Your old road is Rapidly agin'...shades of 1964 but .......

My thoughts wander and I begin to think of the history of the period 1960 to 1964. In many ways there is a certain similarity between then and now. I wonder if certain behaviours of the right wing and it's lackeys of the popular press.

Is Theresa May a latter day Alec Douglas Hume. As Wilson neared power in 1964 allegations of links with Eastern Europe was aimed at him. Having failed with IRA links the declining elements of the right grow more and more desperate.. a wounded beast is at it's most desperate and dangerous. Corbyn will experience it's attacks in the coming weeks.

I think we are on the edge of great social political and economic reforms. I suspect that very soon the coming Labour government will be the most reforming government since 1945. But it will ally that with social reforms similar to that of the 60s. A conservative generation is passing away and a new Socialist hegemony is coming into being.

We are about to experience a new white heat of reform and we shall see the price mechanism and the market capped controlled and muted. Unlike the 60s social media offers the young and the aware on the left a method to fight back. The genii will not go back into the bottle and as the paradigm grows we see clear links between the Wiaon years and the Cornyn years. However unlike 1964 the left controls the Labour Party and is firmly in control. A new generation of left wingers line up behind Conbyn and McDonnell. Corbyn too is different to Wilson. In philosophical terms and in political awareness and direction Cornyn is different he is aware if multiple streams of Socialism and is at heart a decentralist. He understands and promotes environmentalism, he is a vegetarian and a long term supporter of animal rights. Wilson came from another background and did not grasp the nature if social change to the degree that Cornyn does. Corbyn also knows how to survive and had the experience of surviving the Blair years.

There however will be one more similarity between the next election and 1964 I suspect that the Labour majority may be as low as it was then. All of us on the left are going to have to learn to be more pluralist and less sectarian than we have ever been before.. the coming Socialist government will need all the friends it has in all other parties of the left. As we near Pontardawe the light grows and with it my hope for the coming Socialist society. This could welk be the greatest reforming government we have yet seen.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Bob Dylan

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon…

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Songw