The once and future king?

The demise of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London on 1 May was preceded by the publication of the latest account of his political career, Andrew Hosken’s Ken – The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone.(1) Although it contains some new and interesting material (but has no index), it is similar in many ways to Citizen Ken, an account of Livingstone’s life and exploits published in 1984 by John Carvel.(2) A striking feature of Hosken’s book is the large number of people interviewed by him who are careful not to be named when making comments about his subject.

Andrew Hosken is a BBC TV journalist who became quite well known in the 1990s covering London local government. At that time he seemed to be working closely with associates of Livingstone as they placed in the public domain various important items – or gossip, depending on one’s point of view – about events in a small circle of local authorities in London.(3) His approach, therefore, is similar to that taken by John Ware and Panorama when covering events in Brent, Hackney and Lambeth of 20-25 years ago.(4) Little probing research appears to have taken place when compiling this latest account; and Hosken often takes at face value assertions made by colleagues of Livingstone, who, with Livingstone, are happy to be interviewed by him. In consequence this is not the serious biography that one hopes will one day appear. This article considers Hosken’s book while posing some questions of its own about the political career and future prospects of Ken Livingstone.

Early Ken

Approximately 65% of Hosken’s book concentrates on the early formative years of Livingstone’s life up until the demise of the Greater London Council (GLC). There is a certain rough justice in this, in that it is this period which continues to define him for many people and provides a great deal of the explanations for his subsequent conduct.

Livingstone comes from a respectable working-class Tory family. Until he was 28 he lived at home with his parents who were Conservative Party members and activists. This is not investigated by Hosken, but was previously mentioned by Carvel. Their activism included helping at elections – always a key indicator of serious political commitment. They lived in a council flat for a few years in the early 1950s but bought their own house as soon as possible. It would have been interesting to have heard about how the values of that stratum of society at that time affected Livingstone and subsequently contributed to his views – but this is not attempted by Hosken. This is a great shame as there are signs from other sources that Ken himself was politically active prior to joining the Labour Party. It was recently reported that Sir Christopher Gent, currently Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, said that Livingstone had been an Executive Member of the Young Conservatives, in south London, in the 1960s.(5) Presumably this was pre-1966, the year that Livingstone took a lengthy trip around Africa. In 1984 John Carvel casually mentioned that ‘he subscribed for a year [i.e. 1967/1968] to an anarchist group called Solidarity’.(6) Solidarity was actually an offshoot from the Socialist Labour League, an organisation that would produce many people who would accompany Livingstone later on in his career. Carvel didn’t seem to know this and Hosken makes no mention of either event.

Local government

Whatever his previous affiliations, Ken joined the Labour Party in 1968, while at teacher training college. The precise way this happened is not spelled out by Hosken. Around 1970 his political career began in earnest when he fell in with a small Trotskyist sect whose members included two figures very widely known in London politics, Keith Veness and Graham Bash. Both remain close to Livingstone and both are quoted frequently in Hosken’s book. For the consumption of Labour Party members and officials this sect publicly called themselves the Chartists, thus promoting a clear historical connection with the Labour and trade union movement. Their real name, however, was the Revolutionary Communist League and they despised the Labour Party.(7) They had decided to ‘enter’ the Labour Party and work within it to seize political power. Like all ‘entryists’ (before and since) they firmly stated that they had ‘left’ their previous groupings, these assertions being a requirement, usually, of Labour Party membership. It is far from clear how truthful these assertions actually were or are. Carvel, writing in the 1980s, says that Livingstone met Ted Knight in 1970. Knight was a ‘former’ member of the Socialist Labour League, a Trotskyist group active in the 1950s and 60s.(8) The SLL was run by Gerry Healy and had decided during that time to ‘enter’ the Labour Party. Hosken says in his book that Veness – a former member of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, the group that Healy ran after the Socialist Labour League – met Livingstone in a park, playing football, in 1971. More clarity on this would have been welcome, as it is striking how at this stage of his career, Livingstone seems to bump into people associated with the Workers Revolutionary Party.

Veness is mentioned throughout Hosken’s book and is clearly a major figure behind the scenes. He admits inter alia to (a) kidnapping people off the street and beating them up (p. 130) (b) looting County Hall in the last few months before abolition of GLC (p. 235) – ‘The task was to get as much money as possible out of County Hall’ and (c) sitting next to people at political meetings to ‘keep an eye on them’ – i.e. physical intimidation. (p. 87) At no point does Hosken challenge whether any of this bullying, criminality or pilfering has anything to do with politics, or why anyone would particularly regard it as ‘left-wing’. Bash, for his part, talks nostalgically of the days when ‘the left’ in the 1970s and 1980s were ‘a bit over the top’ in how nasty they were, before reassuring the reader that, today, things are calmer and far more conciliatory.(9)

Ted Knight took a great interest in Livingstone and is credited with being a significant influence on him. Remarkably, from the moment he joined the organisation Livingstone seems to have had the notion that he would become leader of the Labour Party. This ambition clearly attracted the various former colleagues of Gerry Healy, with whom he now mixed. In 1971 Livingstone was elected to Lambeth Council where he quickly fell foul of his colleagues. He was expelled from the Labour Group of councillors in 1972. This event is not fully investigated by Hosken and the grounds on which the Greater London Labour Party reinstated him are not produced. In May 1973 he was elected to the GLC while remaining a Lambeth councillor.(10)

The long march to Brent East

Around this time both he and Ted Knight decided they would enter Parliament. Livingstone began organising to this end. Carvel – but not Hosken – notes that he kept the best index file system of Labour Party activists outside of the files of the Special Branch.(11) Hosken does not spell out either the curious mindset of the ultra-left in the 1970s or how rational at the time some of their ultimately irrational views may have seemed.(12) Knight and Livingstone were operating during a time when the Allende government had been overthrown in a CIA-backed coup and the Salazar regime in Portugal had collapsed overnight in 1974, to give but two examples of dramatic change during those years. Something like this happening in the UK through a combination, perhaps, of instability in Northern Ireland, industrial relations problems and general economic difficulties, exercised the imagination of many during this period; and was by no means seen as a theoretical possibility. For many, particularly those on the political right, the sudden appearance of people like Knight and Livingstone was proof of an imminent take-over of democratic institutions from within by small cadres of revolutionaries using the same methods that had worked for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A better and deeper explanation by Hosken of the context and psychology behind the views of the ultra-left might have given some ballast and credibility to views that now look seriously deluded.

In May 1977 Livingstone became GLC representative for Hackney North. A few weeks later he was selected as Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for Hampstead defeating Vincent Cable (currently a Liberal Democrat MP) in a contest for this position. Ted Knight became PPC for Hornsey at the same time. They would both have thought it likely that Labour would win a late 1978 election (assuming Callaghan called one) and both, therefore, would become MPs. In this context Livingstone’s move to the Hackney North GLC seat, held by an elderly Jewish MP known to be retiring at the next election, could be seen as a long stop if he didn’t win the nomination in Hampstead.(13)

Having won the Hampstead nomination, Livingstone also became a Camden councillor in 1978 and quickly became Chair of Housing. His colleagues did not think him particularly competent. In the end, Callaghan delayed until May 1979 and neither Livingstone nor Knight got elected to the House of Commons. Deflected from this they now decided to seize power at the GLC as, to quote Livingstone, ‘it has a lot of money and a lot of power’ (p. 73).

Labour Briefing

The vehicle to achieve the seizure of power in London was Labour Briefing, set up in late 1979 to organise ‘the left’ into voting for a particular slate. Gerry Healy, the leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party, now came to the fore. The connections that had already existed between Knight, Veness and Healy are not greatly remarked upon by Hosken, and, naturally, all participants deny any ill motives; but the man on the Clapham omnibus would at this point think that something might have been going on here. Officially Healy and the WRP only printed the material used to promote Livingstone, Knight and their associates and to organise support for them. This included Labour Herald (a lavishly illustrated colour weekly), which appeared while the Workers Revolutionary Party was directly and secretly funded by Libya, and ceased to appear once the Libyan connection had been made public and that funding was no longer available. (14) Strongly anti-Zionist (actually anti-semitic,(15) Gerry Healy may have calculated that backing Livingstone for the GLC and a career in Parliament would prove that he could influence UK politics. Livingstone, in turn, was an apparently genuine and warm supporter of Healy.(16)

While preparing to take over the GLC, Livingstone and Knight simultaneously began organising a second attempt to get elected to Parliament. In Livingstone’s case this involved considerable intriguing to get support for his candidacy in the Brent East constituency. Hosken reveals that Graham Bash had been a member there at one time and had ‘kept in close contact with his Chartist friends in Brent East’.(p. 177)

Bash is again taken at face value when he solemnly declares the basis for this was that Freeson, the incumbent MP, was ‘right-wing’. Freeson, one of the founders of Shelter and CND, had been Labour Housing Minister 1969-1970 and 1974-1979, during which time he had successfully opposed Treasury efforts to bring in the Right To Buy for local authority tenants. Freeson was a serious and orthodox left-winger.(17) At the time of the campaign to oust Freeson from Brent East (1980-1985) many journalists were clearly puzzled at the insistence of Livingstone and his allies that they were campaigning against a ‘right-wing’ MP.(18)

But for bureaucratic reasons, neither Livingstone nor Knight achieved their objectives before the 1983 General Election. The Brent East selection was not finalised by the time Thatcher asked for Parliament to be dissolved and Freeson automatically remained the Labour candidate. Knight failed in an effort to become PPC for Coventry North East.(19)

Plan B

However, although Plan A didn’t work, Plan B, taking over the GLC, did. Livingstone became leader of the GLC in May 1981 and quickly became a major media figure. The period 1981-1985 was successful for him personally and during this time he also expanded his personal political base by falling in with Socialist Action, another small Trotskyist faction.(20) With their help, and that of his colleagues of longer standing, he was selected as the Labour Party PPC for Brent East in 1985, finally seeing off Freeson. He was elected to Parliament in 1987.(21)

His legacy at the GLC was mixed. Most of the policies he and his team pursued were actually devised by others or had been considered for many years previously, by both Labour and Conservative administrations. Public transport, the main area of success (and notoriety) merely illustrated the peculiar terminology used by the UK media and establishment when commenting about British politics. What Livingstone did by partially lowering bus and tube fares in London was trumpeted by the media as being ‘left-wing’, even though it was less adventurous and consistent than almost any city elsewhere in the world, including the USA. Given the automatic obedience shown to Treasury opinions and strictures by every other mainstream UK political group, his nerve in implementing such policies, even if only pursued as personal aggrandisement, should perhaps be admired. The only genuinely new policy the GLC came up with in the 1981-1986 era was to fund a large number of voluntary groups. But many of these did little to justify such funding; and a number of commentators saw this as a deliberate building up of a political class that would attack anyone who later tried to stop the flow of this cash, and could therefore be counted upon to be the allies of those who had originally provided it. In summary, while the Livingstone GLC was firmly regarded as being the apogee of UK leftism it was actually unexceptional by European or even US standards.

In Parliament

Hosken spends very little of his book discussing what Livingstone did during the 14 years he was an MP. As early as November 1985, just after he had clinched the Brent East seat, Livingstone told Tony Benn that the Labour Party would turn to him when it lost the next election, due then to be held in 1987 or 1988. Even Benn thought this a bit unlikely. Actually the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) ignored Livingstone. He clearly didn’t grasp that the Labour Party is overwhelmingly orientated around an axis of Scotland + Wales + the North and has a low tolerance level for London (something that Herbert Morrison – a completely centre-right figure – found out in his attempts to become Labour Party Leader between 1935 and 1955.)

Quickly bored by Parliamentary procedures, he wrote a column for The Sun from 1991, made numerous appearances on TV game shows and eventually became restaurant critic for The Evening Standard. Hosken says that he abandoned his plan to be Labour Party leader in 1989. Did he? He was a candidate for the position after Kinnock departed in 1992 – with Bernie Grant as his running mate for deputy leader. They got 13 votes and were quickly eliminated. Even as late as June 1994 he spent several weeks after the death of John Smith discussing a possible leadership bid but pulled out calculating, rightly, that he would receive a second drubbing. It would be reasonable on the basis of this evidence to conclude that Livingstone would still like to lead the Labour Party and if the opportunity arose again to do so – or to do something that could be presented as being similar – he would still be a contender.(22)

With nothing much to do in the House of Commons, Livingstone spent much of his time as an MP engaged in the types of localised battles in London that he had occupied himself with in the 1970s. There is some coverage by Hosken of the infighting, in 1992-1994, caused by that Livingstone and his allies in their efforts to gain control of (or wreck) the Anti-Racist Alliance, a voluntary group established by various churches and trades unions,. In doing this they used similar tactics to those that they had wielded in internal Labour Party battles. But why did they spend so much time and energy doing this? Hosken quotes a number of sources who state that Livingstone only works with people who are completely loyal to him and his cadres. Because the ARA and its black Leader Marc Wadsworth did not initially conform to this model, it automatically became a target for Livingstone and his allies who seem determined that they should hold the commanding positions in organisations that oversee matters such as race, policing etc. He also mentions that Socialist Action members who participated in the ARA battles, appeared very early on in the campaign that attempted and failed to successfully prosecute the murderers of Stephen Lawrence. The opinion of the police – that individuals of this type had an agenda that went far beyond the tragic Lawrence case, and that their presence was not ultimately helpful – is neither spelt out nor pursued further, however.(23)

Running London again

The final third of the book covers the years just before and during Livingstone’s renaissance as Mayor of London. After Labour took office in May 1997 he held discussions with Blair about a possible government job. Blair declined – politely.(24) Labour was committed to re-establishing some form of regional government for London. What eventually emerged was a small, directly elected advisory body, the Greater London Assembly, with no real powers, and a directly elected mayor with the widest powers of personal patronage anywhere in Europe. It has similarities to the US systems of city government, but with neither the checks and balances nor the considerable taxation and spending powers.(25)

Running as an independent

Livingstone decided to go for mayor and made it clear privately – after stating the reverse in public – that he was not bothered if this meant running as an independent. Pulling together the information collected by Hosken – and Carvel, earlier – it is clear that, given the new proportional representation voting system adopted for Regional Assemblies, Livingstone realised that, with the continued disarray of the Conservatives, his long-established personal political machine and the substantial funding he could deploy, he would be able to beat Labour in London. Frank Dobson was selected as the Labour candidate for mayor, defeating Livingstone.(26) Ken immediately stood as an independent, was expelled by the Labour Party, and launched his campaign with considerable and expensive newspaper advertising. His election as mayor in May 2000 – although not overwhelming in terms of votes or turnout – returned him to a quasi-national political position after 15 years.

Not particularly bothered about the humiliation of Dobson and his own party, Blair admired this and soon wanted to do a deal to get Ken back on side. Arranging this when he had been expelled proved tricky, though. Hosken shows that the selection process in 2003 to choose a credible Labour candidate to run against Livingstone – the best and most plausible candidate at this point being Livingston’s former colleague at the GLC, Tony Banks MP – was a charade interfered with at the behest of Downing Street so that a weak candidate (Nicky Gavron) could be adopted and then persuaded, ‘in the interests of unity’, to stand down, with Livingstone welcomed back.(27)

As a Labour candidate Livingstone won again in 2004, though by a less impressive margin. His achievements as Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008 were broadly similar to those he could claim for his earlier period at the GLC. Some good policies were implemented, but they were not devised by Livingstone or his allies. Many had been discussed for decades but never attempted in the UK. This record was presented as ‘left-wing’ while being relatively mild or even staid by the standards that prevail elsewhere, particularly in Europe. Despite this even his detractors would admit that, compared to almost every other UK political figure, at least he tried in a few areas. Typically, there was also a repetition between 2000 and 2008 of the issues to do with grant funding that had also been a feature of his tenure at the GLC in 1981-1986. There was media coverage of disputes involving a colleague from ARA infighting, Lee Jasper, and an alleged misappropriation of funds. This took some of the shine off Livingstone’s reputation, which was, in any event, somewhat overblown. Whether this had any effect on subsequent events is hard to tell. In May 2008 Livingstone was beaten – the only time in his 37 year political career to date that he has been voted out of office – by a lively, well organised Conservative campaign at a time when Labour Party fortunes nationally were at a low ebb.

The future?

It is undeniable that Ken Livingstone runs his own political machine in London. He has money, a printing press (28) and a substantial media reputation. Has he really given up longer-term ambitions? One possibility might be a return to Parliament as an MP in a small opposition Labour Party demoralised by right of centre, pro-U.S. policies that would be easier to take over – possibly with the help of the GMB – than had been the case in former years. Another scenario that no longer seems particularly outlandish would be a ‘hung’ Parliament in 2009 leading to electoral reform by, say, 2011. At this point would Livingstone stay in the Labour Party? He could launch his own movement. It would bring together strands of regionalism, socialist rhetoric and environmentalism in a stew not dissimilar to Umberto Bossi’s Northern League in Italy.(29) A prototype of this has already been successfully road-tested by Livingstone in London between 1999 and 2004. With electoral reform it would probably secure a bloc of 25-35 seats in what would then be permanently ‘hung’ Parliaments. In circumstances such as these it would be highly likely that bigger parties, all seeking to form coalitions, would need to do deals with him. He would have a major role, and in neither of these cases would Livingstone be so old as to be ‘unelectable’: he would be 68 in 2013, younger than John McCain today. Given, too, the bleak future facing the UK with rising food prices, a weak economic base, little industrial and manufacturing infrastructure, climate change, poor housing, pollution and fuel shortages, the ability of Livingstone to still have something to say on these issues – even if it is often contradictory and simplistic – may be attractive to many disillusioned with the traditional centre-right politics of the UK’s ruling elite. He could still have everything to play for.

Notes

1. Published by Arcadia Books, £15.99
2. Carvel, Social Affairs Editor of The Guardian, repackaged his book as Turn Again Livingstone in 1999.
3. These usually turned out to be factually wrong. Examples of this included claims made about (a) housing corruption and (b) paedophile cover-ups in Hackney between 1990 and 1996. The former was investigated by Ian McDonald QC who concluded that the person making the claims was a liar, while an enquiry into the latter concluded that the enquiry itself was a waste of time. This episode and the involvement in them of Hosken and Livingstone’s allies is not mentioned in this book.
4. See ‘Baa Baa White Sheep!’ in Lobster 39.
5. See Private Eye 16 May 2008. Sir Christopher Gent was National Chair of the Young Conservatives 1977-1979 and subsequently had a successful business career with Vodaphone PLC, during which he received the Queen’s Award for Industry. His brother, Rodney Gent, was Vice Chair of the Greater London Young Conservatives in 1970 and a GLC councillor 1977-86. Both Sir Christopher and his brother clearly recollect being told of Livingstsone’s prior involvement with the YCs after Livingstone had become a notable public figure.
6. There is quite a bit about them on the net if you look far enough. Interestingly they seem to have had a greater interest in sexual politics/gay rights/women’s issues than the usual Trotskyist group. Much of what they were arguing back in 1967 is similar to what Livingstone has become well known for championing in more recent years.
7. An odd connection with the Chartists involved Ron Heisler, a Chartist, and a Labour Councillor in Hackney 1964-1968 who worked as a researcher for Eddie Milne MP. Milne had fallen foul of the Labour machine in the North East and had been deselected and then expelled from the Labour Party for his pains. In 1974 Heisler and Milne received by post details of an alleged bank account held by Edward Short, Labour cabinet minister and former leader of Newcastle City Council. The documents turned out to be forgeries and there was some initial speculation that a grouping like the Chartists might have instigated the whole thing.It seems reasonably certain that the Short forgeries were the work of some branch of the British secret state and were part of the attempts in 1974-76 to discredit the Labour governments of Harold Wilson.
8. Ted Knight fits perfectly the role of the ‘deep entryist’ mole who appears to have been ‘expelled’ from or left an extremist group but actually retains his ties with them. Both Carvel and Hosken speculate that the intention was that Knight would have been the real Leader of the GLC after 1981 had Knight succeeded in getting elected. This would have produced a situation in London similar to that which occurred in Liverpool under Militant – Hatton was ‘only’ Deputy Leader but clearly ran things. In this analysis Livingstone would have been a malleable Trojan horse rather than a Leader with actual power himself. In the event this didn’t happen. Knight was defeated in Norwood. It seems a distinct possibility, though. Most authors claim that Knight and Livingstone fell out completely after rate-capping in 1984. Not so. In 1985 Knight – after being surcharged and thrown off Lambeth Council – set up his own business, South Chelsea College Limited. This is based 100 yards from Lambeth Town Hall and provides tuition to overseas students (many from Africa, where Knight’s company have a field worker helping people come to the UK to study) in English and various other subjects. Livingstone worked as a tutor for Knight after he became an MP, teaching British Constitution.
9. Veness failed in an attempt to get elected to the GLC in Croydon North East in March 1980. He was later a Labour councillor in Islington in 1982-1986 and thereafter for many years an election agent and researcher for Jeremy Corbyn MP. An accurate monograph of his political activity and connections would make interesting reading. He has a particular interest in Kurdish refugee groups. Bash is editor of Labour Briefing. People who experienced the antics of ‘the left’ in London politics in the 1990s and subsequently would not concur with his assertions.
10. Livingstone was thus able to claim two attendance allowances, equal to £4000 a year, quite a reasonable amount of money at that time. He has not worked in traditional paid employment since 1970.
11. In the early 1990s Livingstone purchased the biggest computer system owned by a private individual in the UK for his personal office use.
12. A comic version of was the BBC TV series ‘Citizen Smith’ (1977), about a small south London revolutionary group and their antics. For a later interpretation of the likely establishment reaction to such activities see A Very British Coup, the novel and TV drama by Chris Mullin.
13. The sitting MP in Hackney North at this time was David Weizmann.
14. The selection to replace him took place after Hampstead. Had Livingstone still needed a seat at this point in the view of people active in Hackney at that time, he would easily have succeeded in replacing Weizmann. Cable had contested Glasgow Hillhead for Labour in 1970 and was an advisor to John Smith MP when Smith was Secretary of State for Trade 1978-1979. He joined the SDP in 1981.

    Libyan and Iraqi funding: the (internal) WRP enquiry that expelled Healy in 1985 said:

    • Over £1 million of donations from the Middle East (50% from Libya) could be accounted for legitimately.
    • However a great deal of other money appeared to have been paid as well, in cash, and kept by Healy, but there was no way of tracing this. The money was paid so that pro-Libyan articles etc. would be published.
    • Healy also provided information to Libya and Iraq in exchange for funding about the activities and connections of various dissidents who had been expelled from those nations.
    • In particular Healy would, typically, organise a conference or rally on a particular theme likely to attract Arab dissidents and then take photographs of those who attended, make notes of their statements and send these off to the various governments who funded the WRP.

    In other words Healy and the WRP took money from foreign governments to organise ‘honeytrap’ style operations that would provide information on political activists of interest to those governments. Some of these dissidents were either killed on their return to their home country or were kidnapped back to their home country and murdered.

    The WRP received so much Libyan funding in the 1980s that one wag called them Gadaffi’s Foreign Legion.

    When questioned by Carvel in the 1980s about Labour Herald funding Knight would not be drawn on where precisely it came from and how they could afford their publication costs, saying he ‘wasn’t going to facilitate witch hunts inside the Labour Party.’

15. Why was Healy anti-semitic? My guess would be: (1) he was an Irish Catholic from an era when the Catholic Church had a negative view of Jews, and (2) both the people with whom he fell out in the 1950s over leadership of UK Trotskyism, Ted Grant and Tony Cliff, were Jewish.
16. He attended Healy’s funeral in 1989 and wrote a warm forward to a biography of Healy published in 1994. Healy had been denounced in the mid 1980s as a serial rapist and sexual abuser of vulnerable female members of the SLL and WRP over a long period of time.
17. The Conservative candidate against him in the February 1974 general election had been George Kennedy Young, the former Deputy Director of MI6. For Young on Young see his ‘The final testimony of George Kennedy Young’ in Lobster 19.
18. A more plausible explanation, given what we now know, would be that his replacement was part of a plan worked out in advance by Livingstone, Knight and others, which assumed, pre-Falklands War and the launch of the SDP, that Labour would win an election in 1981/1982 due to unpopularity of Thatcher; Livingstone would oust Freeson prior to this; Livingstone would be new MP for Brent East; Labour would have no candidate for Housing Minister in its new government, Freeson having been an obvious choice for this position; Livingstone would intrigue for this job, arguing that he had already held similar posts in local and regional government. After this Livingstone would attempt to seize the leadership of the Labour Party, and government, aided by Knight.Freeson was also a prominent member of Poale Zion, the Labour Party Zionist section, so ousting him would please both the Workers Revolutionary Party and Libya and could be presented as a great victory.
19. Knight’s political career went quickly downhill after this. Elected to Lambeth Council in 1974, he failed to gain election to the GLC in 1981 (Stephen Haseler of the Social Democratic Alliance split the anti-Conservative vote in the seat he was contesting) but became Leader of Lambeth Council in 1982, following elections that produced a ‘hung’ council. After refusing to set a rate he was surcharged and disqualified from office in 1986. He had a major difference of opinion with Livingstone over tactics in the mid 1980s. Knight favoured deliberate confrontation with central Government a la Lansbury in the 1920s even if this meant putting one’s personal position at risk (which might be only temporary) in order to mobilise and politicise the class most likely to support Labour. Livingstone favoured remaining in office at almost any price as only by this means could one influence events.
20. They were led by John Ross who had stood as an International Marxist Group candidate against Reg Prentice in Newham NE in the October 1974 general election. Socialist Action were later active in trying to oust Prentice – another individual considered by non-Labour Party leftists to be ‘right-wing’. Prentice had been Minister for Overseas Development and Secretary of State for Education under Wilson and could claim to have a good record in both positions.The efforts to deselect Prentice contained elements of pure farce: Newham NE CLP was counter infiltrated in 1976-1978 by members of the Freedom Association seeking to fight ‘extremism’ and rescue Prentice. Meetings often consisted of extensive and bitter arguments between two and groups that had nothing to do with the Labour Party. A prominent Freedom Association entryist in Newham NE was Julian Lewis, now Conservative MP for New Forest East.

    Ironically Prentice quit the Labour Party in 1977 after he had exhausted all methods of securing his position in Newham North East. He joined the Conservative Party (thus ‘proving’ his critics correct) and sat as MP for Daventry 1979-1992.

21. And caused parliamentary outrage by using his debut speech to (correctly) accuse the late Airey Neave of being involved in the anti-Wilson machinations of the previous decade. (Parliamentary convention is that an MP’s first or maiden speech is never political.)
22. The low regard that the Labour Party has for London has also extended to doing little about its own structures and apparatus in the area when it is threatened by the ultra-left….perhaps it expects nothing better from the Metropolis. Note that it only took action against Militant when Militant threatened Liverpool and had two MP’s elected – neither for London seats. Note also the number of prominent individuals who have tiptoed away from any involvement in London politics for calmer pastures elsewhere: Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, both Millibands, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper. The disinterest the Labour Party shows in its own structures and organisation in the capital city of the country it seeks to govern is striking.
23. For more on this see Brian Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence, (Penguin, 2000)
24. So politely and with such charm that Livingstone thought he would be offered a position.
25. The position of Mayor of London was probably created by Blair as a sinecure for Trevor Phillips, a significant New Labour hanger-on with no political record to speak of. The idea may have been that Phillips would initially serve briefly as deputy to Frank Dobson, whom Blair no longer wanted in the cabinet. After a decent interval with Dobson as mayor, Phillips would take over.
26. Though the media duly criticised Dobson’s selection, the voting system for this was the same that the Labour Party had used for many years for the election of candidates to all senior positions – an electoral college based on a combination of votes from members, trade unions and MPs.
27. The process of welcoming back Ken was presided over by a panel chaired by Paul Kenny – then the GMB boss in the London area (and now General Secretary of the GMB nationally) and a former employee of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Key supporters of readmission included Iain Coleman, MP for Hammersmith, and his wife Dame Sally Powell, who was also a National Executive Committee member. Iain Coleman is the brother of Neale Coleman, a key ally of Livingstone. Note, too, that Kevin Veness, brother of Keith, is employed by the Hammersmith and Fulham Tenants and Residents Association. Hosken fails to ask why Blair would be bothered about this. An obvious reason would be that by late 2003/early 2004 Blair had become personally unpopular with significant numbers of Labour Party members and supporters, mainly as a result of the Iraq war. He probably calculated that he could not afford his unpopularity to reach a critical mass that would result in his deposition, so bought off the bloc of London MPs, and a few annoying trade union figures, by bringing Livingstone back. Putting ordinary Labour Party members through a sham selection process and tossing aside the party’s own rule book was of little consequence.
28. The printing press is Lithoprint Limited, based in London E8 and owned and managed by Socialist Action.
29. According to Hosken, Livingstone’s main theoretician, John Ross, has apparently already suggested and outlined a vehicle of this type. In a lengthy piece in the Evening Standard (2 July 2008) Livingstone was reported by Andrew Gilligan to be preparing to campaign under the banner of Progressive London.