Just a few decades ago England was caught up in the wrath of socialism. Almost everything was nationalized. The coal industry, the gas industry, rail, telecom, you name it, it was all owned and operated by the UK government. Britain was in deep decline, its Empire packing up, its debts soaring, it truly was ‘the sick man of Europe’.

Then came along Margaret Thatcher, who turned socialism on it’s head, privatized the major industries, sold off government owned homes and put Britain back on track toward prosperity. What a decade the 80’s were, and what a decade the 90’s were, riding on the previous decade’s coattails.

Alas, after 11 1/2 years of Thatcher, and 18 years of conservative government, along came the socialists with their ‘New Labour’. House prices soared, gas prices soared, and many, including myself fled in despair.

After 13 years of socialism, Britain was beginning to fail again, and while there is now a coalition government headed by the conservatives, these politicians are weak kneed and not nearly as principled as they need to be. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister has said that he does not have many convictions, and is a ‘liberal conservative’. This is the man that stands against a far greater threat to British sovereignty; the rise of ‘Red Ed’ and his Marxist policies. Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party, has pledged to re-nationalize industries, and punish those that make a profit. His ideology stems from his father, who was a preacher of the philosophy of Karl Marx, and who is indeed buried in the same cemetery, only a few feet from his beloved (albeit insanely wrong) prophet.

Back to the future with Marxist Miliband: If Britain falls for Ed’s socialist farce, it really will be a tragedy

By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

PUBLISHED: 17:06 EST, 23 September 2013 | UPDATED: 17:26 EST, 23 September 2013

Whatever’s wrong with modern Britain, the solution isn’t socialism. We tried that and look where it got us

So now we know Ed Miliband’s master plan. He wants to bring back socialism. No great surprise there, then.

Miliband’s late father was one of Britain’s most prominent Marxist ‘intellectuals’. In other words, he was spectacularly wrong on every single major issue.

My old man’s a Marxist,
He wears a Marxist’s hat,
He wears old corduroy trousers,
And he lives in a £2 million flat.
(In Primrose Hill).

Pity Ralph Miliband isn’t still alive. I’d have loved to hear his views on Labour’s proposed ‘mansion tax’. But clearly some of his discredited ideas have rubbed off on his youngest son.

Whatever’s wrong with modern Britain, the solution isn’t socialism. We tried that and look where it got us.

I’m not talking about the blood-soaked socialism which led to gulags and genocide in Eastern Europe and China. Or the sociopathic socialism which has turned North Korea into a Mad Hatter’s prison camp.

Let’s consider the particularly British brand of socialism, which still has plenty of devoted disciples in the Labour Party, including its weird leader.

The idea that the State could and would provide has been tested to destruction. Rampant socialism turned post-war Britain into a bankrupt basket case.

Nationalisation robbed industry of the incentive to modernise. For decades, Britain turned its back on the free market economics which once made us the richest nation on earth.

Unions exercised a stranglehold on the means of production and distribution. In the name of the ‘workers’, stroppy shop stewards called strikes at the drop of a hat.

Most of the union leaders on parade in Brighton this week salivate at the prospect of turning the clock back to that era of debilitating, daily disruption.

When I was covering British Leyland in the 1970s, there was a grand total of 27 separate strikes across the company on a single day. When the toolmakers went back to work, the delivery drivers walked out. At Longbridge, workers on the night-shift were literally sleeping on the job.

Billions of pounds of public money was poured into subsiding products no one wanted to buy.

I’ve written before about the taxpayer-funded excesses at British Steel. On the day the corporation’s chairman, Mr Pastry-lookalike Sir Charles Villiers, announced a record £1 billion loss, he threw open the doors to the executive dining room and invited Fleet Street’s finest to join him in a sumptuous feast from an all-you-can-eat buffet, groaning with suckling pigs, whole salmon, roast sirloins of beef and vintage claret.

Had Labour won the 1979 election, inefficient, loss-making coal mines would still be open and Arthur Scargill would be sitting in the House of Lords

Still, what’s a couple of grand on a jolly-up when the taxpayers are already lumbered with a billion-pound tab?

And what was the upshot of all this largesse at the public’s expense? British Steel and British Leyland both went bust because they couldn’t withstand the chill winds of foreign competition.

Back then, it took six months to get the Post Office to install a telephone in your home. Try telling that to a generation who upgrade their mobiles every five minutes.

If you wanted a cooker, you could buy one only from the nationalised electricity or gas boards and then wait obediently until they could be bothered to hook it up.

Council tenants couldn’t even paint their front doors without permission in triplicate from a gauleiter at the local authority.

Had Labour won the 1979 election, inefficient, loss-making coal mines would still be open and Arthur Scargill would be sitting in the House of Lords. At least we might have been spared all those hideous wind farms cluttering up the countryside.

The 1997 New Labour government was forced to accept Lady Thatcher’s settlement. But the Left resented her with a toxic hatred, which came bubbling to the surface when she died

Commuters moan about the private rail companies, but if the railways had remained nationalised they’d still be running filthy, dilapidated rolling stock and Bob Crow’s RMT union would be on strike most of the time.

Old Labour presided over a siege economy. At one stage, you weren’t allowed take more than £50 out of the country when you went on holiday. The top rate of tax was 97 per cent, the standard rate 35 per cent. Someone had to pay for all this glorious socialism.

Mrs Thatcher changed all that. The 1997 New Labour government was forced to accept her settlement. But the Left resented Thatcher with a toxic hatred, which came bubbling to the surface when she died.

The hardline socialists didn’t disappear, however. They simply mutated into local government and the institutions.

Brown’s creation of a vast, supplicant state was the imposition of socialism by any other name. The end result was bankruptcy, as it always is under Labour

Those organisations still under the yoke of socialist bureaucracies — such as the NHS and most Town Halls — are notorious for centralised control, waste and almost total lack of accountability.

Whereas once the socialists wanted out of Europe altogether, they now embrace the EU and all its works as a device for imposing their will on an unwilling public. The EU itself is a socialist construct, top-down and anti-democratic.

After the nationalised industries went belly-up, the socialists set about nationalising every aspect of our daily lives, through quangos such as the Health And Safety and Equality Commissions and the ‘human rights’ racket.

The entire ‘diversity’ industry is a socialist front aimed not at eradicating discrimination, but persecuting individuals and criminalising Christianity, which has traditionally been socialism’s sworn enemy.

In the name of ‘equality’, Labour smashed the grammar schools, hobbling social mobility and harming the very people it claimed it was trying to help.

Gordon Brown’s creation of a vast, supplicant state was the imposition of socialism by any other name. He paid for it by letting the banks run riot rather than raising income tax. But the end result was bankruptcy, as it always is under Labour.

Ed Miliband hasn’t yet spelled out his vision of our socialist future, but the policies we know about give us a reasonable idea.

Labour’s answer is a re-run of the tax-and-spend disaster movie which got us into this mess in the first place.

The modern face of socialism manifests itself in the shape of the same old ‘bash the rich’ politics of resentment, a war on wealth creation and a shopping list of generous ‘giveaways’ funded by reckless borrowing and higher taxes.

Ed Miliband’s father could have reminded him of his beloved Karl Marx’s observation that history always repeats itself, ‘first as tragedy, second as farce’.

If Britain falls for Miliband’s socialist farce, it really will be a tragedy.

Marxist Milliband is leading the charge back toward decay in Britain, with his rallying call of ‘yes I’m bringing back socialism’ to his misguided followers.

‘I’m bringing back socialism’: Miliband’s boast as he unveils plan to increase minimum wage and tax the rich more

By MATT CHORLEY, MAILONLINE POLITICAL EDITOR

PUBLISHED: 06:34 EST, 21 September 2013 | UPDATED: 06:13 EST, 22 September 2013

Master plan: Ed Miliband said his party would tackle unequal pay in Britain as people on the minimum wage are worse off

Ed Miliband today declared he was bringing socialism back to Britain as he unveiled a raft of left-wing policies.

The Labour leader promised to increase wages for the lowest paid, force schools to stay open for longer and monitor how many women appear on TV.

Taking part in an open-air Q&A session in Brighton,Mr Miliband was asked when he would ‘bring back socialism’.

The son of Marxist think Ralph Miliband replied: ‘That’s what we are doing, sir.

‘It is about fighting the battle for economic equality, for social equality and for gender equality too.

‘That is a battle that is not yet won in our country.’

He warned that people on the minimum wage are more than £860-a-year worse off because of the rising cost of living.

The Labour leader unveiled plans to dramatically increase the guaranteed rate of pay to reverse the impact of inflation in the last three years.

Mr Miliband hit out at global banks who make huge profits but claim they cannot afford to pay their cleaners ‘a bit more’

It is no secret that I love my mother country, but I despair at how far she has fallen. Once the most powerful nation on the planet, Britain is now being strangled by bureaucrats, and decay is again setting in. I only hope that the UK has its own Tea Party of sorts in the near future to put itself back on track before it is too late.

Tag: thatcher

I weep for Mother England

Back to the future with Marxist Miliband: If Britain falls for Ed’s socialist farce, it really will be a tragedy

‘I’m bringing back socialism’: Miliband’s boast as he unveils plan to increase minimum wage and tax the rich more

Freedom dies within a generation