31st May 1994: I’ve called because I think we should meet. I want to know your decision. Also I think it’s important you and I to resolve this somehow. The Deal, Tony to Gordon, Channel 4 2003
Nellis and I fell out because with respect he and his Militant Tendency friends were entirely responsible for this election defeat. ibid.
Deep down, you won’t change the world until you have the big job. ibid. Gordon to Tony
But significant gains were made in a number of areas. ibid. Tony re third election defeat
Only one of us can go all the way. ibid. Tony to Gordon
I think you should stand for the leadership, Gordon. Me as your deputy. ibid. Tony
You alienate people, Gordon. ibid. Mandelson
I’m sorry it’s come to this. ibid. Tony to Gordon
I propose as chancellor you will have complete control … ibid.
On a bleak May morning in 1994 Labour politicians gathered to mourn their leader John Smith. His death severed a link with Labour’s past. Smith, alone among his colleagues, had served in the last Labour cabinet. For sixteen years Labour politicians had languished into the wilderness; they had lost four general elections and their party has been riven by vicious internal conflicts. The Wilderness Years I: Cast Into the Wilderness, BBC 1995
In the ’80s Labour leaders failed to offer an appealing alternative, and their response to nearly two decades of Conservative domination has been to shed many of the party’s socialist ideals. ibid.
‘Since 1974 it hasn’t appeared to stand for anything.’ ibid. Tony Benn
Tony Benn threw his whole behind the campaign for Labour Party democracy. ibid.
‘Many of Tony Benn’s ideas are crazy.’ ibid. Roy Hattersley
The activists in the party were often the object of deep suspicion: the Right feared their campaign and resented their zeal. ibid.
Right-wing MPs were outraged at the Left’s proposals to give more power to Trade Unions and party members, a recipe in their view for a Trotskyite takeover. ibid.
Michael Foot, the favoured candidate of the Trade Unions, was a left-winger nearing the end of a long career in politics. ibid.
Denis Healey’s campaign was curiously low-key. ibid.
Under Michael Foot’s leadership the Labour Party would give its full backing to unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Community and a massive program of public spending. ibid.
Just two months after the Wembley conference Tony Benn announced that he would challenge Denis Healey for the deputy leadership. ibid.
Foot and his deputy Denis Healey presided over a party which came close to collapse. The Wilderness Years II: Comrades of War
The People’s March for jobs to Michael Foot’s fury became a platform for the deputy leadership contest. ibid.
In the summer of 1981 rioting broke out in the inner cities. ibid.
In the summer of 1981 [Kinnock] distanced himself from the Benn camp. ibid.
Tony Benn had lost by less than 1%. ibid.
Few were willing to wield the knife. ibid.
1983: Michael Foot was ill-prepared for the [election] campaign without his own manifesto. ibid.
Benn lost his seat in Bristol. ibid.
Neil Kinnock was elected leader of the Labour Party at the conference in October 1983 … Kinnock would lead his party on a fraught and difficult journey to the right. ibid.
‘June 9th 1983: Never ever ever again will we experience that.’ The Wilderness Years III: Enter the Rose, Kinnock
‘I personally had no hopes for Neil Kinnock at all.’ ibid. Benn
To Benn and the Left, Kinnock’s first act of treachery was not to give his wholehearted backing to the miners. ibid.
Labour’s national committee began the process of expelling the militant tendency. ibid.
Militant became Labour’s obsession. ibid.
A new symbol for the party: the rose was to replace the red flag … It became known as the Red Rose Revolution. ibid.
More sober colleagues found the theatricals hard to bear. ibid.
In May 1987 Margaret Thatcher called an election. The Labour Party was ready. ibid.
His [Kinnock] exuberant style was both his greatest asset and his Achilles’ heel. ibid.
Kinnock was determined to take his party to the right. The Wilderness Years IV: The Pursuit of Power
Neil Kinnock had established himself as the absolute ruler of his party. ibid.
Increasingly, Kinnock relied on an inner circle of advisers. ibid.
Michael Meacher, a left winger, was duly replaced by Tony Blair as employment spokesman. ibid.
The Labour [’92] campaign lacked overall control. ibid.
‘The ’92 election was doomed from the start.’ ibid. Gerald Kaufman
Defeat in 1992 spelt the end of Neil Kinnock’s leadership of the Labour Party. ibid.
John Smith, the Scottish lawyer and favoured candidate of Labour’s old guard, inherited the crowd. ibid.
After Smith’s death, Mandelson played a key role in the party’s choice of leader. ibid.
Piccadilly was already a seething mass of people; the hoarding around Eros was crowded with young people mainly from the Forces. Ken Loach: The Spirit of 45, woman, 2013
Will we, the people who have won the war, drive home our victory against fascism by defeating our pre-war enemies of poverty and unemployment? ibid. man
We’re still being taken in. ibid.
The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. ibid. Labour Party manifesto 45
The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people. ibid.
The best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment. ibid.
Newspapers carried the astonishing news to an amazed public – Labour landslide. ibid. Pathé news
We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders. ibid. Aneurin Bevan
The idea that people who worked in the industry had any say in how the industry was run was a completely foreign idea. ibid. Tony Benn
It was not until 1967 that dockers gained permanent employment. ibid.
They [police] seemed to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on the working man. ibid. striking miner
The last registered dock workers did not get their jobs back. Casual labour has returned to the docks. ibid.
Democracy is dead in the Labour Party. The Starmer leadership is not interested in democracy. It’s interested in power and control … treachery and dishonesty … Now he has become Stalin. Ken Loach, Youtube 13.02
It’s a broad church within very narrow limits … otherwise you’re out. ibid.
They stop us confronting the real enemy. ibid.
And the BBC joined in. The visciousness of the campaign particularly personally against Jeremy Corbyn was the most vile that I can remember. ibid.
You can vote Labour now and … deliver the working class hand and bound to Murdoch and his pals. ibid.