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| Once they were revolutionaries |
In the heady 1980s Labour’s right wing plotted
to recapture the party from the left in Kentish Town, writes Illtyd
Harrington
Fightback! by Dianne Hayter
Manchester University Press, £12.50
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The Gang of Four – Bill Rogers, David Owen, Roy Jenkins
and Shirley Williams form the SDP
Tony Benn
Michael Foot
Diane Hayter
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THIS is not a book I would recommend to those of a frivolous
or light-hearted disposition.
It is, however, a key document in understanding what happened in
the Labour Party between 1980 and the advent of Tony Blair.
Written by Dianne Hayter who lives in Kentish Town with her husband,
Professor David Caplin, it is an honest and ruthless account of
how Labour’s right beat the left. Hayter was the general secretary
of the Fabian Society, Labour’s only think-tank, who later
ran the European Parliamentary Labour Party. She is a member of
Labour’s national executive committee.
After the defeat of the Callaghan government in 1979 the Labour
Party was shell-shocked. The left found a messiah in Tony Benn who
when last seen was still proceeding steadily across the Sinai Desert
to the Promised Land.
Gradually the right-wing trade union bosses pulled together, meeting
secretly in the Edwardian quiet of the St Ermins Hotel, off Victoria
Street. Not even Michael Foot as Labour Party leader knew of the
meeting.
Later, a determined organiser pressed them to challenge the left.
About five parallel right-wing groups mainly centred on Parliament
seemed less effective. Their aim was to staunch the flow of right-wing
Labour MPs to the Social Democratic Party and keep the left at bay
by recapturing the machinery of the Labour Party.
Of course, there were overpowering egos the chief one being former
chancellor Dennis Healy.
Hayter knew it was a tricky balancing act complicated by the leader
being Michael Foot, a man of the left holding the centre.
After the defeat of Labour in the 1983 election, Hayter and her
friends set about lancing the cause of the European Community, One
Man One Vote, whilst opposing CND’s influence and resisting
re-nationalisation without compensations.
Her account of trade union wheeler dealers is worthy of a chapter
of the Cosa Nostra.
I had a hearty laugh when she remembers the hard-left amongst whom
were union organiser Reg Race, now a staunch Blairite; Margaret
Beckett, Tom – later Lord – Sawyer the future secretary
of the Labour Party; and “hard left” Harriet Harman. My
God, they’ve since run down the road to Damascus, rather than
stumbled.
Camden was often the scene of the right’s public face. Mary,
now Baroness, Goudie, wife of James Goudie QC, another one of Derry
Irvine prodigies, played an additional organising role.
Kentish Town seems to have been at the heart of this counter-revolution.
Yet in 1983, two MPs, Blair and Brown, joined the left-wing Tribune
group.
Hayter is even handed in her contempt for quitters such as Roy Jenkins
and Bill Rogers.
With ‘right-wing views’ she remembers, she remained a
stayer and stuck to her corner.
Not mine though. And Labour’s vote did rise from 27.6 per cent
in 1983 to 38 per cent in 1987.
She draws an optimistic conclusion from that. Indeed she puts the
counter policy of the left fairly.
It looked democratic to me but at the same time Thatcher’s
wrecking legislation was rapid and dangerous.
Although modest about her role, she asked the vital question: What
did she and others bring about?
Blair’s Commons majorities have made him more authoritarian
than presidential and with a diminishing respect for Parliament.
Even as I write, he seems determined to leave his right wing imprint
before he goes. The home secretary Charles Clarke, it is said, is
under threat for being too liberal.
The late 1970s and 1980s were heady times – revolution was
in the air. Who said in February 1983: “We are not interested
in reforming the police, the armed services, judiciary and monarchy,
we are about dismantling them and replacing them with our own machinery
and class rule”?
No it wasn’t Madame Le Farge from A Tale of Two Cities, but
MP Dianne Abbot, now seen cosying up with Michael Portillo on late
night television.
No wonder that moderates like Hayter dusted down their muskets and
set about taking their power back.
• Illtyd Harrington was a former deputy chairman of the
Greater London Council. |
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