Labour Party moves against Militant Tendency in Liverpool 

new labour = tory reserves

1:01 Peter Hitchens

For those who are curious... The man at 1:08 to 1:26 is the late Eric Heffer, MP The man at 1:27 to 1:39 is Dennis Skinner, MP The man at 1:39 to 1:53 is David Blunkett, when he was a young left-wing councilor on the NEC The woman at 1:53 to 2:03 is Gwyneth Dunwoody, a right-wing MP The man at 2:42 is Derek Hatton, who was deputy leader of the Liverpool City Council and Militant member

I do remember, I was for the militant tendency then and was a militant in Liverpool myself. They were never a threat to democracy, they built houses for the poor. Look at the direction the Labour Party took. They are now a tory party and have been instrumental in building the police state we now live in and a war foreign policy.

"democratic socialism is on the way in" What-Tony Blair? democratic?! Socialist???!!!

new Labour is what we get when socialism is kick out of the labour party

Militant were always going to be kicked out. They were a revolutionary party and the Labor Party wasn’t. That’s not exactly an insignificant difference of approach! Their expulsion was inevitable.

Remember, this was under Kinnock

A record of a historic turning point. This was the first key step on the path to Labour's recovery and the successes of 1997 onwards.

Hello from Minneapolis. Heard you guys are doing great work. Keep it up. Take care!

go forward for a marxist tendency in labour party again!!!

@SkullOfYorick I thought it looked like Christopher Hitchens not his brother Peter. Could be wrong.

i think you are thinking of the 1983 Manifesto not 1987

greetings from greece comrade!:)

Mrs Thatcher started the precess of division-her admirers within New Labour (which is not the ordinary people within Labour) imitated her

He's back... as Tony Benn once said, they'll all be back.

Militant was a collective of narcissism.

Long live democratic party-structures Long live democratic socialism Long live mass movements Long live revolutionary socialism Long live socialist militant activities Long live the Socialist Party Long live the CWI

I'm a militant Leninist

3:25 Antifa says the same thing now and we're supposed to think they're very clever

@SkullOfYorick He was a journalist...hardly shows his political beliefs

Well, little seems to have changed

Only in the UK would a group have a name like "Militant Tendency".

Oh you mean those guys who destroyed Militant?

No, not at all. The situation differs from country to country. In Germany Die Linke is a fusion between 2 *existing* parties that have been built up during the years, and on which the working class counts and turns to. The working class turns to a party they know, not to some self-proclaimed revolutionary party with no basis in the working class whatsoever. That's why we are still in the Labour party, and that's why *everything else* fails. That's what Lenin is talking about.

@UDSS We now have Labour Representation Committee, Socialism is building up within Labour again its only a matter of time before we can democratically reshape Labour into a fighting working class party.

Militant were a pain in the arse and helped to damage an already ailing labour party in the 80s. There needed to be an effective labour party to counter the tories so ousting them was the correct decision. Got to say it , the true voice of the ordinary person wasn't really heard till new labour in the 90s .

Lenin disagrees.

Further on: Needless to say, the only success Militant had was BECAUSE it was working in Labour and not outside of it. When CWI talks about success, they always talk about Militant and Liverpool, silently forgetting that they were the ones who thought a NEW Party was needed to capitalize success. It obviously failed miserably and the move ruined years of hard work in a minute. 20 years of 'flying the flag high' did not, not even for one minute, make any difference at all, on the contrary.

A genuine socialist would not touch the labour party with a barge pole.

This group were a disgrace and have destroyed Liverpool

All that happened was no one was left inside Labour to hold their feet to the fire and this allows Tony Blair to take over

@cmsobota They did not - I suggest you read Eric Heffer's Labour's Future. They were closer in sticking to the party manifesto than the leadership was. Most of them were long-term members. Labour is supposed to have a federalized structure. Kinnock et. al (and by implication the Labour from then on) became, like every other political party, simply the administrative front of the capitalist class.

@MrRedFredSaidI would suggest that you travel my friend... Liverpool just makes me think of a massive chip!!!!

i think its fair to describe them as democratic, when people voted them in it was obvious what they were. labour used union block votes to crush them when they tried to register to remain in the party but they had the grassroots labour support at the time. don't forget they had a lot of support in liverpool, where the city council was already pretty left wing. the way i see it, militant were not communists, they were socialists. they wanted to work within british democracy not throw it out.

Long live to Ted Grant!!

We're working on it! Join us. Marxist dot com!

Militant was helping to destroy the Labour Party. Good to see Gwen Dunwoody in this clip. She was one who fought the most against the hard left

I’m oddly getting more left wing as older which I think is the opposite

Blankety shows his true right wing credentials

I want to understand this, but politics is just not my thing. Can anyone kindly go out of their way to explain this video to me?

If only the Militant had the masses ears today. We wouldn’t be in such a pile of shit

were Militant truly DEMOCRATIC socialists or authoritarian in many of their methods? I agree with you about Blairism but we can't romanticise much of the hard left.

Militant lives on! Anyone who is sympathetic to the Militant should check out the Campaign for a New Workers Party (CNWP) and the Socialist Party. There is also a remnant of Militant operating within the Labour Party as Socialist Alternative I think.

Eric Heffer (God rest his soul) and Dennis Skinner. Men of principle.

Good luck living in 1917 :)

I wish Militant would join the Labour Party again. All that Trotskyite drivel mixed with Gordon Brown's tax and spend and they'd all be out. Please re-join. Militant In, Militant In !!!

Us scousers say thank fuck for Militant they gave us hope back then more than Lord kinnock .

New Labour was extremely militant - look at how they transformed Britain with their marxist ‘march thru the institutions’ just merely needed to look sober to win in 1997.

kinnock is a class traitor

1:00 Peter Hitchens