In his 1935 poem the great Communist playwright Bertholt Brecht wrote "Questions from a Worker Who Reads". It starts:

‘Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?...’

He exposed that behind the ‘great men’ of history fiction there are legions who really do the work.

The superb Victorian architect John Middleton, who designed the local Clearwell mortuary and the railway house I was born in, didn’t build them himself. He was just the conductor of an orchestra of labour controlled by those who owned the wealth that the orchestra of labour created.

Following the French Revolution the Combination Acts were introduced to ban Trade’s Unions to ‘stop revolution happening here’, and 19th century workers turned to Methodism to shelter behind. Just for being in a Union you could be ‘transported’ for half a lifetime to ‘the colonies’. Christianity was, and still ought to be, revolutionary. Just leave God out of it and you’re on the road to Communism. That’s what the rich really feared and still do! So, they made Unions illegal.

Methodist churches are monuments to this historic struggle. They litter the Forest - modest and inspiring symbols of resistance and hope. Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was right to say that the Labour Party had more to do with Methodism than Marxism.

Before the welfare state, churches generally were the centres of social life – the market, the labour exchange and the community centre. The church stopped being necessary and was relegated to simply being ‘spiritual’ when the state took over these functions. The material basis for organised religion was ripped away. Churches were left with births, deaths and marriages – just enough to keep them on life support.

The soul of the Labour Movement lies in the intellectual and practical work of men and women who created what we see around us – in the factories and schools, the railways, the forest and the farms. Working people created them and were in turn shaped by them.

As the economy changed the mandate of Labour became more than just about defending the rights of the historic ‘blue collar’ working class. It had a vision about constructing a functioning and balanced world that served ALL wage earners. Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution embraced workers ‘by hand or brain’ and united blue and white-collar workers. The Labour Party became the political expression of ALL working people to achieve a balanced economy utilising all intellectual and practical talents.

Tony Blair, in a homage to Margaret Thatcher and delusions about free market ‘global’ capitalism, chucked it aside. We stopped making things and shipped that task to the rest of the world and became a ‘financialised’ economy based on the mirage of easy money in a globalised world of deregulated markets ruled by private capital – mainly from the USA and Britain.

The roots of this country’s decay and its politics lie in this act of suicidal stupidity.