Tories Richard Benyon richest MP (£110 million) & Charles Ashley Rupert Walker OBE with @OwenSmith_MP -Socialist. pic.twitter.com/PRfLh37XUQ
— Dylan George (@DylanStrain) August 8, 2016
The tweet above, and others like it, caught my eye.
Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith is pictured on a fishing trip with rich Tory MPs Richard Benyon and Charles Walker. “Not much socialism there” was one tweeted comment.
So, the inference is that Owen Smith has lots of rich Tory chums and goes on fishing trips with them. So he can’t possibly be a socialist, or even a true “new Labour” man.
The tweet particularly caught my eye because I had a good idea where the photo came from.
It came from the website of the Angling Trust, “fighting for fishing”. It illustrated an article written by former Labour MP for Reading West, Martin Salter. The photo is from a trip to the River Pang organised by the All Party Parliamentary Angling Group, which seeks to foster positive parliamentary work in favour of angling, the UK’s most popular participatory sport.
In his article, Martin Salter explains how he struggled to set up that group:
My problem was that there were strict rules about the membership of these All Party Groups with 20 nominees required from across the parties. Although I could easily round up ten Labour MPs from my own side, including several keen coarse anglers, I also needed anther ten from the combined opposition parties and there wasn’t anyone who seemed as keen as me to take this forward and to put in the work.
Luckily all that changed in 2005 with the election of Charles Walker as Conservative MP for Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. Charles tracked me down within days of his election and soon we were arranging some fishing trips. I had the pleasure in helping him catch his first barbel and he helped me iron out some of the many flaws in my fly fishing technique. Charles was clearly a fine all round angler, a great orator and just the person to help get the All Party Parliamentary Angling Group off the ground. We were joined by my neighbouring MP Richard Benyon who represents Newbury whilst on the Labour side we had Mike Foster from Worcester who was an accomplished match fisherman and my old friend Jon Cruddas, the MP for Dagenham. After I retired from the Commons in 2010 Charles took over from me as chair of the group and then passed the baton to another keen Conservative angler, George Hollingbery.
Bear in mind, as anyone who knows of the man will attest, Martin Salter was one of the most “tribal” Labour MP’s ever. But he set up an all-party parliamentary group, on a subject which is natural territory for Labour MPs, and managed to involve some Tory MPs, including one who gave the use of his land for the group’s trips.
This seems to me to an excellent example of cross-party co-operation in Parliament, particularly on a subject which is very dear to many Labour voters’ hearts.
It is therefore a great shame that a photo from this activity has been used out of context on Twitter to try to smear Owen Smith as some sort of non-Labour person.
And, no, I couldn’t say all that in 140 characters.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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11 Comments
I don’t remember Tony Benn ever being attacked by posting photographs of family outings of the Wedgewood Benn family, or where the Wedgewood Benns were hobnobbing with other posh families. This tweet from Mr. Strain is clearly part of the Militant Tendency kind of smear tactics now used in Labour circles. But I remember some Liverpool Militants in the 1980’s who, once they had discovered the “Jet Set” lifestyle, could not get enough of it themselves…
When Marx and Lenin adviced “class betrayal” for intellectuals and academics (deserting from their elite and joining the Working Class in the Class struggle), at no point did they ever say that noble and/or academic marxists should cut off all family and/or job connections or should avoid mingling with posh people (it could be a way of mobilising support for workers in posh circles, a tactical ploy).
Attacking Labour MPs, tribal, centrist or otherwise, with this kind of superficial “arguments” is just leftist political correctness running riot.
Thank God Liberals (social liberals like Keynes and his Bloomsbury friends included) never were swayed by these kind of smear tactics by orthodox bigots.
Excellent piece , Paul , and typical of you and any in this party , seeing even in the little things , something significant.
Charles Walker is mentioned , a decent man . There are many such men and women in the Tories or Labour. Some in our party , few , though they are , have referred to David Laws in a rather bitter way because of his wealth or success in the city. I see it differently . If anyone is worth as much as the Tory M.P. in your article , we know they are not in politics for the money !
What Labour are going through is very sad , very dramatic and rather peculiar!
Looked at through our intellects this sort of thing does seem silly, even funny but there are some vicious emotions behind it & of course, it works. The point about Labour is that this sort of class prejudice is common across the political spectrum. “Saving Labour” which is supposed to be a Centrist group is currently running a smear campaign against senior figures in Momentum on the basis that they are Millionaires & really, really Posh.
The sort of prejudice that would get you expelled from Labour, if it was on the basis of gender, ethnicity ot religion is fine if its against people who are too rich or too posh.
At least Jeremy Corbyn is sorting out the so called moderates of the Labour Party who enthusiastically support interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I would think that a true Liberal would be happy to see the current Labour meltdown. It was always a party holding together Marxists and moderates in the same string bag. The difference between Smith and Corbyn policies is the difference between fantasy and lunacy so whoever wins, Blairites still lose.
I have this strange torn feeling watching Labour; Corbyn frustrates me intensely as I cannot see any serious intent to either put together a plan for government or to scrutinise and hold the government to account.
But then Mandelson gets up and says Theresa May should just get on and do a deal with the Chinese over Hinkley Point as you ‘can’t be choosy’ who you deal with on trade in these times; exactly the kind of ‘all business is good business’ thinking that will disenfanchise us in the post-Brexit era and lead to bad deals being made with dubious ehticality and low democratic accountability.
To be honest, it’s not something I’d be surprised at Liam Fox or Douglas Carswell trotting out.
Obviously the future for the Labour party at the moment is not exactly a Manichean dualist choice between the two – there’s a lot of shades of grey in the middle.
But is it too much to hope for a grouping to emerge from Labour on the centre-left that is both robust, realist and streetwise when it comes to parliamentary politics and government, and takes democracy and ethics seriously?
Robin Cook, what has happened to your party?
I do hope something happens which brings social democrats and democratic socialists in Labour into closer collaboration with LibDems and social liberals of all kinds.
But knowing that, post-Brown, the Labour party had ample opportunities to hold power, to reach outside itself, to shape the direction of the country positively and collaboratively … all the missed chances for meaningful collaboration since 2010!
It grates on me.
It’s all a bit of a yawn and illustrates why people get switched off by politics.
As for Labour, if the best they can do to challenge Corbyn is to put up the unknown unproved Smith then they really are in big trouble. Whatever happened to the so called ‘big beasts’ ?
Incidentally we should get too sniffy about posh boys
Whatever happened to the so called ‘big beasts’ ?
I hope we are plotting with them. There is no happy ever after for the Labour Party. This is a family rift that could only be healed if Jezza is wiped out at the leadership election. Any odds on that?
Our party leadership and the Labour moderates have a duty of care to the British people to save them from any more Tory incompetence.
Woops……. pressed the button too soon
coninued…………. Incidentally we should not get too sniffy about the posh boys in other parties. In our lot before Tim Farron, only Charles Kennedy was educated at a state school, all the rest were public school boys including three old Etonians.
Isn’t this just a bit silly. In the real world we all have friends with different views. I meet up with a long term friend who I’ve debated Europe with quite heatedly. As Lib Dem support is currently 8/9% all Liberal democrats must have friends with different views. All of us go to work-and all our colleagues support different parties. Our employers couldn’t function if we didn’t work together. I don’t know the views of the people I go to football with. If Owen smith goes fishing with Tories isn’t that a good thing?
I do agree with Matt from Bristol. somewhere from the mess of the Labour Party a new centre -leftish grouping has to emerge that takes in social democrats, social liberals, liberals, democratic socialists.
Peter Griffiths does not appear to know that Owen Smith opposed these interventions. And what does “sorting out” mean? Somebody disagrees with you and you “sort them out”. Charles Kennedy effectively accused William Hague of “bar-room politics”. This sounds more like bar brawl politics.