Benn Tony - Hammer of the left: the battle for the soul of the labour party

BY NEIL KINNOCK

J OHN G OLDING WANTED L ABOUR to be elected and re-elected to government as the party of justice, jobs, security and opportunity. Those purposes were and are shared by many. What made him different was his ruthless diligence in organising for them. In Labours years of near self-destruction in the late 1970s and 1980s he was merciless in his treatment of anyone or anything that he considered to be standing in the way of achieving those objectives. His relentless organisation, his plotting to beat plotters, his use of sectarian methods to beat sectarians are without precedent or copy.

This book is a dipped-in-vitriol documentary of those efforts. It tells the story without deference to the Marquis of Queensbury or anyone else, but with gallows humour, pace and fish-hook frankness. Because of that it provides a chronicle for students, a cracking read for anyone with a taste for raw politics, and 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.

N EIL K INNOCK

J ULY 2003

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I N THE TWELVE YEARS since I wrote that Foreword, the Labour Party has won one and lost two general elections in tumultuous times. It experienced at the top sourness and split that, to a greater extent than ever before, arose from animosities between personalities and their retainers rather than policy conflicts. Its unprecedented thirteen years in government, which brought jobs, security and record health, education and anti-poverty spending, ended in the wake of historys greatest economic crash caused by the excesses of international market chicanery. That government was buried in the shroud of incompetence despite the fact that the Prime Minister and Chancellor had managed a gigantic rescue from ruin nationally and secured multi-governmental action that saved global capitalism from devastation. In this century, the party has been deserted by members disillusioned with decisions to wage war in the Middle East and make passive peace with filthy rich financial interests. And then, following defeat in the 2015 general election, a surge in sentiment and eligible voters, enfranchised through revised party rules, resulted in the election to leadership of an MP that had around fifteen committed supporters in a PLP of 232.

That result did not surprise me. It was a reaction waiting to happen. The size of that victory was, of course, facilitated by the changes that vastly expanded the Labour electorate for the price of a pint (or its temperance equivalent). But from the moment that Jeremy Corbyn, more pleasant, calm and appealing than previous contestants from the PLP awkward squad, gained enough MP nominations to put him on the ballot paper, my own experience told me that he was odds-on favourite to win. For years, at frequent party suppers and socials, I had been factually exposing George Osbornes falsehoods about Labours ruinous legacy, his risible Long-Term Economic Plan and his austerity regime of gross inequity and pillaging of community assets. In those meetings, using the arguments developed by respected economists, I also set out the rational case for investment-led durable growth and social solidarity, emphasising the interdependence of economic efficiency and social justice in modern economies. Those efforts, sometimes conversational and sometimes (I confess) tirading, had roused (mainly) Labour-supporting audiences from pervading glumness. Revealingly and worryingly people from diverse social and educational backgrounds, and of all ages, had said to me that they hadnt heard the argument put like that for a long time. Even taking into account kindness to an old warhorse, such comments came so earnestly and so often that they couldnt be attributed to courtesy, sentimentality or even appreciation of political jokes. They were expressions of frustration and a rising desire to hit back with feasible, productive and enthusing alternatives. Labours cool, crafted critique was despite its intelligence and sincerity not articulating the disgust and fury aroused by the damage and injustice being done to communities and individuals by Toryism and by the glib arrogance with which the harm was being inflicted. Labour people were boiling with irritation and they wanted that to be voiced.