Frankly, I’ve been a lazy bastard. The progress of history has only been in the right direction when people have worked for it, and there are always forces of conservatism that want to halt and reverse this progress. This evening I took the mic at a Left Against Brexit meeting and said so.
In the run-up to the referendum I was complacent. I couldn’t believe that people could possibly back the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, could possibly believe the transparent lies blazoned across the sides of busses, and vote against what was clearly against their best interests. In my runs and walks around Sheffield the Remain posters I’d seen in windows had far outnumbered those that called for Leave.
I thought that it was enough to just vote, and the result was like a punch in the gut. I don’t think I’d felt such pain from an election result since John Major’s victory, when we had felt so certain of a Labour win, and I had never felt so estranged from my fellow citizens.
The past two years have been hard. It has felt as though we have lost our country, which is somewhat ironic. It has felt as though so much of the progress we were making has been lost. Corbyn’s election as Labour leader on the back of the Momentum surge, pulling the party back to where it should be, representing this country’s working people and poor and disenfranchised rather than being soe Tory-light pretending that market forces and public private partnerships can improve things, has begun to feel hollow. The Labour leadership’s position of not fighting against Brexit, and Corbyn’s own disinterest in leading on this particular issue have been galling.
So I have become someone who attends political events and speaks at them when I have something to say. I have vowed and signed up to take part in activism to shape the world into how I think it should be for the benefit of the many. I dearly hope it is not too late to stop the utter disaster that any form of Brexit will surely be - that I have not left it too late to help. And, even if I can’t if the worst no-deal barely-better-than-Armageddon Brexit - or if we reverse this insanity and pull back from the brink - there will be more fighting to do.
Lazy bastards of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your sense of desperate helplessness.
