Monday 14 July 2014

Bigotgate - the prelude

A further extract from Joe Ashton's 1977 novel Grass Roots. This is a Labour voter berating his MP, shortly after hearing that the steel-plant where he works is to be closed, and that the Labour government isn't going to save it:

'This country, us, the working people, have had enough of you lot down there! Don't you know this country is bleeding to death? You bastards do anything for the Irish. They can blow Belfast to pieces and flatten it to the ground, and you will pay our taxes to rebuild it again. You do anything for the sodding French to keep their farmers rich in the Common Market. You lean over backwards to keep those bloody Scotchmen happy and give them all the oil. And if it is West Indians and Pakistanis, then they can come here and live on the dole for ever. But when it comes to your own English working-class flesh and blood, then we can be thrown on the scrap-heap and you'll let us go bankrupt.'

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