A matter of credentials

I tell people that a quarter of me joined the Labour Party in 1906. That's a reference to the genes I inherited from my grandfather and a recognition that as someone born in 1945 how much my life has been shaped by the social provisions and achievement the Labour Governments, first of 1945 and then of subsequent ones.

I joined the Labour Party in my own right in 1968 as I graduated from university and immediately became a Ward Secretary and delegate to both the Odham West Constituency Labour Party and the the Oldham Trades and Labour Council Political Section., what we'd call the Local Government Committee today.

I've been there ever since in such roles as, at times, Treasurer or  Secretary to the Constituency Labour Party and the District Labour Party. From 1971 to 1974, I served as a Councillor on the former Oldham County Borough Council and, once free of the curse of being an employee of the Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, I served on that body from 1995 until 2008. I remain an activist holding down, at present, the role of Local Government Committee Secretary.

As I watch the current Tory Government (aided ad abetted by their Lib Dem partners) strip away the very fundamentals of the social structures which my Grandfather's generation struggled for and which have sustained me and mine throughout my life, I will take the opportunity of a blog format to offer my comments.