Letter to Radio 4 re Militant and Liverpool


Dear Helen

I listened very carefully to the Radio 4 programme on Militant and Liverpool. To a new listener it would appear to be fairly balanced. However, I must take you up on the time given to the Baron (Kinnock) and the total distortion and misrepresentation of his remarks.

He suggested, for instance, that the Liverpool delegation asked him to call a general strike in support of Liverpool. We certainly placed that demand on the TUC, but to suggest we would request Kinnock to call a general strike is the ramblings of someone who has lost touch with reality.

What we asked him for was a declaration of support which he declined to give. It’s similar to the claim that he ‘saved’ the Labour Party. In reality he started the rot and gifted the Thatcherites two more terms of office, when if the Liverpool vote had been replicated nationally, in 1987 Labour would have been elected with a landslide.

Perhaps a further programme to put the record straight would do justice to a great period in Liverpool’s history.

All the best
Tony Mulhearn