Left Behind: Journeys into British Politics - Tapa dura

A 1980s' equivalent of Priestley's English Journey, David Selbourne's book is an acute and topical portrayal of Britain in decline and an indictment of the Left's failure to provide a true and honest response to the general malaise.
Visits to doctors' waiting-rooms in Lancashire and Cheshire, dole offices in Wolverhampton, the strike-torn communities of South Yorkshire and the Tammany-dominated Liverpool Labour Party reveal the debilitating effects of unemployment, industrial decay and lack of resources at both a personal and public level. These engrossing pages convey disillusion and depression, bitterness and racism, but also humour and wry observation from the author and his acquaintances.
There is no abstract pontificating: verbatim conversations with the inhabitants of, for example, Handsworth show that some immigrants feel that 'Labour are the worst enemies of black people' and that trade unions are 'crap, a waste of space'. In addition, well-known figures such as David Blunkett in his Socialist Republic, Tony Mulhearn in his Merseyside command-post and Ray Hon-eyford in a polarized Bradford are interviewed with impartiality and a sharp eye for detajl. Avoiding the simplistic, Selbourne clearly sets out the complexities of contradictory viewpoints and at the same time maintains throughout his own independent position.
The divisions sometimes open, sometimes hidden of police and miners, employed and unemployed, black and white, Left and Right, and even the polite disagreements of Tory and SDP at a postelection garden party in Hampshire, are at the heart of this book. But so too is the Left's inability to outgrow its own narrow tradition. Unless this is remedied the future of Great Britain is bleak. Intelligent, original and stimulating, Left Behind is anything but bleak reading.