Keeping on to the end

This is one of those unusual posts on this blog which is mostly about me (your humble blogger) and (for me at least) it isn't good news.

The summer before last I blogged here about popular support for the National Health Service when I got my diagnosis of locally advanced prostate cancer. Last year I got my own taste of intensive care (and hospital food) when sepsis cut short my radiotherapy treatment (and the NHS saved my life). This year, today, I visited outpatients at the Royal Sussex County Hospital for a blood test and saw at first hand the bravery of health service workers on the front line of dealing with a deadly pandemic.

As I observed here the other day “low paid essential workers (nurses and other health service workers, cleaners, refuse collectors, public transport workers) are vital for our existence, whereas the wealthy and powerful are not.” The world in which we live is made, and re-made every day, by workers (and not by billionaires) but we are denied control over the world created by our labour.

That, of course, is why we have created trade unions, and a Labour Party, to represent our interests. In a lifetime of active membership of our movement I have become all too familiar with the problem of how our movement is vulnerable to “capture” by some of those we employ in its service – it’s something I fought for years in UNISON, and it is not at all surprising to see evidence of the same problem in the Party.

It is important to continue to fight for democracy in the labour movement because, for as long as our movement is dominated by officials contemptuous of the rank and file it cannot fulfil its task to transform our society. I therefore intend to continue to be active in the movement (and for me now that means the Labour Party) for as long as I can.

Unfortunately, that may not be as long as I would have hoped. As I said, today I went for a blood test. This was because I have now been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I can no longer hope that treatment could cure my cancer, although it will help to keep it under control for a matter of months or (probably quite a few) years.

I guess it is unlikely that I will now live to see a socialist Britain – but that was probably always pretty unlikely, and I hope I will continue to play my minor role in the struggle for a while yet – just as I intend to enjoy every day of life as it unfolds before me. One day (just like you, dear reader) I will die, but each day before that I intend to live.

And - since I have always known how to live well - that will include Labour Party meetings...