TO UNDERSTAND THE PSYCHOLOGY of the Labour Party at this time, it is important to remember that the party was created initially as an alliance between trades unions and socialist societies and only later were individual members admitted. Labour, therefore, was naturally a trades union party.
The constitution recognised these roots with an Annual Conference, the party’s supreme policy-making body, in which unions and socialist societies had by far the majority vote over constituency Labour parties, into which the individual members were organised.
History, too, was embodied in the NEC – the body charged with running the party’s affairs – which consisted of the leader and deputy leader elected by the PLP; the treasurer, elected by conference as a whole but effectively, because of their voting strength, by the trades unions; five women elected on the same basis; nine constituency representatives, elected at conference by constituency delegates; twelve trades union representatives, elected by the trades union delegates at the conference; a representative of the co-ops and socialist societies and the Young Socialists.
Traditionally the NEC had been right-wing and loyal to the parliamentary leadership because both the constituencies and the unions at conference had been overwhelmingly moderate in character.
The NEC had provided a leadership to conference, which had then given support to the leader and the PLP. The leader would also call in all the main union officials to let them know what was needed, so the vote could be duly collected. With the big swing to the left, this changed. Neither constituency nor union representatives were willing to play ball with a right-wing leader.
The NEC had effectively come under the control of the left in 1975. By then, through sheer hard work and meticulous attention to detail, various factions of the left controlled a substantial number of constituencies, union national executives and Labour Party and TUC delegations.
This posed great difficulties for Callaghan when he became Prime Minister in 1976. At a typically tense joint Cabinet and NEC meeting held on 16 February 1977, for example, Callaghan upbraided the NEC for being too negative and urged that they tell the country more about Labour’s achievements. When asked to retract by Barbara Castle, formerly a member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet, who hated Jim, he refused, stating that he would never forget that the NEC had organised a public demonstration against the government. On this occasion, Heffer countered that ‘the NEC is not made up of left-wing crackpots’ and simply continued with Frank Allaun MP to attack the government.
To understand the ludicrous situation, whereby a Labour government in office was not supported but aggressively undermined by the party’s highest representatives, we need to look at the left’s tactics in the unions and party at large.
Constituency parties fell like dominoes to the left as a result of hard work, scheming, deceit and thuggery. I came to know first hand of their methods because from time to time they tried to take over my constituency in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Unfortunately for them in Newcastle, and in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent, whence they went afterwards, my agent Llin and I beat them at their own game with the loyal support of party members.
I also learned much about them from other MPs. Known in the tea room of the House of Commons as someone who not only detested but fought left-wing bully boys, I would be asked to advise fellow Labour MPs. The Irishman Michael O’Halloran would, in his distinctive whisper, relate all the horrors that he and other moderates faced in Islington. The voice of Robert Kilroy-Silk would be somewhat smoother but even louder on the question of Militant on Merseyside.1
To begin with, committed left-wingers – the ‘bed-sit brigade’ – were drafted into local parties in areas of great Labour strength with the job of taking them over.
Constituency parties were run by Executive Committees elected at the annual general meeting by members of the General Management Committee (GMC). This in turn was made up of delegates from ward branches, the Women’s Section, Young Socialists, trades unions and other affiliated organisations such as the Co-op, the Fabians and the Socialist Educational Association (SEA).
For the left to get control of the GMC, which at that time chose the MP, it meant gaining control of ward parties, ensuring that sympathetic union branches and socialist societies were affiliated and sent delegates, and also ensuring the existence and control of a Young Socialist branch.
In many areas it was fairly easy for young professional, middle-class people to take over wards and GMCs. During the 1950s, I was a member of the West Ham North constituency and remember how badly it was run. Membership was small because it wasn’t easy to join and I had to make quite an effort to transfer mine from elsewhere. Although part of the reason was apathy, it is also true that many old-timers did not want to see an increase because they were frightened that newcomers might be a threat.
They were, of course, quite wrong: the larger the membership of ‘ordinary people’, the safer the local leadership would have been. When left-wingers persisted and joined, they often found it easy to take control when membership was small and attendance at meetings even smaller. Indeed, only four or five people were needed to take control of some wards and ensure that their delegates to the GMC supported a particular faction. It was, of course, these wards that the left picked off first.
Many became Branch Secretaries very quickly, this being a hard-working job that few wanted. While the Secretary’s job today can be a chore, it was even harder before the arrival of all our new technology, word processors, photocopiers and the like. Under the rules, becoming a Branch Secretary automatically put the newcomers onto the GMC, too, and this proved a bonus to the left.
The left played what we call the ‘numbers game’, i.e. they set about getting control of as many wards as possible to get a majority of the delegates at the GMC. Placing members was possible because cheaper accommodation was easier in working-class areas than in middle-class districts. Once they had control in a particular ward, they would move to another – always placing just enough members to make the most of the troops under their command. The exact same tactics Lenin and Trotsky used to such effect in revolutionary Russia were being played out in Britain in the 1970s.
Not that the numbers were always necessary. A small group of strongly committed newcomers, plotting before meetings and then pushing hard at the meeting itself, would often get its own way even though older members might have doubts.
If the old-timers refused to be bulldozed, the newcomers would claim they were brighter, better educated and therefore knew better. Other techniques would be brought into play, including bullying and blatant twisting.
Intimidation initially helped Militant in the 1970s and early 1980s to make great progress, but was ultimately – as we will see – a major factor in its downfall. Foot, for instance, was told by his fellow Aldermaston peace marchers that at meetings Militant supporters would sneer at and abuse the ordinary members, many of whom quickly gave up. Others, who did not, had rougher treatment – including being mobbed after meetings, receiving nasty telephone calls and being threatened with physical violence.
Meetings, too, would be kept going often until after midnight, with the left knowing that older members would leave. After taking control of the party officerships, the left kept going on until moderates gave up, allowing non-agenda items to be taken as ‘emergency business’, of which nobody except the left caucus had any warning.
In this way, when the left did not get what they wanted by fair means, they got it by foul. They cheated their way into positions of power and justified it to themselves in terms of acting in the interests of the working class. In the name of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, they did all they could to remove control of the party from the working class in solidly working-class areas.
To prevent parties being taken over needed great vigilance. Just before one AGM of the Newcastle-under-Lyme GMC, I discovered that Mike Tappin – a university lecturer, who later became an MEP – had organised an attempted takeover using a ‘list’ or ‘slate’ of supporters. I fought Michael Tappin for much of my political life locally, because, with the support of Militant sympathisers, to further his own parliamentary ambitions, he tried to take over my constituency.
He justified himself to me later by saying that the working class weren’t fit to control the Labour Party! Discovering his plan in time, those of us who had been in the party rather longer and were proud of our working-class origins, copied his technique and issued our own list. The many trades unionists on the GMC made sure that we fought off this challenge.
In other constituency parties, from time to time, the left would cheat by telling only their own supporters when meetings were taking place, by putting in false inflated figures of membership to get more delegates and by stating the rules incorrectly.
While it was harder to influence the local union branches, the left did have some success. They would first secure the affiliation of branches where the leadership was sympathetic to the left and then find delegates. They would also do this with bodies such as the SEA, Fabians and the Co-op, which had the right to affiliate to the constituency. They also formed Young Socialist branches to which they applied an iron discipline.
As well as hijacking GMCs, they were able to deselect local councillors and put in their own people to give themselves control of councils. But control of GMCs was all important. It enabled them to control the selection and deselection of the MP and gave them the right to be represented at conference, take part in the election of the NEC and help formulate policy. The ability to send delegates to conference gave Militant, in particular, a national platform.
The left put their control and influence in the constituencies to great use at Annual Conference. Their organisations met secretly to draw up an agreed list of people to support in elections, together with priority policy proposals, and then ‘sold’ them strongly through their supporters. This uniformity of purpose was bound to achieve results against a right wing which, until it woke up, failed to do likewise.
The left, by concentrating their votes on a limited, agreed number of candidates, obtained many more successes than the right, who spread their votes more widely.
The carrying of left-wing propositions at conference created huge difficulties for Callaghan and Healey. Effective organisers, particularly Vladimir Derer in CLPD, circulated constituencies with many copies of model resolutions, which were passed, placed on the conference agenda, composited for debate with other resolutions and, wherever possible, supported by left-wing constituency and union delegates.
Over many years I approached Annual Conference with varying attitudes. In the early 1960s I would go full of excitement, wonder and awe. In the early 1970s, I would go with the union delegation for laughs. In the ’90s, I went just to the social activities and treated them as a reminder of ‘all our yesterdays’. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, I went to each conference totally psyched up, knowing that the adrenalin would flow for a whole week of struggle in a mainly hostile environment.
Many delegates – 1,200 in all, half of them from constituencies – went to conference chosen by the left, armed by the left and ready to fight for the left. Leaving nothing to chance, the left tried to make it impossible for the union-dominated Standing Orders Committee, responsible for determining the conference agenda, to brush aside their chosen subjects.
The first fights took place in the compositing meetings held on the eve of conference. Because it was impossible to debate all the hundreds of resolutions sent in, those on the same subject used to be brought together and ‘composited’. Putting your resolution into a composite meant you also accepted other parts.
The chairman of the Compositing Committee and its officer (a member of the Labour Party staff) would generally expect to produce at least two composites – one ‘for’ and one ‘against’, i.e. one satisfying the left and one the right.
To ensure that the left composite was not cobbled together on the spot – a hazardous business – the left organisers prepared one carefully in advance and planted it with someone they could trust, who was attending and would argue effectively for it.
The composite meetings, held on the Saturday, provided the first buzz of excitement. If a delegate failed to turn up, his union or constituency proposition fell. Of course, this rarely troubled the left. They made sure their delegates arrived and, playing safe, generally arranged for several constituencies to table roughly the same resolution.
There would also be great competition to see who would move and second the proposition on the conference floor. When a large union was involved, often the official could overawe – some would say bully – constituency delegates into agreeing that the union do this. Very often, however, Militant members, confident speakers well-versed in the arts of manipulation, would stand up against right-wing unionists.
The next stage was for the left organisers to talk to the left on the NEC, which endorsed the final conference agenda. Dennis Skinner and others would need to ensure that the NEC recommended acceptance of left proposition. All needed to be ‘fixed’ and was. Benn, for example, records in his Diaries how he paid attention to Conference Arrangements Committee so that nothing could go wrong.2
As well as trying to fix compositing meetings, organisers on both sides would be following closely what was happening in the union delegations. These differed greatly, but each would have a meeting in a smoky hotel room at which decisions would be taken in advance of the conference. In some unions these were over quickly; in others the process would take hours. Most unions, however, were driven by factions and torrents of blood would flow on the carpet.
For delegates, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning would be full of gossip and anticipation. Rumours would be rife over who was likely to go on the NEC and who would be ejected. Mikardo will be off, they might say, and Skinner on – ‘and serves him right!’
Along the front, at Blackpool or Brighton, delegates and visitors would stop and swap information, some more reliable than others: ‘The T&G have decided this…’; ‘NUPE is definitely going to support that…’; ‘We’ve got control of the AEU again this year’; ‘USDAW (the shopworkers’ union) are still meeting, it’s touch and go.’
Delegates wanting to rub shoulders with the famous would call in at the Imperial or the Metropole, the headquarters hotels in Blackpool and Brighton. Here, there would be an even bigger buzz. Dozens of journalists would be quizzing Benn, Skinner and me on events at the NEC.
The relationship with journalists was very important. Throughout my time on the NEC, Frank Allaun, as chairman of Press and Publicity, and Michael Foot repeatedly made attempts to discourage the holding of unofficial press conferences.
One of my first discoveries on the NEC was that the left briefed journalists regularly and in detail, particularly the Morning Star and The Guardian. I decided to follow their example. The Guardian – made up of a mixture of Tribunite, Trotskyite and later SDP journalists – could not be expected to support a right-wing, union hatchet man and didn’t. Other posh papers were more helpful to me – especially The Times – and also the tabloids and the TV. These we needed to get our message across: that the moderates within the Labour Party were still in there fighting.
At the Imperial and Metropole, the ‘fixers’ also came to meet, swap notes on their side and decide what to do next – Alan Meale of the left always looking worried with a frown; Roger Godsiff, laid back, with a broad smile constantly breaking from his ever-serene look.
There was much drink, much gossip and endless speculation. And then conference actually began. On the floor, delegates sat in blocks. MPs, Lords and prospective parliamentary candidates sat in one, where cynicism reigned supreme and parliamentary behaviour of the worst kind was evident at moments of crisis. In other blocks throughout the hall sat the union delegates, male, white, middle-aged and working class. They were mostly business-like, well-used to conferences and relying heavily on one or two in the delegation to keep them abreast of what was happening. They needed to because they would spend more time in the bar than the constituency delegates. My own POEU delegation was always bitterly divided between right and left, although this did not prevent us from sharing a bag of sweets. We even fed Joel Barnett, the Treasury Chief Secretary, in the MPs’ block. Constituency delegates were younger, more left wing, more passionate, less obviously working class and the least well-behaved of all. In the constituency section of the hall, newer delegates delighted in identifying the personalities and then following the lead of left-wing leaders in their treatment of them. The rules were simple: cheer the left and boo, barrack and slow handclap the right. It was like a football match, save that it was more sinister, brutal and menacing. The hatred was real. When dinner time came, out you went through an army of pamphleteers and placards condemning the Labour leadership into the autumn air outside. For delegates still revelling in the wonderland of conference, there was always a good demo to enjoy or worthy cause to support. In the afternoon – in those bad old days – ballots were taken for treasurer, the NEC and the Standing Orders Committee, heightening the atmosphere of battle.
The left knew the constituency section of the NEC would be OK, as their slate would ensure that no right-winger could possibly win. They could never be as certain about the Women’s and Trades Union Section, nor about the position of treasurer. The left’s union organisers had been at work but the likes of Tony Banks and Alan Meale were simply not in the same league as Roger Godsiff, then the Political Officer of APEX (the professional and computer staff union), who conjured rabbits out of hats.
Conference debates themselves were pitched battles. In the evening, there were fringe meetings to attend, trades union and other receptions to be gate-crashed, where you could listen to the latest rumours about the ballot results and pass them on. To get into a trades union reception was a bonus. You not only got close to the high and the mighty, but drank for free as well.
Not long after I joined the POEU, the union held a cocktail party to celebrate re-affiliating to the party. The object of this event, so we told each other, was to make contacts and important personalities were invited. Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister, had promised to come and we were all excited. Sadly, he was held up and Charles Smith – the POEU General Secretary at the time, a former MP himself and stickler for good manners – ordered that the reception carry on until Harold arrived.
Those there seemed only too eager to postpone their suppers and help by drinking on. The only worried person was me, completely sober, who as political officer had responsibility for the expense, which was becoming excessive. When the expense was, indeed, challenged at the next union conference it was explained that the reception had to go on longer than planned because Wilson had arrived late. This was accepted – with the usual cynicism, of course.
The following year, the generosity of the POEU having become a byword in every boarding house, everyone in town decided to attend. Important Labour regional organisers – able to help the POEU get seats in parliament and to whom nothing could therefore be refused – organised whole coach outings to the reception. The hotel room was packed out and even more was drunk than the previous year.
At the next POEU conference, an explanation was demanded and the treasurer Charlie Morgan was told: ‘Don’t tell us that Wilson arrived late again.’ ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m pleased to report that Harold Wilson arrived on time. The problem this year was that George Brown, his deputy, arrived early!’
At receptions – and indeed everywhere – new delegates were stuffed up with stories denigrating the right-wing leadership. In fact, I was continually amazed at the number of delegates who believed everything they were told about the Labour right.
One of the great myths concerned our presumed connection with the CIA. Benn, indeed, himself wrote: ‘The right wing of the Labour Party is American-financed for that purpose,’ i.e. to keep the Communists out.3
On one occasion Llin and I took Ken Perry – the union convenor in the Lucas Rists factory in Newcastle – and one of his shop stewards into a small Blackpool cafe for dinner. As we went through the door, we heard a young Trot enquire of his older companion: ‘What’s Golding doing in a place like this?’ His mentor, the old Trot, replied knowingly: ‘He’s come for his CIA money.’ On hearing this, I went to the counter and said: ‘Four double egg and chips, please,’ paused, and then added: ‘Do you take dollars?’ The look on the face of the young Trot was one of pure joy!
On another occasion, I picked up three hitch-hikers from a service station near Birmingham. One of them, about twenty-five years old, sat in the front and two younger ones sat in the back. The older one opened up the conversation ‘What job do you do?’ he asked, after saying he was a Liverpool social worker. Knowing a thing or two about Liverpool social workers, I pondered and replied ‘trades union official’, thinking this would lead to less aggro than if I said ‘MP’.
‘Oh,’ said the LSW, ‘and where do you come from?’
‘Newcastle-under-Lyme,’ I replied truthfully.
‘Do you see John Golding?’ asked the LSW looking me in the face.
‘I see him from time to time,’ I said, referring to those rare occasions when I resorted to a mirror.
‘He’s a terrible man,’ said the hitch-hiker. ‘He is destroying the Labour movement.’
I smiled knowingly to the LSW and returned often to the subject on the long journey to take advantage of my companion’s insight into the evils of Golding. At the end of the journey I thanked him for opening my eyes in this way.
It was not only the Trots and social workers from the constituencies who swung conference and the NEC for the left. That could not have been achieved without the help of the unions, who dominated the voting. Sadly, in the 1960s and 1970s, the situation within the unions had changed from those happy days when a handful of individual leaders – commanding almost half of the conference votes – had carved things up simply to give support to the leader.
Now they were as likely to use their muscle in support of the left, especially the public-sector unions following their disputes with the Labour government over wages, conditions and cuts in public spending.
Not that the growth of the left in most unions arose from any great revolutionary fervour on the part of their members. While the left set out to control the unions for both industrial and political reasons, members voted not on political grounds but rather for officials who they had been told would look after their wages and conditions. Union members tolerated the unrepresentative political activity of officials so long as they delivered the goods.
The left was greatly strengthened by the election of Jack Jones in the TGWU and Hugh Scanlon in the AEU, which later became the AUEW, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. For different reasons, the right was also weakened by the replacement in the GMWU, which later became the GMB, of Lord Cooper by David Basnett in 1973.
That is not to say that union leaders in the early 1970s were totally unreliable and disloyal. In fact, Jones and Scanlon were extremely courageous in defence of Healey’s economic policies, which were so unpopular with the left. They did not, however, give the same support to realistic defence or foreign policies. As a rule of thumb, the more remote policies were from their union responsibilities, the more left wing were those they supported.
Additionally, they made life more difficult for the leadership by casting the bulk of their NEC votes for left-wingers. As the union vote determined who was to be treasurer, the five women’s seats on the NEC and the twelve union seats, this was disastrous. Their sentimental left attachments put the NEC and its important sub-committees firmly under the control of Benn and the left between 1975 and 1982.
Unfortunately, they carried on voting for the comrades even when they realised they were dealing with people who were idiotic, dangerous or both. They were responsible, for example, for making Norman Atkinson treasurer in 1976 – withholding their vote from Eric Varley – and replacing Eirene White, the MP for Flint, by the left-winger Joan Maynard.
The new behaviour also came about not only because of the change of leaders, but also because the ‘barons’ themselves became less powerful in their own delegations. Even where the leadership remained moderate, a new breed of activist was being elected to delegations, who was less likely to follow their lead.
One reason was the change in the left’s composition in the unions. Traditionally, the Moscow-supporting Communists had been the main opposition to right-wing union leaders, but by the early 1970s, with the discrediting of the Communist Party, their place had been taken by their opponents on the left – the Trotskyites.
This had bad consequences for the Labour Party, because the Communists – as a separate party – were denied attendance at conference, whereas the Trots and Militant were allowed in. Their ‘entryism’ gave them the ability to destroy a party whose aims and aspirations they opposed.
Other left-wing organisations also began to work within the unions, including the ‘Rank and File Movements’ in the late 1960s and 1970s – originally encouraged by Jack Jones himself – which were dedicated to bringing union leaderships to heel.
For a variety of reasons, then, the swing to the left in the party was marked. The only place that the right was still powerful, despite losing some ground, was the PLP. The scene was set for violent clashes and Labour’s left-dominated NEC made certain they came.
I joined the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party at the Blackpool conference in 1978, my election in the union section being a rare setback for the left. My success was partly due to my reputation as a minister willing to help the unions and the popularity of my union boss, Bryan Stanley, among the big union barons. Had Benn known what was to come, he would not have just described my election as ‘unfortunate’ – for him it was to be disastrous.
Then, however, he was safe in the knowledge that the only right-wingers elected were Jim Callaghan; Tom Bradley MP representing the Transport and Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA); Neville Hough, the GMWU representative from the Black Country; Fred Mulley, the Secretary of State for Defence; Gerry Russell from the AUEW Executive; Shirley Williams; Russell Tuck, Assistant General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and me – just eight out of thirty-one.
To these should be added, for a short while at least, the unreliable Les Huckfield, who beat the right’s John Cartwright in the Co-op and Club Section – as at that time Huckfield was more concerned about the threat from Militant than Cartwright.
Apart from us few, the NEC election was a triumph for the left, of hard and soft varieties.
The left-wing Norman Atkinson, MP for Tottenham, beat the moderate Eric Varley easily for the treasurership. Four out of the five in the Women’s Section were of the left: Judith Hart, Joan Maynard, Lena Jeger (MP for St Pancras & Holborn South) and Renee Short (MP for Wolverhampton).
In the union section, Alan Hadden of the boilermakers, Doug Hoyle of the ASTMS, Alex Kitson of the TGWU, Sam McCluskie of the seamen, Syd Tierney of the shopworkers’ union USDAW and Emlyn Williams of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were all, at that time, identified with the left. In addition, a Militant Young Socialist, Tony Saunois, was elected unopposed.
From the right’s point of view, it was an utter disaster. The total dominance of the hard left in the constituencies was shown by how they were able not only to defeat the popular Jack Ashley, MP for Stoke South, but the one time hero of the Socialist left, Ian Mikardo, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow – replaced by Dennis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsover, as the barmies wreaked revenge after Mikardo had dared compromise on the compulsory reselection of MPs, a left-wing totem.
The success of the left ‘slate’ was of greater significance than simply ensuring continued control of this particular NEC. It also gave those who organised ‘the list’ great political power. However popular you might have been, you did not readily upset the left ‘fixers’ who controlled the list. There was no point in following Mikardo into the wilderness. If he could not save himself, what hope was there, without kowtowing, for ambitious newcomers setting out on the path of fame and glory?
For several years, the constituency left on the NEC was kept in line by this ruthless Machiavellian machine. Only in 1982 was Kinnock able to beat the system, though Joan Lestor was not. Once elected on the left ticket, you were expected to vote according to the decisions of the left caucus, which came together before meetings to decide a ‘line’. And this left caucus was controlled effectively by those who controlled the list. Time after time left-wingers taking sensible decisions in NEC sub-committees were forced by the left fixers to change their vote on the NEC itself.
At this time, in late 1978, those who supported the Labour government had no effective organisation either at conference or on the NEC. With the support of the slimy Labour General Secretary Ron Hayward and the party’s Research Secretary Geoff Bish, the left rode roughshod over all opposition. They treated Callaghan and the Secretaries of State Fred Mulley and Shirley Williams, in particular, with contempt. Immediately after the 1978 conference, I watched how Benn and his allies were keen to pick a quarrel over the Queen’s Speech, which would set out the government’s programme for what was to be the last session before the 1979 general election.
At the very first meeting of the new NEC on 4 October, it was decided that Bish would prepare a discussion document before we met the Cabinet. In other words, the ‘Left-wing Socialist Government in Exile’ would present its alternative programme.
In the event, Benn – then chairman of the NEC’s powerful Home Policy Committee – and his fellow lefties were frustrated, because the meeting was put off until a fortnight before the Queen’s Speech was due. In Cabinet, Benn thought it wrong that the speech should be considered with the NEC so late and claimed it had already gone to the palace. When the joint meeting was finally held, Skinner announced he had heard that the speech had gone to the printers already and didn’t want to be involved in a pointless discussion. Instead of just ignoring all this huffing and puffing, however, Foot gave his word ‘as a socialist’ that no final decisions had been taken.
One result of the bust-up was that the Cabinet agreed to hold joint meetings on a monthly basis – and then subsequently used the meetings, badly attended by NEC members, to expose the shortcomings of that less than august body.
Inevitably, there was also an early punch-up on economic policy. At the 1978 conference, a proposition drafted by Benn and his son Hilary (now MP for Leeds Central and a junior minister) – calling for selective import controls, the reversal of public spending cuts, early retirement and a shorter working week – had been carried with overwhelming NEC support, despite Callaghan’s protests that it was an attack on the government’s economic policy.
Benn and all his allies knew there was no way the government could either afford or accept it. The Queen’s Speech, therefore, stuck to the anti-inflationary line because the government had no alternative. Nevertheless, the NEC attacked the government’s economic and European policies throughout the winter. Healey, indeed, received more stick from Labour’s NEC than from the Tories!
One particularly nasty meeting stuck long in my mind: a special meeting of the Home Policy and International Committees on 27 November 1978 to discuss the European Monetary System (EMS).
This meeting typified the bullying tactics of the left. Skinner told Healey he was only where he was because the Labour movement had put him there, whereupon Denis replied that ‘mouthing of ideological claptrap’ got you nowhere and told Skinner that he didn’t carry a certificate to speak on behalf of the working class. Later, as Healey was speaking, Heffer simply shouted ‘rubbish, rubbish’ before Benn brought heckling Eric to some sort of order.
We will look in detail at the catastrophic effect of disagreements on Europe later. Suffice it to say now that that this vitriolic meeting carried a strongly worded resolution against the EMS. And when Shirley Williams moved that the manifesto for the European elections be drawn up by the International Committee, the Home Policy Committee and the Back Benchers’ Liaison Committee of the PLP, Heffer had plenty of backing to ensure that the PLP was simply brushed aside. Crucially at that dreadful meeting, too, Healey was also forced to defend his anti-inflation policy and the recent increase in the Minimum Lending Rate (MLR).
As ever, he put his arguments brutally. For anyone who knows The Wind in the Willows, it was Badger facing down the Weasels in the Wild Wood – no place for the faint-hearted, but a joy for people who love to see a real pugilist at work. I enjoyed every minute of it, looking around at the distraught faces as Denis thundered on. ‘MLR was now an administered rate,’ he hectored, ‘but it mustn’t get too much out of line with the discount market, since that would benefit discount houses.’
Most of us had experience only of street markets, as Denis clearly realised. Norman Atkinson, who regarded himself as something of a financial expert, did his level best to make a good impression by nodding at points he clearly did not understand. Doug Hoyle, whose voting record against the Labour government was a matter of pride to the Tory Chief Whip, screwed his face up and scowled, as Denis ploughed on with his tour de force to justify the 2 per cent rise, taking the MLR up to 12 per cent.
Benn sat, with wild eyes popping out on their stalks, as Denis made the evidently outrageous point that we needed a period of quiet in financial markets in a politically difficult time over the winter and that the MLR increase had now made this possible.
Skinner and Allaun – taking the role of the Weasels – did their best to discomfort Badger, but they might as well have saved their breath. Skinner argued that the rise was unnecessary and would hit Labour mortgage payers. He looked sorely put out, though, when in a bout of one-upmanship Allaun jumped in to remind Healey about council house rents instead!
Then, with sarcasm that would have put down a rhino, Hoyle congratulated Healey for not having blamed the unions this time. Denis didn’t even notice, remarking wearily that unemployment was down by 107,000 from the peak and inflation had been cut by half over the past twelve months.
‘If we had not increased MLR, there could have been a sterling crisis over the winter,’ he said. ‘There will be a general election soon and we should be drawing more attention to the many points of agreement between the NEC and the government.’ A rare burst of wishful thinking!
Following the meeting, of course, Hoyle and Skinner submitted a motion condemning the increase in the MLR and calling for the adoption of ‘the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) passed by successive Labour Party conferences’.4
Then the General Secretary held a press conference, announcing to the world this attack on a Labour government, which would shortly be facing a general election!
Under Benn, the Home Policy Committee kept up its attacks right to the end. On 12 February 1979 it opposed cuts in public expenditure and decided that there should be a joint Cabinet–NEC meeting ‘to discuss economic and industrial issues’. Resolutions from Allaun and the Militant Trot Saunois, too, spouted the usual claptrap.
For years, it was still beyond belief to me that only weeks away from a general election, the Labour government was threatened in this way by the National Executive Committee of its own party.
Jim did not suffer completely in silence. There was a great deal of tension at the meeting on the Queen’s Speech on 23 October about where ministers’ loyalty lay, to the NEC or the Cabinet.
At the Cabinet meeting that discussed the Queen’s Speech, Callaghan reported Skinner’s comments that he would make everything on the NEC public knowledge. The Prime Minister made it clear that, if this happened, ministers would be ordered to remain silent. Though Benn knew that it would be essential to maintain the Cabinet’s collective responsibility, he would not accept this.
The issue arose again after Benn had spoken in favour of the government, rejecting the Franco-German EMS proposal and a pledge in the Queen’s Speech that we would veto any European monetary scheme that was against British interests.
‘Tony has advanced his own point of view,’ Jim told the press. ‘The Cabinet has not yet reached a decision but when it has, collective responsibility will then be operative and any member of the Cabinet coming out against the decision would face the consequences.’ This put the cat right among the pigeons because Benn’s position was clearly the majority view on the NEC.
This caused Heffer to write to the General Secretary about the position of ministers on the NEC and Jim’s effective gag.5 And at the Organisation Committee in December, despite opposition from Tom Bradley and me, Benn and Kinnock pushed through a resolution, by eight votes to four, that a delegation be sent on behalf of the NEC to the Prime Minister to discuss the relationship of ministers and the NEC – and that a sub-committee, of all things, be set up to consider the issue.6 In the event, Benn withdrew from the delegation and kept his head down!
Callaghan was greatly upset by this particular episode. At the NEC on 21 December 1978, when certain members wished to defer the discussion on collective Cabinet responsibility, Jim insisted on making a statement.
It was the first time, he said, that a Prime Minister would have been prevented from addressing the NEC. He then laid down the line that he was not prepared to waive the rule of ministerial collective responsibility for NEC members, although he had always applied the rule ‘liberally and with tolerance’, unlike Wilson.
He pointed out that for years innumerable ministers had been members of the NEC without difficulty. If any ministers couldn’t square their NEC position with that of Cabinet collective responsibility, then resignation or dismissal were possible. Jim made it clear that you couldn’t have one rule for NEC members and different rules for others. If the NEC, Jim warned, tried to lay down new rules, then he might have to think again about his tolerant approach. ‘Leave it as a matter of good sense,’ he pleaded. It must have been left, because I cannot remember going on any delegation.
And while all this was going on, the NEC were making a total shambles of running the party – on which they should have been concentrating rather than fighting the Labour government.
In 1978, the party was in chaos and in the years that followed it managed to get even worse.
‘It’s a shambles.’ Wherever MPs, regional organisers, agents or experienced local party officers met, whether in the tea room of the House of Commons, at 10 Downing Street, or regional conferences – this was the verdict on the state of the party. ‘It’s a shambles,’ one of us would say, and everyone else would agree. Ron Hayward, the General Secretary, was fond of quoting words from Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the party, dating back to 1888: ‘Perfect your organisation, educate your fellows, look to your register, spread the light and the future is yours.’
The party cards carried the exhortation: ‘The victory of ideals must be organised.’ But in 1978 ‘that lot at Transport House’, as Labour’s HQ was generally called, would have had Hardie turning in his grave.
Demoralisation was the order of the day. Our membership was falling, there were fewer and fewer agents and Head Office organisation was a joke. Our popular vote meanwhile was dropping and by-election results were disastrous. To pile on the misery, the party was facing a cash crisis and was grinding to a halt.
Norman Atkinson, the treasurer since 1976, was quite incapable of doing the job. By 1979, wringing his hands as ever, he announced that the party had no reserves and faced a deficit of £1.4 million over the coming three years.
The lefties feigned shock and blamed the unions for not increasing affiliation fees. One day, when Atkinson asked the NEC, ‘What shall I do?’, there was an uncharacteristic silence. In a constituency somebody, at least, would have piped up: ‘Why don’t we have a raffle or a jumble sale?’
But the NEC had long since lost any organisational initiative. They were capable of holding mass demonstrations, at which Militant collected thousands of pounds for themselves, but they were incapable of raising money for the party.
The irony was that the NEC couldn’t itself have run a chip shop without bankrupting it. The left leadership was totally incapable of running the Head Office of the Labour Party, never mind the country.
The situation came to a head when the TGWU, in desperate need of additional accommodation, gave the party notice to quit from Transport House and it was decided to re-house in a derelict property in Walworth Road, miles away from the House of Commons.
To renovate the building was obviously going to be expensive and the party was broke. The NEC launched a ‘Buy a Brick’ scheme but the response was pathetic. It was generally thought by members that the NEC itself dropped sufficient bricks in a year to build a dozen headquarters.
By 1978, only £145,477 had been raised. The party now, however, had to pay £160,000 rent and £160,000 rates, a far cry from the £50 rent plus rates charged by the TGWU. When the unions stepped in with a lifeline, they were mortified to find that the ‘brick money’ had actually been spent on lavish carpets, furniture and trimmings. ‘Nothing is too good for the workers,’ Ben Tillett had said. And the new Walworth Road staff took him at his word before the party finally moved into the building in March 1980.
Why were things so bad?
Much can be put down to the failings of the General Secretary, who was not only disloyal to Callaghan but not up to his job. He was incapable of coordination and instilling any sense of direction. He presided over a divided, inefficient Head Office that was also becoming increasingly infiltrated by Militant and other lefties.
Andy Bevan, the Trot Youth Officer was one example. He and Nick Sigler, a left-wing researcher, were able to push the real sense of grievance felt by many staff about the pay and the general conditions under which they worked. Benn and Heffer preached left idealism while the party’s employees fared badly. Captain Bligh would have been pushed to have caused such a state of anarchy.
In the unions, Joe Gormley of the Mineworkers and Terry Duffy of the Engineers took a stand: they simply would not dole out more to this bunch of incompetents.
Others of us said ‘get rid’. Get rid of the General Secretary, get rid of Norman and his fellow left-wing NEC members, get rid of the ever-increasing number of left-wing researchers, get rid of the waste and above all get rid of Labour Weekly, the official newspaper, which, while costing us a fortune, was totally biased to the left.
And we would have ‘got rid’ at an earlier stage, had it not been for the fact that the right could no longer rely on support from the GMWU to sort out the party in such a rough-and-ready fashion. Its new General Secretary, David Basnett, allied himself with left-wing union general secretaries in an attempt, starting in 1977, to reform the party by the use of reason alone. It was far beyond reason already, however, and looking back, it was clear that Basnett was just the lapdog of Clive Jenkins, the high-living left-wing leader of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) – a pathetic enough fate for anyone.
Basnett had become General Secretary of the GMWU in 1972 and plays an important – albeit generally a self-important – role in this story. Had he given the union’s traditional total loyalty to the Labour leadership, events in the late 1970s and early 1980s would have been very different. Unfortunately, like so many of his kind, he failed to see the light in time.
He himself was inclined to the soft left but his failure to help us was motivated more by his bad relations with Terry Duffy and Frank Chapple over the Isle of Grain dispute (see p. 179) and his resentment of what he thought was bad treatment from both Healey and Callaghan.
Although at an early stage Basnett professed to like Jim, his pride was deeply wounded when Callaghan announced there would be no election in October 1978. As ever at important moments, he had both press statements and champagne at the ready. He strongly believed that Callaghan had indicated there would be an election and felt very let down.
Like other union leaders, he had worked particularly hard to ensure that the TUC Congress had gone smoothly in the run-up to the general election. After being asked for money for the general election at one meeting at No. 10 in 1978, Basnett had helped set up Trades Unions for Labour Victory (TULV) to mobilise support from trades unionists, which had fallen and was set to crumble still further.
But his hurt by Jim was as nothing to his resentment of Healey. Basnett was one of the ‘Neddie Six’ trades union leaders who negotiated so unsuccessfully on pay before the Winter of Discontent. The bruising that Denis gave Basnett was to cost him the leadership both in 1981, when Basnett helped to persuade Foot to stand, and in 1983, when he supported Roy Hattersley in order to stop Denis once and for all.
Basnett was egocentric and believed his role was to act as the kingmaker and then take advantage of this by being appointed to the Cabinet. In truth, many believed that Jenkins on so many occasions pulled his strings.
This was galling to those of us who wanted to fight the left and regretted that some first-class fighters in the GMWU, such as Derek Gladwin, Callaghan’s campaign manager, and David Warburton, were not able to play the part they could have done in stopping the rise of Benn and Heffer.
Gladwin and Warburton had already been responsible in 1977 for putting a proposition to the GMWU conference calling for reform of the party. At a cosy chat over a meal with Benn, Basnett told him that they wanted a Commission of Inquiry into the party, which included trades union general secretaries and others not on the NEC.
Seeing how disastrous this might be for him, Benn rebuffed this, arguing that the NEC could hardly be expected to acknowledge its own incompetence. He argued that a commission would open old wounds, look like a reprisal and would, in any case, open up the question of the union block vote.
Benn was so worried that the next day he warned Callaghan that it would be a disaster to have an inquiry that would be critical of the party just before the general election. Callaghan’s response was to refer to his own concern about the control of the party by a small coterie of left-wingers.
Sadly the GMWU proposal did not even reach our conference agenda in 1978, despite the fact that Gladwin was chairman of the Standing Orders Committee. The left on the NEC had organised stiff resistance.
Following this failure, Basnett in his self-appointed role as the man most likely to save the Labour Party, enrolled the help of about ten unions to put pressure on the NEC. He himself wanted an all-embracing inquiry that would cover not only the financial and organisational weaknesses of the party, but also its internal democracy.
Using trades union pressure, he secured an inquiry into organisation. The left, however, remained opposed and it was allowed to fizzle out and no final report was ever made. A proposal to form a joint committee of senior trades union officials and NEC members, with a co-ordinator to oversee organisation, was carried but never implemented.
Leaving aside his massive ego, Basnett meant well. But he set out thinking that by reason and logic alone he could persuade the left-wing NEC to reorganise the party. The lefties at that time, however, were never open to reason and logic. They were convinced that everything they did was right and that there was no need to make any concessions. It was put to Basnett over and over again that the only way to make progress was to fight the left, not to make alliances as he did with the GMWU, Jenkins, Bill Keys, NUPE and so on, thus keeping the left in control of the NEC. If only he had listened.
After the 1979 election – when it was too late for a generation of Labour supporters – Basnett again picked up the candle of reform. Suffice it to say, however, that at this time he had never seen the left on the NEC actually at work, nor had any understanding of how bad these barmpots and bigots were.
Worse still, he failed to appreciate how their disloyalty to the government would contribute to its downfall.
1. A detailed, if jaundiced, account of left-wing tactics is to be found in the book Enemies of Democracy by Paul McCormick, which tells the story of the left’s ousting of Reg Prentice in Newham North East.
2. Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80, 29 September 1979.
3. Benn, The End of an Era: Diaries 1980–90, 21 March 1981.
4. With a general election looming, this was later endorsed, with amendments, by the full NEC by thirteen votes to ten on 24 January 1979.
… the NEC, following a meeting between the Home Policy and International Committees with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, continues to view with regret the government’s decision to raise the Minimum Lending Rate by 2.5 per cent with its consequences of an increase in the mortgage rate, higher bank charges, deferment of investment profits and possible higher unemployment. We feel that the decision and the circumstances in which it was taken demonstrates a lack of effective democratic control over the Bank of England, the money market and the City in general. We consider that the government would be better engaged in adopting the alternative economic strategy passed by successive Labour Party conferences.
5. A letter from Heffer on the relationship between Labour governments and the party – together with a letter and a copy of the minute sent in 1976 by Benn to all ministers in the Department of Industry on the subject of the political role of Labour ministers, including those who are members of the NEC – was considered by the NEC’s Organisation Committee on 4 December 1978.
6. This group was to comprise of Benn, Heffer, Lestor, Maynard, Russell Tuck and myself, together with the National Agent and the General Secretary.