Cumbria for Corbyn!
Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds, as this selection of endorsements from the North West underlines.
John Hall, artist from Ulverston, Cumbria
As an artist with a career-long commitment to the arts in education, I am saddened by the downgrading of creativity and expression in school curricula and in higher education, and by the barriers preventing young creative working class people from following their vocation.
I want to see education and culture valued, and their institutions and practitioners supported for their contribution to our national well-being, rather than run down and then cynically trotted out as "flagships" whenever an international junket demands bread and circuses.
As the architect of the Welfare State and the Arts Council, I expect Labour to maintain and reinvigorate these institutions. As the candidate most in touch with the ideals of the Labour Party that built them, Jeremy Corbyn has my support.
Nancy and Yvonne, adult social care workers from the North West.
As adult social care workers, specifically working with adults with learning disabilities, the Corbyn campaign is essential to restore the integrity and equity of support provided to help people live meaningful lives.
Throughout his career, Jeremy Corbyn has fought for peoples’ rights – and he continues to do so. His policies on inclusive education, the need for sustainable funding for an integrated care system that recognises and validates the role of social care and his condemnation of reforms of the welfare system all make it clear that this is not election rhetoric, unlikely to be fulfilled. It stems from a deep seated, long-term commitment to an equitable and supportive society for all.
Shaun Blezard, borough councillor and carer from Cumbria
As a carer for a partner with arthritis, I watched with growing anger as the majority of Labour Party MPs abstained on the Welfare Bill. Jeremy Corbyn voted against it. I have never been a member of any party but paid my £3 to vote for Corbyn as he was saying the right things and has a history of doing them. After his victory, I became a member of the Party to become more active at the grassroots. I have since stood and took a borough council seat from the Tories. That’s why I stand with Corbyn.
Dr. Kate Random Love, art historian and mother from Allithwaite, Cumbria As an academic, witnessing the negative effects of the ever-increasing corporatisation of higher education upon my own job and upon the student experience across universities, I welcome Corbyn’s plans to scrap tuition fees.
As a child of Thatcher who, regrettably, cast my first ever vote for Tony Blair in 1997, I am fed up with neoliberalism, I am fed up with putting profits before people, and I want to give my own children a chance to live in a true socialist democracy led by a politician we can actually trust. Corbyn offers us hope and change and something genuinely different from the Tories. And we all, so badly, need that. Ceri Hutton, human rights researcher and activist from Ulverston, Cumbria The Corbyn campaign for me is about changing social and political tack. Unless we do, we will sell off more public assets, lose our NHS, turn our children into automatons, devalue art, watch more and more people lose support and dignity, trash more human rights and keep pumping money towards the rich in the laughable hope that somehow, some day, they will hand it back. And we continue to thunder towards the cliff of climate change.
So it’s a campaign of resistance to a powerful system. Corbyn has been doing that all his life. So have I, as a human rights researcher and activist. He can count on my support.
