BREXIT ...
Points of view
DURING the 1975 referendum I actively campaigned for Britain to exit the EU . I am a socialist and I didn ' t want the EU ( a big capitalist club ) stopping a socialist oriented Labour Party from enacting socialist policies in Britain . At that time we owned our electricity , gas , water , railways , buses , council houses , the Post Office and the NHS . We were also looking forward to the year 1979 when North Sea oil tax revenues would start being paid into the Treasury . We had strong trade unions and the great point about the so called Winter of Discontent was that people had the selfconfidence to actually go on strike to stand up for their rights .
The Daily Mirror May 5th 1979 stated " Mr . Callaghan served the nation well . Despite a world recession lasting nearly six years , he leaves office with the pound strong , the gold reserves vast , the balance of payments sound , and the level of price rises lower than bequeathed to Labour by Mr . Heath and Mrs Thatcher in 1974 ". The Guardian March 18th 1993 stated " The Callaghan Labour Government experienced high world commodity prices , particularly savage increases in oil costs at a time when North Sea oil was not on tap . Even so , it ' s last year in office showed a surplus of £ 670 million in the balance of payments ".
Then disaster struck , the Thatcher Government came into office . It sold off all the nationalised industries mainly to foreign capitalists , hedge funds , and other evil entities that had no thought for the well being of the British people . Not only did they sell off the family silver , as ex Tory PM Sir Harold MacMillan stated in the House of Lords , they also wasted all of the tax received from North Sea oil . They oversaw the destruction of engineering and manufacturing , and unemployment hit four million . It was probably more but they kept altering the way it was calculated . All the above is correct , it ' s not up for debate , it ' s true . Fast forward to EU Referendum 2016 and the austerity hit British public . Today our gold reserves are 310 tonnes . In 1979 they were 710 tonnes . Today China and India are adding 1,000 tonnes per year to their reserves because they believe the money printing in the western democracies will result in a worse financial crisis than that which occurred in 2008 . In 1979 unemployment was 1,299,300 . Today it ' s 1,425,000 , but as " Business Insider UK " states : " In reality , about 21.5 per cent of all working-age people are without jobs or 8.83 million people , according to the Office of Official Statistics ." The Thatcher , Major , Blair , Brown , Cameron and May governments were and are committed to the neo-Liberal Global pro big business model that as failed and left billions of people worldwide living a miserable life style .
Just think about this ... My father ' s semi skilled woodcutting machinist wage managed to bring up four children whilst my mum was a full-time housewife . It bought us our terraced home and allowed him , like all the other men at that time to go to the working men ' s club on Friday , Saturday and Sunday night . It paid for two nights at Blackpool at the September holiday weekend . Apart from the Family Allowance we didn ' t have to claim social security . Today the working class of Hyndburn can only yearn for such an economic sense of well being . Grandparents can see that their grand children are suffering a worse standard of living than they experienced in their youth .
Today the UK finds itself in a really bad situation , in that all of its major engineering expertise has more or less vanished . For example , power stations and other projects . At the time of the 1975 Referendum , Britain had C . A . Parsons of Newcastle , International Combustion of Derby , Babcock and Wilcox of Glasgow , Taylor Woodrow and G . E . C . all capable of building power stations not only in the UK but worldwide . Today these companies no longer exist , which has resulted in the Chinese providing the capital for a French company to build Hinckley Point C , Sizewell C , and Bradwell B . The truth is that the UK has
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