Jeremy Corbyn, like us all, is no doubt a flawed human being, but in my opinion he is a man modest about his own accomplishments, yet nonetheless proud of the achievements of the Labour movement. I am certain that he would not ask to be seen in the same light as James Keir Hardie, one of the founding figures of the Labour Party and its first MP at Westminster. Nonetheless Keir Hardie's treatment at the hands of the baying mob of Planet Westminster bears some comparison with what Jeremy Corbyn faces today and the following extract drawn from Bob Holman's biography of Keir Hardie* hints at the inner strength a person would need when in the face of orchestrated and unrelenting personal abuse.
From: Keir Hardie by Bob Holman, Oxford, Lion (2010) and iBooks. https://itun.es/gb/jug4H.l
“Then he accepted personal abuse. The personal attacks and lies about him never ceased. Early in his parliamentary life, he printed the menus from which MPs gorged themselves and contrasted them with the lack of choice of the starving. They retaliated in the press with rumours that he was a glutton, smoked cigars costing 2s. 6d. each, and lived in a hotel where he enjoyed champagne and ten-course meals. He received hundreds of crude letters. At elections he was accused of advocating free love and being an atheist. Often when he rose in the Commons to make a case for the socially deprived he would be jeered, howled at, and interrupted.
When asked by his friends to hit back, he replied, “Let conduct be its own reward.” Yet the continual misrepresentations, false accusations, and cruel cartoons must have been among the factors which sometimes depressed him and increasingly affected his health.”
Things don't seem to have changed much in the ensuing 100 years.
Things don't seem to have changed much in the ensuing 100 years.
From: Keir Hardie by Bob Holman, Oxford, Lion (2010) and iBooks. https://itun.es/gb/jug4H.l
