Keir Starmer & roads
Keir Starmer writes near the end of his Fabian pamphlet (2021) that ‘the road ahead will be long, the journey will not be simple,
Road imagery on the left is quite common.
Stalin was reputed be perpetually on the road to socialism though some found themselves diverted to the gulag. Hence the British Communist Party’s long running programme when first produced in 1951- the British Road to Socialism-was claimed to be inspired by Uncle Joe.
Charles Parker’s radio ballad, The Long March of Everyman was also about a road journey but here people were marching not walking properly on the pavement as one suspects Sir Keir envisages.
Eric Hobsbawm, definitely a road man, saw the forward march of labour being halted by Thatcherism
On the other hand Sir Keir’s road is certainly not the kind of shining path preferred by several varieties of Maoist.
The problem with road imagery in general is its lack of engagement with actual history and how change occurs. Of course modest incremental changes often take a long time to happen, hence a journey.
More radical change though more often occurs in bursts, sometimes quite unexpectedly (to most anyway). People are not on a journey they are seeing the world change suddenly before their eyes, not as bystanders or fellow travellers but as participants.
There ws also a more direct link between Charles Parker and the open road than just the “Long March of Everyman”. Prior to that, he had – as one of his thematic Radio Ballads – done an hour long special with McColl and Seeger on the building of the M1 (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/radioballads/original/songofaroad.shtml) Sad to say that whilst all kinds of rubbish are on the BBC Iplayer, neither that programme and series is now available