Hammer of the Left: The Battle For the Soul of the Labour Party by John Golding

Author:John Golding [Golding, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781785900334
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2016-02-15T23:00:00+00:00

This time, Benn did not speak and Foot took the rostrum, on behalf of the NEC, to oppose the plans. Again, he laid into the myths that the 1979 manifesto was a creature of Callaghan alone. ‘I know what the arguments were. I was present at all of them. There is no such thing as a personal veto. No leader of the party has a personal veto. No, he has not,’ Foot berated delegates.

Having spoken so passionately twice, Foot was then devastated to find that on a card vote he had lost. And so it was decided to vote yet again on the issue of the control of the manifesto. Given the vote that had just taken place, everyone clearly thought the result was a foregone conclusion. Certainly Foot was subdued, as he readied himself to reply once again. Imagine the shock for us all then, when the result was announced, that the moderates had won – defeating the plans by 3,791,000 to 3,254,000! At conference, everything was possible.

In the interval a pivotal group of unions shifted their ground. Other delegates had simply returned to the conference floor from the bar. Some later pleaded ‘confusion’. Bill Whatley, USDAW’s General Secretary, admitted to The Guardian that there had ‘been a spot of bother on his delegation’, but that he had put the vote right second time round. Roy Grantham of APEX simply chose to ignore his union conference.

And so, in 1981, after Foot’s magnificent fight and a spot of union ‘confusion’, the score over the manifesto became 2–1 in our favour. That’s the good news. Now for the bad. We had kept the right of the leader effectively to control policy, only to wake up to the fact that our leader supported policies on which we could not be elected.

Except for rejecting of ‘troops out of Ireland’ and barmy plans to nationalise banks, building societies and insurance companies, on policy matters we had little success. The key policies on defence and the Common Market remained like albatrosses around our necks.

Foot certainly saw to that. Callaghan had the sense, when speaking at conference in front of the TV cameras, to ignore delegates and use the opportunity to address the nation. Foot, however, bothered more about the party. He had to persuade the left that he was still one of them while being conciliatory towards the right. He had to show that his old socialist oratory was as strong as ever.

And on the platform Michael was good; he was very good. And in paving the way for the massive defeat of the right on defence and the Common Market, he saw to it that we would be massacred at the next general election.

The debates, the clashes, the taking of the card votes and the announcement of the results – this was a battleground on which, in 1981, the left were still winning.

Is it any wonder, then, that at the end of the conference after the official singing of ‘The Red Flag’ and ‘Auld

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