No Cunning Plan by Sir Tony Robinson

Author:Sir Tony Robinson [Robinson, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780283072581
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Militant supporters would probably say I’m being simplistic (actually they’d say I’m being ‘reductive’, which is pretty much the same thing), But I don’t think I am. I’d got no beef with Leon Trotsky. He was one of the great political thinkers of the early twentieth century, and not all Trots were bonkers. I’d worked in Equity with members of the International Marxist Group for years, and always found them friendly and honourable. The problem with most of the Militants I met was that they were dishonest bullies, and put their faction’s interests ahead of the party they pretended to support. They had to be stopped.

Neal Lawson was a young researcher for the Transport and General Workers’ Union who lived in Bristol West, the same constituency as me. Whenever Militant members reared their shaggy heads, we’d be on to them straight away. If they attempted to pack a meeting with their supporters, we’d phone round and bring enough of our own people to vote them down. If they tried to get into positions of influence, we’d argue against them and put up our own candidates. Some people might say we were as bad as they were, a charge which can’t be completely refuted. That’s the trouble with dirty politics: it taints everybody, even those who are trying to clean it up.

The Labour members who took on Militant in Liverpool had to combat political heavyweights. All we had to deal with were a few nut jobs, and maybe we had no effect on them at all. But after a year or so they disappeared from Bristol.

Neal became an adviser to Gordon Brown and is now one of the most interesting and controversial commentators on Labour Party politics. Whenever we meet, we catch each other’s eye, and there’s a slight swagger in our step as though we’re Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday remembering the moment when we shot the Clancy Brothers in the O.K. Corral. ‘Back in the day, we took on Militant, and won!’ the look seems to say, even if our opponents were only a few weirdos with beards, beige short-sleeved shirts, and corduroy jackets.

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