
Please love thine enemy?
Well yeah, I tried that once or twice
It doesn’t work for me,
And if you think that’s not fair play
Remember this, you must:
The Tories, they will spend their day
Mostly hating us.

A history of evil done
Will justify my hate,
I still detest the Tory scum
For Section Twenty Eight,
Nye Bevan built the NHS
So he knows what the score is:
And he said vermin come out best
Compared with bloody Tories.

I’m sure I’ll find time to revile
That UKIP and its drivel
And I’ll locate a little while
To loathe a lonesome Liberal,
I’ll maybe pause to show regret
For Labour’s missing glories
But save the fiercest fury yet
For mostly hating Tories.

For generations and hereon
Our class and those before us
Grew up to know which side we’re on:
The side that’s not the Tories,
So when I die, do this for me –
Inscribe and sing in chorus
Here lies Janine, her life spent she
Mostly hating Tories.