Journeyman
Established Member
- Joined
- 16 Apr 2014
- Messages
- 6,295
My dad was born into abject poverty in 1933, and would appear to be the sort of person you'd expect to naturally vote Labour. Right up until his death in 1995, he voted Tory every single time, despite it blindingly obviously not doing him much good at all. However, I can completely understand why he did it.
He was a proud man who believed in hard work. He left school at fifteen with no qualifications, and he never had a particularly well paid job, but he managed to afford to buy a house, a car and (just about) support his family. I was briefly privately educated and my parents moved heaven and earth to try and get me into the best school possible. He made some foolish decisions money-wise, but tried to buy into Thatcher's vision of the property and share owning democracy. I think he was somewhat misguided, and it drove him to an early grave with little more than a pot to piss in, but there you go.
The point I'm making here is that he was aspirational, and wanted a better life than the one he was born into, and he saw voting Conservative as the best way to achieve that. He didn't want handouts, he didn't want a council house, and he didn't want to be part of a union that just seemed to destroy everything for trivial reasons. To be fair, back in the seventies, he had a point there. He considered those on the hard left - the sort of organisation that the RMT supports today - to be completely beyond the pale and the complete antithesis of his value system.
I've never voted Conservative in my life, and never intend to because they've crossed far too many red lines in my opinion, and are leading us to absolute disaster with the kind of Brexit we're heading for, but I can understand their appeal to the sort of man my dad was. I suspect if he'd lived longer, he might have supported Blair - my mum certainly did - because Blair recognised the aspirations that a lot of working class people have to better themselves, and the world their kids will inherit.
Corbyn came along and pissed all over that - promising loads of freebies and preaching class war and revenge on the rich is not what people like my dad want. They want to be able to claim a stake in society for themselves, off their own backs.
However obnoxious I find the Tories to be, I won't judge anyone who votes for them, whatever their background, because people are motivated by different things and want different things for themselves and their families. Most people want the world to be better, and will vote accordingly for the party they think will deliver on that.
There's a lot about my dad I don't want to emulate, but I admire his basic decency, and the good start he struggled to make sure I got in life. I'm better off than he ever was, so he must have got a few things right.
I appreciate this is rather long and a bit tangential, but I post it in response to the "turkeys voting for Christmas" comments about those deemed working class voting Tory.
He was a proud man who believed in hard work. He left school at fifteen with no qualifications, and he never had a particularly well paid job, but he managed to afford to buy a house, a car and (just about) support his family. I was briefly privately educated and my parents moved heaven and earth to try and get me into the best school possible. He made some foolish decisions money-wise, but tried to buy into Thatcher's vision of the property and share owning democracy. I think he was somewhat misguided, and it drove him to an early grave with little more than a pot to piss in, but there you go.
The point I'm making here is that he was aspirational, and wanted a better life than the one he was born into, and he saw voting Conservative as the best way to achieve that. He didn't want handouts, he didn't want a council house, and he didn't want to be part of a union that just seemed to destroy everything for trivial reasons. To be fair, back in the seventies, he had a point there. He considered those on the hard left - the sort of organisation that the RMT supports today - to be completely beyond the pale and the complete antithesis of his value system.
I've never voted Conservative in my life, and never intend to because they've crossed far too many red lines in my opinion, and are leading us to absolute disaster with the kind of Brexit we're heading for, but I can understand their appeal to the sort of man my dad was. I suspect if he'd lived longer, he might have supported Blair - my mum certainly did - because Blair recognised the aspirations that a lot of working class people have to better themselves, and the world their kids will inherit.
Corbyn came along and pissed all over that - promising loads of freebies and preaching class war and revenge on the rich is not what people like my dad want. They want to be able to claim a stake in society for themselves, off their own backs.
However obnoxious I find the Tories to be, I won't judge anyone who votes for them, whatever their background, because people are motivated by different things and want different things for themselves and their families. Most people want the world to be better, and will vote accordingly for the party they think will deliver on that.
There's a lot about my dad I don't want to emulate, but I admire his basic decency, and the good start he struggled to make sure I got in life. I'm better off than he ever was, so he must have got a few things right.
I appreciate this is rather long and a bit tangential, but I post it in response to the "turkeys voting for Christmas" comments about those deemed working class voting Tory.
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