The Militant Tendency once ran the city of Liverpool. A group of only 7,000 revolutionary socialists, they infiltrated the Labour Party, they orchestrated the antiPoll Tax campaign. But by last year Neil Kinnock had expelled most Militants including MPs Dave Nellish and Terry Fields. Cutting Edge: Comrades, captions, Channel 4 1992
He was once described in the press as the most dangerous man in Britain. A Viscount’s son, the public schoolboy who became a champion of the working class. A politician devoted to his party but whose socialist vision nearly tore it apart. Tony Benn: Labour’s Lost Leader, BBC 2014
He swapped the BBC for the Labour Party. He stood for the seat of Bristol south-east. ibid.
In 1963 the Peerage Bill was passed which allowed Ben to renounce his title. ibid.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson appointed Benn Postmaster-General. ibid.
Benn’s political journey to the left was encouraged every step by his wife. ibid.
‘He immatures with age.’ ibid. Harold Wilson
‘He was at the head of a broad social movement.’ ibid. Chris Mullen
‘I’d have been utterly ashamed if I’d followed the course of Neil Kinnock.’ ibid. Benn, 1995
The Labour Party leader a decade before Tony Blair was Michael Foot, a lifelong leftwing socialist. But Foot came under attack for not acting like a party leader. Labour’s Old Romantic, BBC 1997
The way he looked at the Cenotaph was to cause one of the biggest political rows of his life. ibid.
Michael Foot’s life has been one long protest march. No ‘Ban the Bomb’ rally was complete without him. But he is also a man of many paradoxes. ibid.
‘There’s a touch of Jesus about him.’ ibid. Spike Milligan
Foot’s father was a Liberal MP, a campaigner against alcohol and a bibliophile. ibid.
Aneurin Bevan: the Welsh firebrand became Foot’s mentor and lifelong hero. ibid.
‘He had a lot of pretty girls before me.’ ibid. wife
Foot became a leading member of the Keep Left group of Labour MPs. ibid.
In 1945 Britain emerged from the most devastating conflict in history. In a surprise election result the people overwhelmingly voted in Clement Attlee and a Labour government that promised the prize of far-reaching social reform. But could they deliver? The War had almost bankrupted Britain. David Reynolds: The Improbable Mr Attlee, BBC 2005
A most unlikely prime minister. These were years of intense drama … The tension between radicalism and patriotism was embodied in the man at the very top. Terse, uncharismatic but often very effective. ibid.
Attlee seems the very opposite of a leader, a mousey little man with a moustache … Nor was he much of an orator. ibid.
‘There’s less there than meets the eye … He has a great deal to be modest about.’ ibid. Churchill
Attlee was also a man of ideals. Appalled by the poverty he witnessed as a social worker in London’s East End, he joined the Labour Party, and standing as Major Attlee, became an MP in 1922. ibid.
Attlee moved fast sending Keynes to Washington to seek aid. ibid.
Economics would prove his Achilles’ heel. ibid.
Bevan and Attlee agreed that Britain must develop its own bomb. ibid.
In September 1949 the £ was devalued by 30%. ibid.
Attlee was out; Churchill was back. ibid.
I think Peter Mandelson is the ghost at the banquet. You know, he’s behind a lot of what’s going on. The purges of left-wing candidates, the purges of socialists from the party, from what is supposed to be a socialist party, Mandelson is behind that. Mick Lynch
The UK Labour Party is a truly despicable preversion of what a labour party is supposed to be. It is a monstrosity. Something hideous to make the flesh creep. George Galloway, tweet 20th April 2024
Starmer: I’m very clear Israel must have that, does have, that right to defend herself. And that Hamas bears responsibility. The Big Lie II: Starmer & the Genocide, Platform Films 2024
Over 37,000 Palestinians killed in next 4 months, including over 14,500 children. ibid.
Across the world an extraordinary protest movement erupts, a movement that promises to change the face of global politics. ibid.
Labour leader, Keir Starmer, seems to back the genocide. Why? Labour’s Love of Israel. Keir Starmer is by no means the first Labour leader to champion the cause of Israel. ibid.
Labour commits to it 3 months before the famous Declaration of Tory minister Arthur Balfour. And sticks with it for the next 100 years. ibid.
The British army, helped by gangs of Jewish settlers, torture people, commit atrocities, destroy whole villages. Over 5,000 Palestinians died. ibid.
The Israelis kill around 13,000 Palestinians, and drive 750,000 of them from their homes. Many become refugees. ibid.
None of them is a keener fan than Tony Blair. ibid.
New leader Keir Starmer sees himself as returning Labour to business as usual. He drives a witch-hunt in the party apparently to cure Labour of its alleged antisemitism. ibid.
8 December 2023: US votoes United Nations proposal for ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire.’ ibid.
South Africa accuses Israel of genocide in the International Court. ibid.
Mainstream media claims the protests make Jewish people feel unsafe. ibid.
But what do you do where you realise marches and demos on their own aren’t enough to stop the genocide. ibid.
The main target for direct action is the arms industry. ibid.
Demos across Europe and the US are brutally crushed. ibid.
The UK connection between fossil fuels and genocide runs even deeper. ibid.
[McCormack]: ‘Across my entire spectrum of friends everyone is disillusioned with politics right now.’ George Galloway on the Elite Middle Class Takeover of the Labour Party, podcast Peter McCormack 2024
There is no difference between them. And people hate them both. ibid.
The Left: They are university educated, Guardian reading, North London dwelling, Macchiato-swilling … They were pro-EU, they were pro-cheating the people after the Brexit result didn’t go their way by forcing them to vote again, they are pro-Nata … weeping at the defeat of Kamala Harris … Corbyn in 2017 was the last throw for them. ibid.
Even Corbyn lost his way among the mass of the working people. ibid.
The kind of debate that existed when I entered parliament. ibid.
You cannot Balcanize your railroad. ibid.
There are no working-class people in braces … They wilfilly lost any connection to the British working man or woman … The Californification of Labour … and now they are reaping the whirlwind. ibid.
Their name is an embarrassment to them. ibid.
A pygmy parliament of twerps on both sides. ibid.
1997: It was the birth, dramatic birth, of the pager era, where somebody, Peter Mandelson, told you what to say.
The Blair era was the beginning of the end. But it’s a symptom rather than a cause. The symptom is the death of ideology. ibid.
A different kind of society – they lost faith in it. ibid.
The workers are essentially abandoned. ibid.
There are at least ten million people in Britain who genuinely are making a choice – do I eat, or do I heat. ibid.
All I’m asking for is fairness for the people who make life work. ibid.
The defeat of the miners, the destruction of the coal-mining industry, led to human slagheaps in all the former coalfields. ibid.
We have dangerous leves of alienation in our country.
Our political-economic system is extremely precarious. It is governed by the worst among us, the lowest among us. ibid.
The Big C Conservatives don’t do anything well. ibid.
I believe in the country. I like it … I love British humour, I love British culture, the geography of the people, and I love the people. ibid.
There’s been state capture in western countries by the supporters of Israel … Congress has been purchased by the Israel lobby. ibid.
A mixture of bribery and other forms of corruption. ibid.
They were massacring Palestinians before there was there was any Hamas, before they was any Hezbollah. ibid.
This issue won’t go away. And we are winning. ibid.