I had, by the way, applied to join the Southwark and Bermondsey Labour Party in about 1980. Someone came round to check me out, and then I didn’t hear anything more from them. Still waiting.

Nobody had heard of Tatchell until an SDP MP caled James Wellbeloved asked the question to Michael Foot in the House of Commons. He was not even a Labour MP and it was extraordinary that Foot fell into the trap of denouncing Tatchell and then before the by election being forced to backtrack and endorse him. This reinforced Foot’s reputation for weakness as labour leader and virtually doomed Labour’s chances.
I also remember Tatchell being interviewed on the BBC by the famous Robin Day and being treated with such disrespect. When Tatchell explained that if elected he intended to live on a skilled worker’s wage and give away the rest of his MPs salary Robin Day could only sneer “you realise you’ll be taxed on that”. Tachell was regarded as representing a dangerous radicalism with his support for “extra parliamentary action” even though he was only talking about protests against the mass unemployment of the time like the People’s March for Jobs.
A friend of mine went to a Labour Party meeting in Bermondsey at which Tatchell was speaking to be asked by Labour members of the old guard “How can we vote for that animal?
I also recall the effect of the anti-Tatchell campaign on the average working class voter. I was on a bus going past the old Walworth Road HQ of the Labour Party on the day of the byelection. Seeing the vote labour banner one elderly lady said to another “I’m not voting for a gay lib draft dodger!”
The catastrophic Labour defeat also emboldened the right. Margaret Thatcher is said to have concluded that the Left could not win.
I have always admired Peter Tatchell for his courage and dignity at the time and his refusal to give in to understandable bitterness at his treatment and particularly the way he refused to join in the bashing of Simon Hughes following his outing as bisexual.

Well true, up to a point. But I remember that people like Patricia Hewitt played a particularly vicious role in briefing against the left between the Bermondsey and Southwark by-elections (and subsequently). She had, of course, previously headed the NCCL and been a prominent supporter of Tony Benn. So I guess someone of her ilk would fit the bill (on some people’s views of what counts as “far left”.

And in the Tatchell case. You think that there was anything excusable in the homophobia an xenophobia that Tatchell’s opponents used? And spreading the word, as they did, that it was in fact the LibDems that were putting out those leaflets.

Labour post-1979 has been a series of tragedes, and there is a lot of blame to be shared around. In the specific case of Bermondsey, Derbyshire’s piece gets things about right,

It in no way reveals the brutality with which the upper middle class post 68 far left attacked and destroyed the old working class post 45 Labour Party, and as soon as it had seized power, steered Nu Labor so violently rightwards that it ended up far to the right of anything the old working class Labour Party would have endured or permitted.

It is a story of deep shame.