Kogan David - The Battle for the Labour Party

David Kogan & Maurice Kogan

David Kogan and Maurice Kogan is a freelance journalist who specialises in Labour Party and local government politics. He was educated at Haverstock School and Balliol College, Oxford. Maurice Kogan is Head of the Department of Government at Brunel University. He is an authority on the politics and government of education and on welfare state organisation and politics. His book The Politics of Educational Change is published by Fontana.

First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Kogan Page

This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Reader

Copyright 1982 David Kogan

The moral right of the author is asserted.

Bloomsbury Reader is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square

London

WC1B 3DP

www.bloomsburyreader.com

Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing plc

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

PB ISBN: 978-1-4482-1735-9

eISBN: 978-1-4482-1734-2

Visit www.bloomsburyreader.com to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

You can also find us on Twitter @bloomsreader.

This edition takes our account of the battle for the Labour Party through the events of 1982. We owe a debt to many people who helped us to produce both this and the first edition of our book. We had full discussions with some of the leading figures in the political groups whose struggles we record. All of them willingly consented to be interviewed and agreed that recordings of the interviews could be freely used. Their willingness to go on public record on many of the highly sensitive issues which are currently being fought out deserves to be fully acknowledged.

We are grateful to the following for being interviewed: Vladimir Derer, Roy Grantham, Andy Harris, Roy Hattersley, Jon Lansman, Ken Livingstone, Claer Lloyd-Jones, Frances Morrell, Chris Mullin, Giles Radice, Bill Rodgers, Laurie Sapper, Nigel Stanley, Shirley Williams, Nigel Williamson, Audrey Wise and Valerie Wise.

We received help and encouragement from Peter Stothard, Anthony Holden, Bernard Donoghue and Harold Evans when producing articles which appeared in The Times on 22 and 23 September 1981. We are also grateful to Times Newspapers Ltd for permission to publish the photographs contained in this book. We are particularly grateful to Philip Kogan of Kogan Page and Helen Fraser of Fontana, both of whom encouraged us to produce, and critically vetted, this book during the intensive period in which it was written. We were fortunate enough to receive skilled criticisms of a draft of our first edition from Fred Wirt, Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois.

We are also grateful for the many constructive criticisms made by reviewers of the first edition of this book. Although some were either uncomprehending or hostile or both, many provided a critique which, even when we did not agree with it, has caused us to look again at our evidence and interpretation. On one issue alone we remain unrepentent: those who criticised us for writing instant history can be easily countered by the argument that the events we record are too important and too interesting not to be revealed to those who want to know more of the facts that might explain the behaviour of one of our great political parties.

Sally Harris produced successive manuscripts, at astonishing speeds, and at what many of the trade union leaders depicted in this book would regard as unsocial hours. Our debt to her goes beyond words.

David Kogan

Maurice Kogan

November 1982

The Labour Party has undergone cataclysmic change. The power of the traditional leadership has been broken. The right of the Parliamentary Labour Party to elect Labour prime ministers and leaders of the opposition has been taken away from it. Members of Parliament must now account for their parliamentary actions to their constituencies, and their voting decisions in leadership elections are published. These changes, together with decisive changes in the Labour Partys policy commitments, have driven leading figures of the Labour Party into forming the Social Democratic Party. By changing the patterns of deference and by reducing the opportunities of patronage, they have also limited the power of the traditional leadership.