Why I joined @UKLabour party, a thread

1. Political apathy. I spent most of my life till my mid 30's being cast around by the warp and weft of political weaving, I didnt feel engaged or even heard, i went with the flow.

2. I was interested in some very niche policies but didnt get much involved with anything, eccept the Make Poverty History March in Brighton in 03? Other than that I just let the winds blow and got angry at stuff i had no cotrol over.

3. WhenGordon Brown lost the election i wasnt really dismayed, just disheartened. He was a terrible Prime Minister and a fool of a Chancelor, arguably his mistakes in the early Blair years made worse the 08 crisis.

4. During the colossal balls up of the Great LibDem Power Play Margaret Beckett, I believe, was interim party leader. After her brief and non descript tenure Ed Milliband became leader and was utterly abysmal, voting in line with Gov more than against.

5. That GE i didnt vote for @UKLabour for the first time in my adult life, i just didnt see it as Labour, just Tory apologists trying to be relevant in a darkening world. Unsurprisingly, the party lost that election, against the most draconian government we had yet to see

6. It was Harriet Harman, of age of consent should be 10 years old letter fame, who was interim leader and she kept to the Milliband mantra of say anythig, do nothing. I deeply feared that the party might finally have gone bonkers.

7. I had started working in social care in a care home for adults with learning disabilities, a job i came to adore after worrying i wouldnt be very good. Those 6 people, with all of their different difficulties taught me about humanity, and i love them still for that and more

8. I joined @unitetheunion and though i didnt get involved and largely suffered at the hands of a nasty employer because i didnt want to make too much fuss, i remain an unemployed member and I am proud to be a trade unionist

9. I had ticked the box about joining the Labour Party via my Union sub and as such i gained a vote in the leadership election. I had become more and more intersted in politics and social democracy, I dont recall very much about the warly leadership contest, but then i found it

10. I found my place, a social democrat! Id spent years not really putting labels on my beliefs or politics, largely because i didnt know what most of them actually meant. @jeremycorbyn came out of nowhere and suddenly someone was on my side, saying my thoughts

11. I voted for him, because i truly believed he represented the core values of the party. I believed that the party could be radical, it could be bold and visionary and suddenly that was tangible, not just wishy washy hippy lefty thoughts

12. And then it bagan, almost immediately the Great Internal Spat. I saw members of the PLP openly mocking, chiding and insulting the membership of my party, they were doing this to me because i voted against them and for him.

13. It was relentless, a war of atrition. The coups, the open hostility, the language. The Chukka Um-and-Ah and the Chicken Eagle Coup. Second leadership, i voted for the embattled leader. All the Tories had todo was watch the party burn and add the odd bit of fuel

14. And so that war of atrition continued, open dissent and distrust, willing discommunication of the manifesto, open lies about brexit policy and the smears, by god the smears were torrential.

15. My heart was broken, that vision and that hope all washed away on the river of despair. We lost the 17 election, and now we know why, but then it was suspicion and we were conspiracists, cultists and extremists, but now we know why!

16. So after losing the 19 election and not seeing any of my preferences win their spots why would I join as a member, not just a union affiliated member? After all the pain, suffering and anger, why join?

17. I joined because this is my party damn you! 100 years of blood and tears so i can hold a mans hand and not get glassed, so i can have a holiday and not lose my job, its my party and i dont want to lose it!

18.of course i have deep deep fears of centrist neoliberalism, as someone tweeted the other day - if centrist policies were so popular why are the LibDems failing? I dont want to lose my party, and i wont let it go without a fight

19. 100 years of martyrs 100 years of becoming human, i wont let that go, i wont let the memories of our Hallowed Martyrs go.If the party becomes lost to me its because the party sailed away, the party, not me, lost the map. I joined to fight the only fight worth losing

20. of course i see this as a lose lose, but i think of those early labour unionists, i think of those men and women who were once illegal and i see us as alive, free and equal. I'll fight for an imperfect hope, because it gave me my life! END