Don’t label Labour’s leader an extremist
IT’S difficult to know whether to laugh or despair at the recent attempts by correspondents Harry Singleton and Bill Newham to invoke ‘history’ in their efforts to label Jeremy Corbyn an extremist.
The truth is that the type of policies Corbyn advocates on nationalised ownership were also favoured by every post-war Tory prime minister from Winston Churchill to Ted Heath – including along the way Anthony Eden, Harold MacMillan and Alec Douglas-Hulme.
The economic model that Corbyn advocates returning to is a west European one that we used to share with our neighbours, and which has been successfully practised by all of Scandinavia, Germany and France.
We’re supposed to be the fifth largest economy in the world – and have been the fourth – yet large amounts of people are less well-off than when we were the 20th.
They also have less social protection and funded educational opportunities than their grandparents.
Nor is Corbyn an extremist in the context of Labour history or its political spectrum.
Historically you could say that the centre of the party was roughly the position Barbara Castle occupied.
The right would be represented by MPs like John Stonehouse and George Brown. Corbyn would have been to the left of Castle but probably beyond him would have been MPs like Eric Heffer, Tony Benn and Michael Foot.
Significantly those critics of Corbyn’s that feature in the Parliamentary Labour Party are so far to the right they don’t even register on the movement’s historical spectrum, and are consequently often referred to as ‘Red Tories.’
It’s from that false, artificial positioning that the notion of Corbyn as ‘extremist’ originates. Gavin Lewis, Manchester
Nightclub’s enduring run
READING your Nostalgia page about Fagin’s nightclub reminded me and my wife about its opening night around September 1970.
We were just strolling along Oxford Street when we came across this new club with door staff outside.
We asked them about the club and they said it was the opening night, so we thought we would give it a try.
Inside, the club was quite up-market, with the waiters dressed in an Oliver Twist theme.
Top of the bill was Tony Hatch and his wife Jackie Trent. Also appearing was a girl group, The Paper Dolls, featuring Susie Mathis, who went on to become one of Manchester’s top radio DJs, along with all her charity work for Francis House.
I never thought it would turn out to be one of Manchester’s long lasting clubs. Brian Howard, South Manchester
Help trace soldier’s kin
I AM writing to see if your readers may be able to help me trace descendants of Sgt Kay Egerton Ashworth.
Some time ago when the M.E.N. published a search for WWI casualties, I found out that a cousin of my father had served in the Royal Field Artillery and died in March 1918, in France.
This was the first I knew of this relative as my father never mentioned it and we did not have contact with his mother’s side of the family while he was alive.
Last year I visited the Somme area where he died and tracked his movements for the last four days of his life.
He had no known grave and is just a name among many others at the Arras memorial. That I thought was that – until May this year.
Another researcher contacted me to say that he had come across a grave of an unknown soldier in a graveyard nearest to where Kay had died.
This researcher, who was tracking the history of his relative, had been able, within the course of his researches, to identify a number of previously unknown soldiers and obtained verification by the War Graves Commission.
He is currently collecting the evidence for this grave that he believes is the last resting place of Kay.
I hope that this can be completed by March next year – 100 years since his death. I would like to contact any of the descendants of his father’s family as Kay himself died without children. His father was Robert Henry Ashworth and at one time lived in Radcliffe.
His children were William, Richard, May – who died in 1976 – and Alice, who died in 1994.
My email is stevensvalerie7@aol.com and I would love to be able to share this story of their brave relative with his family.
I do hope that you can help. Val Stevens, Stretford