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From: The Socialist issue 487, 17 May 2007: Good riddance to Blair!

Search site for keywords: Working-class - Tony Blair

Good riddance to Blair!

What we really think

"Tony Blair's legacy is Iraq which was implemented on a lie. He's still lying and he doesn't regret anything that he's done which is quite sad and it's also quite scary. Now he's going to receive up to £250,000 for lectures. I feel Gordon Brown will still carry on his legacy."

Gillian Samuels, Tower Hamlets

"For Jamie Oliver's dinner ladies in Greenwich, Blair's legacy is more work, more hours and if you're lucky a £2 a week pay increase and gardeners here face a £111 a week pay cut! It's an absolute disgrace!"

Onay Kasab, Greenwich UNISON

Hannah

"For me Blair's legacy is leaving university with about £15,000 worth of debt. It means a minimum wage at a level that you can't actually live on. It means that I'm on a waiting list at the moment that's about five years long to get a council house. Rents in the area I'm living in have gone through the roof. It means that I had to wait two years for an NHS dentist and I ended up having to get two teeth pulled. I think that's about it...without swearing!"

Hannah Walter, Durham Socialist Students

"I can't see that there's any legacy that's done any good for working-class people. He's a career politician and a career MP. He's just feathered his own cap and done nothing for working-class people."

Jo Oldham, Ipswich Trades Council

health workers demonstrate at Whipps Cross hospital in East London, photo Paul Mattsson

"To me Blair's legacy is the destruction of the NHS. We're losing services through the back door - it's like a slippery slide to privatisation. Little things like the oxygen services that go to people's homes are now run by a private company and people don't know that."

Vanessa Gee, Secretary of People United Saving Hospitals (PUSH)

"Now student nurses have got insecurity to look forward to when they go finding a job. Some nurses get one-month contracts which just keep you on a merry-go-round. It just makes you wonder what you've spent all these years working for when all you want to do is look after people. I don't think that Blair's legacy has been a positive one. Healthcare provision in general seems to have suffered. People are waiting a lot longer. Care isn't co-ordinated as well as it used to be. I think he's been a bad thing really for the country."

Rowena Mason, student nurse

"Right from the word go Tony Blair has made friends with big business. He's done nothing to address what Maggie Thatcher did to destroy working-class movements and trade unions in this country."

Martin Hynes, Unite member

Len Hockey

"Tony Blair's lasting legacy is a reduction in public service jobs, privatisation, a more unstable world and, because so many have seen his failings, a rekindling of the ideas of socialism."

Len Hockey, Joint branch secretary of UNISON Waltham Forest health branch

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