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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