Government of Liverpool

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 5:40 pm on 24 June 1991.

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Photo of Mr Robert Hughes Mr Robert Hughes , Harrow West 5:40, 24 June 1991

If anybody had been under the misapprehension that the Militant Tendency had been driven out of the Labour party, the speech of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) has nailed that lie once and for all. The first thing that one noticed was that the hon. Gentleman did not bother to tell us which Labour candidate he supports in the Walton by-election. That is not surprising, because a whole chapter of the book, "Liverpool—A City that Dared to Fight", by Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn, is devoted to a tribute to the hon. Gentleman. The book quotes the Liverpool Echo of 10 June 1983, which stated: The election of Terry Fields is an embarrassment to members of Labour's National Executive who have tried for months to throw Militant supporters out of the party. People from outside Liverpool can learn from that book that the platform on which the hon. Gentleman stood in that election and which he has outlined to the House tonight is exactly the same political programme as is being used now by Lesley Mahmood, the Militant candidate in the by-election—so much so that the slogan that was used by the hon. Member for Broadgreen—"A workers' MP on a worker's wage"—is now being used by Lesley Mahmood on every piece of her campaign literature. It is therefore clear where the hon. Gentleman's sympathies lie and why he did not say who he is supporting.

However, what is also clear now is why the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) reacted with such anger when I told him that he had previously been against Militants being thrown out of the Labour party. He may like to play the indiarubber man in this debate but, unfortunately for him, these things are on the public record. The Guardian of 2 January 1986 referred to an article that the hon. Gentleman wrote for Tribune, in which he stated: wholesale purges will either destroy us all or suck a broad swathe of the party into a very authoritarian and rigid mould. The article continued by stating that Labour should cease the purge mentality which is currently sweeping through the party. The hon. Member for Brightside may well have changed his mind, but when it counted—when Militant had to be faced up to—he would not do it, and that is why he was so angry—