Better Than Mauve

The Labour Party should stop calling itself the Labour Party.  Labour is a horrid word.  The dull among us 'labour the point'; the criminal is sentenced with 'hard labour' as well as loss of liberty (or used to be, perhaps should be even now); no-one wants their breathing to be laboured, or yet their argument; or their work to be laborious - even less their patterns of thought.  Doubtless many other unattractive associations can be added, not least 'camp'.

Ed Miliband is in the owning up stage of getting us to forgive the attack on Iraq, and to forgive Gordon Brown in his entirety.  But he's starting from the wrong place.  We won't forgive, or forget, either of those two monstrosities.  It is their association with much that is attractive in the history and thinking of a radical movement of the centre left that must be severed and, in line with  turning a disaster to advantage, at last the very name they disgrace could be abandoned.

There are other words to lose as well while he's at it: struggle, fight; scum; as well as journey, message (we'll have to keep send, it's too useful a verb in other contexts) and even big.  Perhaps it would be best to have a thesaurus drawn up, or something like the pretty book of rhymes for hopeful poets I found here among the severe religious texts (though the forebear who signed his name inside, Ansano, also added Pazzo over and over again which suggests self doubt of his poetic gifts; but I digress).

So what name will gather together all the good and worthwhile values and history and achievements of the Movement?   Mutual, co-operative, people, sharing, community - all these are applicable to some part of what is wanted but unfortunately have had quite a drubbing in the mouths of socialists and communists.   And trying for future, hope, forward, together, serve has decidedly fascistic echoes. Perhaps that's why the newly re-formed Italian parties went for trees and flowers.

I like The Red Party.   It's got everything: complex associations with every shade of leftishness encompassed in a simple word,  sets up wonderful sets of oppositions; declarative; assertive; and a glorious colour.