The Socialist 14 August 2013

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Zero tolerance for zero-hours!

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Met finally apologise for G20 death

London Olympics legacy - one year on

Football and big business: time to reclaim the game

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Protest at the Tory Conference in Manchester

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South Africa: Limpopo WASP launch

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Defend the Four: Tribunal compensation award to Unison activists

Postal workers ballot for action

On your bike, Serco

Swansea council pay attacks angers workers

Winning a reprieve from the bedroom tax

Building TUSC in Caerphilly

Reflections and sycophancy: Kinnock versus the socialist Liverpool council

The Mill: A change from the usual TV

Successes, failures and stalemates: A week in the life of a trade union rep

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Reflections and sycophancy: Kinnock versus the socialist Liverpool council

Tony Mulhearn, Former Liverpool 47 councillor

Liverpool city council's struggle in 1983-87 for more funding from the Thatcher government was an inspriation to workers, photo Dave Sinclair (Click to enlarge)

Present day Labour councillors who are carrying out Tory government cuts are still haunted by calls to emulate the example of the Liverpool 47 councillors who refused to carry out Margaret Thatcher's cuts in the 1980s.

This was further evidenced in a recent BBC Today programme when Baron Jenkin, Minister of the Environment during the Liverpool 47's tenure, was asked to comment on the content of cabinet papers which had been made public.

He said the biggest problem he had ever faced was the Militant Tendency's control of Liverpool. He was urged to send commissioners in to take control of the city.

His response was: "How do you get commissioners past half a million people, and how do you get them out again?" Recognising the potency of a mass campaign, his trepidation persuaded him to reject the idea.

This was followed by the first of a series of 'Reflections', in which Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, FBA and an English historian of government, asks senior politicians to reflect on their life and times.

His first interview was with 'ex-socialist firebrand', ex-Labour leader Lord Kinnock. The interview was a model of sycophancy, leavened with dollops of cloying flattery.

Naturally Hennessy's big question was practically preceded by a blast of trumpets and a roll of drums.

It went something like: 'Now Neil, we come to what some people consider was the best conference speech in the history of the world - your attack on the Liverpool Militants, what gave you such courage and fortitude to make such a brilliant demolition of Liverpool?'

Bloated toad

Although it was a radio show, you could sense his Lordship swelling up like a bloated toad as Kinnock entered into a fantasy world in which he carried out his historic role of saving the Labour Party from destruction and delivering a knock-out blow to brave councillors he described as 'clowns'.

He conveniently ignored the fact that the result of his carrying out the edicts of Rupert Murdoch and then Daily Mirror owner, pension thief Robert Maxwell, was the two worst Labour defeats since 1931 while, by contrast, Liverpool's Labour votes were the highest in the history of the city.

Hennessy of course did not ask why, since Kinnock's speech, Labour has been reduced to a hollowed-out scarecrow whose idea of opposition is to ape the policies of the ruling party.

One was reminded of socialist writer Upton Sinclair's quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."