I believe that Peter Tatchell is planning to run for the Greens in Oxford East against Andrew Smith at the next election. What he ought to be, of course, is a rather dreary backbencher who held a minor position in Blair’s first and second governments, but quietly resigned in the lead up to the Iraq war. At least, that’s what he’d be if the Labour Party hadn’t decided to make him something else. Jonathan Derbyshire has a very fair and accurate account of Labour’s more minor but nevertheless spectacular own goals of the eighties.
{ 7 comments }
P O'Neill 07.03.08 at 12:27 am
Very interesting. I’m used to thinking of the Lib/LibDems as having a ruthless by-election machine but clearly they didn’t really need one in this case.
johnf 07.03.08 at 8:45 am
An extremely one-sided article.
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.
harry b 07.03.08 at 1:42 pm
Were you there johnf? Bermondsey was one of many rotten boroughs, in which men, some of working class origins, ran constituency parties as feifdoms, ensuring extremely limited participation. The shift far to the right was not led by the middle class far left,but by middle class moderates and right-wingers (Charles Clark, Otto Clark’s son,or goodness sake) aidedand abetted by the right of the union movement who should have known better.
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,
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan 07.03.08 at 5:51 pm
That is a good column by Derbyshire. Didn’t know that Simon Hughes had came out, although having met him once it was pretty frickin’ obvious.
Chris Bertram 07.04.08 at 8:51 am
_The shift far to the right was not led by the middle class far left,but by middle class moderates and right-wingers (Charles Clark, Otto Clark’s son,or goodness sake) aidedand abetted by the right of the union movement who should have known better._
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”.
Jon Edwards 07.05.08 at 6:52 pm
A useful reminder of the viciousness directed at the Bennite Left during the years when they looked in the ascendency. I am sure Tatchell is right that the Bermondsey by election was a turning point.
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.
Jo Wolff 07.07.08 at 10:03 am
Jonathan Derbyshire’s piece is excellent. I was there, and remember John O’Grady in his horse and cart. Until a few days before the election it seemed inconceivable that Hughes could win, but a day or two before the election the Lib Dems produced a leaflet saying that Simon Hughes was now the favourite to win, according to the bookies. I am sure it persuaded many that a vote for Lib Dem was a better way of stopping Tatchell than O’Grady. Consequently I am one of the fewer than 8,000 people who voted for Tatchell in 1983.
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.
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