AS the speculation about a snap General Election grows many people are casting their minds back to 1979 when Labour Prime Minister Sunny Jim Callaghan misjudged the mood of the country, after tanking the economy putting the nation through a winter of discontent and ushering in Margaret Thatcher.
Last month in the city chambers some younger opposition colleagues referred back to that fateful election accusing the SNP vote of no confidence in Labour - for failing to deliver devolution - as the harbinger of the decade of discord and despair Thatcherism unleashed.
Nearly twenty-five years on, Margaret Thatcher’s reputation is still deservedly low.
However, not with Labour who also seem to overlook the seven new and unique benefits introduced under the SNP in Scotland including the game-changing Scottish Child Payment.
Widely considered a shoo-in at the next General Election, carbon copy Conservative Keir is consistently on the record for saying that he intends to bring zero economic change - and is no better than a David Cameron tribute act.
When quizzed about scrapping the two-child benefit he replied, “Don’t expect a radical Labour government”.
Sir Keir Starmer has applauded Thatcher in the Tory Telegraph for effecting “meaningful change”.
Rachel Reeves, the Labour lady is not for turning either, pitching herself as a big business-friendly Thatcher for today.
Reeves, Labour’s shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, praised Thatcher in a recent speech saying Britain must rebuild its economic “resilience”, likening Labour’s promised economic transformation that she hopes will reverse Britain’s decline to Thatcher’s hatchet to communities in 1979.
Shortly after David Lammy another Labour shady Shadow Secretary described Thatcher as a “visionary leader for the UK”.
The same day Labour were shamelessly reminiscing about Thatcher in the City Chambers, another Labour member moved a motion about more Women in Politics rightly calling out sexism and misogyny.
I moved an amendment that their motion was warm words unless followed up by action that directly benefitted women.
What should have been Women’s Hour was instead hours of women being gaslighted. The Sisterhood of Starmer failing to stand up for Waspi women in another motion moved by me and seconded by Drumchapel’s own Glasgow Girl, Councillor Roza Salih.
3.6 million women born in the 1950s have had the goalpost moved on their pensions in 1995 and 2011.
The lack of action by successive Labour and Tory governments to do them justice has been decried in a recent report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which not only found the DWP guilty of maladministration in its handling of pension changes but ruled that the women affected are owed compensation.
Fellow female councillors – everyone Labour - mumbled an amendment that the UK Government should “continue to listen to those women who have been affected” and their calls for economic justice.
Labour councillors, claiming to be Waspi women themselves, urged the UK Government to sit down and chat with the Waspi women about “long overdue justice” despite decades of them trying to do so and having to go through the Courts.
Labour Westminster candidates seemed to be more likely to sit down for a teatime talk with Margaret Thatcher as Gordon Brown did when he was Chancellor than give any of these women the time of day.
Time is something these women don’t have.
As my fellow Councillor Elaine McSporran highlighted, some 240,000 women have already passed away without ever receiving any apology, any justice, or any compensation.
It’s estimated that around 40,000 sadly pass away each year. 11 women each day do not live to see justice.
We have seen before in Glasgow how women workers were discriminated against by Labour and deserted by their unions some of whom have their own staff threatening to go on strike due to the rampant sexism, having to take matters into their own hands. And seen how it took the SNP in government in Glasgow to deliver equal pay.
Meanwhile in Birmingham, bankrupted by Labour this past year, women’s justified claims for Equal Pay are being used as cover by the Labour administration for incompetent implementation of an IT contract that ended up costing, more than six times the original budget.
Waspi women trusted both Tory and Labour governments to honour their pension contracts.
Pensions in the UK are already amongst the lowest pensions in Europe. Waspi women don’t even have that luxury: forced to work longer in low-paid jobs, care for elderly relatives, look after grandchildren, and to wheesht! Just get on with it!
Waspi women have shown that they will get on with it. They will continue to campaign and highlight hypocrisy and injustice at every turn.
Whether it was the hypocrisy of Labour councillors in the City Chambers, or Jackie Bailie posing for a selfie with Waspi women three weeks ago and then selling them down the river, or Anas Sarwar deleting online support for them after saying the Scottish Government should pick up the tab despite blocking devolution of pensions, as well as employment law to Scotland.
Waspi women have been stung by both Labour and the Tories. And what is the response from Labour’s Aberdeen-born Aretha Franklin lite Anneliese Dodds, Chair of the Labour Party? Waspi women deserve ‘respect’! No mention of compensation, just another Labour U-turn.
While Labour sisters stand by their man, Sleekit Starmer, only the SNP continue to stand in solidarity with Waspi women, and workers whether female or not, who want fair pay. Don’t come the cowboy with Waspi women, sonny Jim!
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