What Hammer of the Left can tell us now
John Golding, employment minister in James Callaghan’s government and my predecessor-but-one, died all too prematurely, aged just 67.
His funeral took place on the day my eldest was born, so I paid my last respects by writing John’s obituary for the Guardian and publishing, posthumously, his memoirs.
Hammer of the Left was conceived as an antidote to some of the more misty-eyed accounts of Labour infighting in the 1970s and 1980s in the voluminous Benn Diaries. As Winston Churchill well understood, those who write history command the sympathy of history.
John – and seasoned stalwarts like Betty Boothroyd in her own memoirs – was determined that Tony Benn should not have the first, last and only word about the struggle against the hard, illiberal left that cast Labour into the wilderness for 18 long years until 1997 and which now threatens a repeat performance.
The book recounts, blow by gruelling blow, how three Young Turks spearheaded the fight against Militant and Benn’s Trotskyite fellow travellers, mobilising moderate trades unions in support of the leadership to make Labour electable again.
Two are very much still with us: Roger Godsiff, member of parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath, the astute tracker of where votes were most needed in Labour’s labyrinthine organisation, and John Spellar, MP for Warley and at that time an energetic, no-surrender political officer for the electricians’ union.
After a chaotic leadership election, today the book stands as a salutary reminder of ‘no go’ territory for Labour, if we actually want to win in 2020, or before.
As Neil Kinnock wrote in his gracious foreword, it is: ‘an object lesson for any political party that allows itself to drift away from electoral reality and into the wilderness of illusion and self-obsession.’
I say ‘gracious’, as, when I asked Neil to pen a few words, I recommended he read the draft from the back. For half the manuscript, he gets a rough ride. By the end, after his gloves-off 1985 Bournemouth speech laying into Militant, he is a hero (and still is today).
By then, Labour had suffered its disastrous 1983 defeat – an election fought, in Gerald Kaufman’s words, on ‘the longest suicide note in history’ – and the defection of the Social Democratic party. Our electoral system ruthlessly punishes splits, another object warning as we look ahead.
Thirty years on from Bournemouth, it is now up to the party and Labour MPs to heed the lessons.
With the deluge of people signing up (my constituency numbers have nearly trebled), I hope the ambitions of the latest party reforms succeed, reinvigorating branches with new volunteers to engage the voters and turf the Tories out.
When I see platforms shared with dinosaurs, though – like Liverpool Militant Tony Mulhearn – I fear again interminable, packed meetings, incessant agitation and aggravation that succeeds in putting decent people off.
In the 1980s, the holy grail of the hard left was automatic, full-blown reselection of MPs before each election. Clothed as ‘proper democracy’, it was of course intended to deselect moderates en masse in favour of slates of revolutionary ‘true believers’.
Over the years since, as well as keeping the lights on at Labour party headquarters, the most important role of our trades unions has been as a stabilising force in ‘trigger ballots’ during reselections. Negotiating day in, day out for working people, they have been an anchor for Labour, which the Tories have never had. With the leadership contest over, I hope that role continues.
The party does now need to urgently review the leadership election rules. As for policy, we need to draw the right conclusions from 2015. For those tempted messianically to lurch to the left, one hundred per cent of nothing is not just nothing. It is five, 10 or more years of a Tory government.
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Paul Farrelly is member of parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme and was the editor of Hammer of the Left: Defeating Tony Benn, Eric Heffer and Militant in the Battle for the Labour Party
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