A curious tweet earlier today from Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, who lost her place in Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet re-shuffle:
"Thank you twittersphere for kind comments. I have freedom to speak for Hackney freely for first time in five years"
I am sure those who elected Meg Hillier in 2005 and 2010 will be interested to know that her Ministerial and then Shadow cabinet careers came first, her Hackney constituents second.
Parliament's one of the central institutions invented by the ruling classes to help maintain their entrenched privilege. Socialists who choose to join the 'club' are for the most part likely to be marginalised, absorbed, or just plain ignored. It doesn't necessarily make people who work for institutions bad people, it's just the way that power works and the way that it makes people work when they accept their rules. I think that it's probably possible to work for an institution - say the teaching profession and make some sort of progress against power. But it's a dangerous business, because all of these institutions are part of the problem, not part of the solution. They're built in the image of power and they usually seek to extend their influence, not reduce or abolish it.
As for Meg Hillier, I suspect that she's just feeling a little humiliated at the moment after losing out in yesterday's game of musical chairs. Maybe we'll see her face on the barricades come the revolution, who knows? If we do, I rather suspect that it's more likely to be on the end of a metal pole than shouting "kill the rich!'
Posted by: romanticanarchist | October 09, 2011 at 03:26 PM