[* Excerpts from Jeremy Corbyn's speech in Parliament…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-07-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 16 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 16
* Excerpts from Jeremy Corbyn's speech in Parliament last Friday, July 1.
THIS IS the first time that I have spoken to the House. It seems a million miles away from the constituency that I represent and the problems that the people there face.
Islington North is only a few miles from the House by tube or bus. We are suffering massive unemployment and massive cuts imposed by the Government on the local authorities. There are cuts in the Health Service. In common with the rest of inner London, we have lost all grant funding for education.
That is a measure of the contempt with which the Government have treated Islington North - indeed, the whole borough of Islington.
Media attack
The borough has suffered an unprecedented media attack/in exactlý the same way as the GLC suffered because it was singled out as fair game for editorials in the Daily Mail, The Sun, and other newspapers....
[It] has suffered a stupendous loss in rate support grant since 1979. In 4979 £55 million a year was paid to Islington borough council. That was the Government contribution to the needs of that rundown inner city area.
It is indicative of the Government's determination to create massive unemployment in inner city areas and demonstrates their ignorance of the problems that people face in such boroughs that the Government grant is now down to £32 million and is destined to go down further. That is a massive indictment of the Government.
Contempt
Unemployment in Islington is as bad as anywhere else in Lonion About one third of those who are out of work at the moment in Islington have been out of work for more than a year. Within a few minutes of the House are areas in Finsbury Park where there are black people of 20 and older, both women and men, who have never worked since leaving school at 16. ' They have little but contempt for the Government and for proceedings that are adopted by the Government in attacking such boroughs. They have little regard for a system that seems destined to force them to stay permanently on the dole.
I shall convey that spirit to the House as often as I can. The people in my constituency are bitter and angry. we are vergey.