Saddened just now to learn that ex-MP Terry Fields has died. He was a decent man and a socialist. For a short while, in my youth, I was a member of the Militant Tendency. I left because I don't hold much truck with democratic centralism as a modus operandi and disagreed with various Militant policy positions. But people like Terry, and Pat Wall, an MP in Bradford, took their socialism seriously. In my view, Militant made a great mistake disenfranchising itself from tjhe Labour Party and contributed as much to the mess we are in as the SDP in the early 1980's.
However. Kinnock's landmark speech in 1985 referred to the Militant in much the same kinds of terms as Mc Carthy did in America in the 1950's. Agree or not, the Labour Party was the poorer without them. Ask me who has done more damage to the Labour Party - New Labour or Militant? I think you know my answer........
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Not my brand of politics
but respect his stand on fighting the Poll Tax and going to jail as an MP
he fought for his class
He fought for his class, my god.
I'm sad to hear of his death.
Yeah - wicked New Labour - getting the party into Government for over a decade - Militant would never have exposed the comrades to such horrors as having to come up with policies that could be applied in the real world now would it? Keep politics pure & theoretical - stay in opposition!
Liverpool ???
Council houses
didnt support them but like SWP did actually take power
and built many council houses
unlike New labour or the Tories who would sell them (incl Housing Assoc houses)
"Ask me who has done more damage to the Labour Party - New Labour or Militant?"
Not sure, but one of them achieved 11 years in power and the other vanished like the Cheshire cat but this time leaving nothing behind it except a snarl.
Militant in Liverpool
31'000 council houses ,but left the city in debt
Lib Dems in Liverpool
sacked thousands of council workers, built no council houses, city 20 million in debt, leader resifned for bringing his office into disrepute...
consider the press coverage of Liverpool during Derek Hatton's time in office and the coverage during the Lib Dems disastrous 10 years in power.
I remember Terry Fields giving a speech on the need for a minimum wage way back in the mid 80s.
Interestingly, Kinnock's attack on Liverpool Council during the 80s- "scuttling around the city hiring taxis to hand out redundancy notices to its own workers"
it took a Lib Dem Council to make those workers redundant.I don't recall any Blair conference speeches about that.
'Yeah - wicked New Labour - getting the party into Government for over a decade - Militant would never have exposed the comrades to such horrors as having to come up with policies that could be applied in the real world now would it? Keep politics pure & theoretical - stay in opposition!'
Tell me anonymous, how prepared are you for the Tory general election victory in 2 years?
For how long will the policies of Blair and now Brown keep Labour in opposition?
Things have moved on now sharply and the reasons to vote Labour in 1997 are not the reasons for voting for them next time.
Voters want radical policies to deal with housing, poverty,debt, work and this expensive war.
New Labour at the moment arent capable of providing it.
Ian
So what did Fields and his other Militant friends actually achieve? Glorious failures actually help no one and are not serious socialism - particularly if they helped maintain the Conservatives in power.
Did they introduce the minimum wage? Did they reduce unemployment? Did they oversee massive increases in education and health spending? Better the imperfect achievers rather than the perfect failures i'm afraid.
Did they reduce unemployment did they.
Yes - they did. People can and do play around with the statistics - so you need to look at a constant and reputable measure over a long time series - the ILO measure saw the unemployment rate fall from 7.1% in 1997 to 5% in 2006. Probably not as much a fall as claimed - but a significant fall nevertheless.
http://laborsta.ilo.org/
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