"the disunity almost always emerges when the right wing in the Party don't get 100% of what they demand."

How long have you been in the party, Bob - five minutes? Where did the challenge to Denis Healey's deputy leadership of the party come from in 1981 - you know, the cataclysmic, unnecessary challenge that defined the Labour Party in the eyes of millions of voters? Was Benn still on the Right by then?

And Benn tried it again in 1988, this time mounting a challenge to Kinnock. And why? Because, in your own words, Bob, the Left didn't "get 100% of what they demanded."

And when Kinnock was trying to rid our party of the Militant infection, who walked off the stage at conference? A right winger? No, Heffer.

When idiots like Scargill are complicit in the destruction of the mining industry and the attempted destruction of the Labour Party, and then bugger off to form their own parties where their own will can be carried out without any opposition, it's hardly plausible to claim that the Right are the bad guys in all of this.

One hesitates to enter a familial punch-up but I thought I should let you know that I am always available to hold some-one's coat!

Tom, I was in the Labour Party when you were supporting the Conservative Party and when you were voting for the SDP, so I suspect I don't need lessons in Labour history from you.

You see, you give the game away. Don't you understand that standing in a democratic election on the basis of different political ideas isn't disunity. It is the way matters are resolved. Benn was entitled by Party rule to challenge for the Deputy Leadership. He didn't do it by secretly briefing the lobby, or acting as a prima donna for the media, but by standing openly for election. In your world presumably when someone is elected they have got the job for life. But I have no problem with Purnell standing as Leader in an election, if that is what he wants. It would give us an opportunity to debate issues.

In any event, if the best you can do is find Benn guilty of standing in a democratic election, Scargill guilty of following the decision of the Miners' conference decisions, and Eric Heffer leaving the platform of the Labour Party Conference 20 odd years ago, you're getting pretty desperate.

But hang on... are you by any chance related to the Tom Harris who was advocating a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown?

Good post, Bob, but I'm here to speak to tom if that's ok by you.

Tom

Might I recommend, as an addition to your summer reading list, some literature on what actually happened in the 1980s, as opposed to what you now prefer to think may have happened.

Perhaps you might start with Hilary Wainwright's Labour: A tale of two parties (1987), an account not just of the vicious skullduggery on the part of the rightwing of the Labour party, but also - much more instructively - an account of how the left was actually electorally very popular in the places where it came into power and (to use Mr Spellar's phrase) got to 'legislate' rather than put pontificate.

In Manchester,for example, the left took office at (significant scale) local government level, and their legacy lives on in the form of a city with no Conservative reputation to speak of, and continued support for 'Manchester Labour' well above levels elsewhere in the country with similar demographics/social histories.

It is both disappointing and inevitable that your only reference is to Liverpool in the 1980s, which was a very special case, and out of keeping totally with what happened elsewhere in MCr, Sheffield, London and elsewhere. However, as you raise it, you might want also to invest in your colleague Peter Kilfoyle's Left Behind: Lessons from Labour's Heartland. It's pretty vainglorious stuff, but it's a decent piece of evidence that even people like Kilfoyle, at the heart of Tony Blair's leadership campaign, knew a thing or two about the validity of the kind of socialism that Bob espouses).

And of course, need I remind you that while the left was winning elections, and hearts and minds, in cities across the UK, the Labour right was busy losing them to a Tory government which was wildly unpopular as early as 1981? Why did it lose? Lack of alternatives, dear boy, lack of alternatives.

Have a good summer recess.

I always thought it was Thatcher who shut the mines down?

Do the miners know it was Arthur?
They'll be livid when they find out!

'Unnecesary challenge' where on earth is there ever an unnecessary challenge in politics?

Every position should be open to a challenge and the majority vote wins. That concept precedes 'one member one vote' but is enhanced by it.

Tom, your argument of 'unnecesary challenges' within the sphere of politics frightens me.

Bob/Tom

I have just read the above posts with an increasing sense of doom. At this moment unemployment is creeping up towards the 2.5 million mark, Gordon has maxed the credit cards to the hilt and we’re bringing kids home in body bags.

And you two twits are arguing about what Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill did or didn’t do a couple of decades ago.

For Christ’s sake! Your internecine fighting reminds me of the scene from Life of Brian when Reg is busy passing resolutions while Brian is being nailed to the cross.

My mate has been out of work since Christmas and has applied for 280 jobs without success. When I take my lad to football training and talk to the other Fathers, every single one of them is either on short time or scared sh*tless that they are going to lose their jobs soon.

Meanwhile Tom’s off on three months paid holiday and Bob’s recently returned from a nice couple of weeks in Sandwell-by-the Sea.

Talk about being out of touch with reality. Gentlemen, this country is screwed – and you two are responsible. Yes you! It’s your bloody Labour party that’s got us into this mess.

And no, I am not some Tory Troll, I am an ordinary working class bloke who is wondering how the hell I am going to pay the bills at the end of the month.

Centre Labour? Disaffected Blairites? The pair of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Snapper, what on earth are you talking about? I had three days in Yorkshire, two of which were Saturday and Sunday. I then post a 5 minute piece, and have an exchange of banter with Tom Harris. In your mind that has brought about the collapse of the western economic system, thrown your mate out of work, led to soldiers being killed in Afghanistan for the last 7 years, and massively increased the national debt!

And YOU are in touch with reality!

Get a life man. The fact is, if you hadn't taken your nipper football training you could have concentrated on serious issues like solving the problems in Palestine, improved the national transport infastructure, creating a million jobs, including one for your mate, and had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty! It's all your fault, you selfish sod! I hope you're proud of yourself.

Snapper, thanks for that insight into Labour collapsing the British banking system.

The next time you go football training can you ask who collapsed the United States of America and its banking system?

We need this information to decide whether it was Gordon Brown or the global world recession.

My friends in the embroidery class reckon it's Gordon but I say it was Margaret.

Any chance of a hint to the Japanese collapse?

Keep up the good work with the kids.

Remember Bob we have it all to play for. We have Swinwe Flu and Gordon is good in a crisis.
After hearing Comrade Spellar's speech 3 times I still dont understand who he means by the hard left although he certainly doesn't count you as a member which is a bit disappointing really. Anyway look on the bright side at least we wont be getting an invite to the Labour First xmas party (again). I wonder how the rabid right party on down ?

It's all Maggie Thatcher's fault. We're all 'conservatives' now (except for you Bob, and a few others).

For the record, nowhere in my comment did I say that Arthur Scargill single-handedly destroyed the mining industry. I said he was complicit, which means he was an accomplice. Which he was. An accomplice, I mean.

No, I didn't say you said that either, Tom. But I suppose if carrying out the wishes of the National Union of Mineworkers delegate conference makes him complicit, then complicit he was. Although the only other thing he could have done would have been to resign because he didn't accept their mandate.

The miners' strike was not lost by the actions of Scargill though, but by the right-wing of the Labour Party under Kinnock, the TUC under Willis and the Union of UnDemocratic Scabs.

I read it as destroying the Mining Industry and destroying the Labour Party.

I count that as nothing else to destroy!

'Complicit' means that all other miners were complicit and in other words, they should have done as they were told by Thatcher.

No! I like history the way it was and the way it reads.If there are any lessons to be learned from history it would be that we should not be so weak in the face of the enemy.

'Conservatives, a warning from history'.