Elizabeth Hope: Divisiveness

What is it breeds divisiveness?
Disraeli’s hold one-nation dream?
Churchill’s clear far-sightedness?
Thatcher’s people-power theme?
Is national unity more cleft By powers of the right – or left?
By Bevan’s ‘Tory vermin’ scream?
Or Bernie Grant’s ‘good hiding’ steam?
Or Labour’s pledge to soak the rich with avaricious nose a-twitch?

From class divisions Labour spoke.
And Socialism, more extreme.
Then Independent Labour broke,
Like SDP, to save the cream.
Black Sections bifurcate again
As Trots and Militants take rein,
And earthy sons of toil now deem
Themselves the only genuine seam.
Thus ever Labour splits and shreds
In separate shades of pinks and reds.

Labour cleaves society
While its endless factions teem;
Strife is its epitome
As inner chasms rift and ream.
Labour clamours others’ guilt
To camouflage the spite it’s spilt
And masks its weakness with a scheme
To pour a rank invective stream
On fancied faults it won’t condone
That match its unacknowledged own.

Divisiveness in disarray,
Presented as salvation’s gleam,
Is a Labour Party trait
That skews its policies off-beam –
No fit basis to unite
Or set the nation’s soul alight.
Instead, ‘divisiveness’ would seem
A desperate deceptive meme,
A repetitious ploy worn thin
That fails to take the electorate in.

from Ideological Commentary 33, May 1988.