Former Liverpool socialist councillor Tony Mulhearn has sent the following letter to the Observer
Keegan: a strange take on courage
I took a double-take at William Keegan’s description of Neil Kinnock as possessing ‘courage and clout’ to ‘detoxify’ his party (Observer 10.2.13).
I have read his forensically irreverent column for many years and naturally attributed to him a radical, socialist philosophy who has been appalled at Labour’s slide into a party neutered by right wing infiltrators, a breed exemplified by Blair and Mandelson.
The socialist Clause 4 advocating public ownership was ripped from its heart. The democratic constitution was torn up and replaced with a top-down scarecrow of focus groups.
Thus, Labour as a meaningful advocate of civilised socialist change was effectively strangled, confirmed by Thatcher’s claim that her ‘greatest achievement was Tony Blair’.
Kinnock’s treacherous attack on the Liverpool Socialist councillors in 1985 and the subsequent crazed witch-hunt he launched against the Left paved the way for the toothless poodle donning the mantle of today’s Labour Party.
Hardly the achievement of someone possessing ‘courage and clout’, unless such a term is also applied to Ramsey MacDonald whose treachery wrecked Labour in 1931.
