The great socialist folk singer, Pete Seeger, always said that he wanted to be with “the live hearts”, wherever they may be and in whatever numbers they were fighting the struggle. Jimmy Reid was always a “live heart”.
To begin Jimmy’s life near the end, he eventually rejected Labour for the SNP because he felt Labour to be paradoxically a Thatcherite party.
And he was right to say that Labour had left its working class base behind, and Labour had sadly lost confidence in working class people. Most of its leaders and indeed most of the leading trade union bureaucracy no longer live, mix and socialise with the working class they represent. But Jimmy was absolutely at one with them to the end. (more…)