Dangerous Hero. Tom Bower
secure the nomination of fellow Trotskyists as Labour candidates in the GLC election. Acting to a strategy outlined by Trotsky, the minority would eventually make itself a majority. Trotsky himself, wrote the historian Robert Conquest, was ‘a ruthless imposer of the party’s will who firmly crushed the democratic opposition within the party and fully supported the rules which gave the ruling group total authority’. Abiding by those tactics, the Target 82 group agreed to remove their enemies as quickly as possible, consolidate their control, and never give it away.
The launch of London Labour Briefing was staged at the GLC’s headquarters in County Hall. It attracted two hundred people, and was regarded by Livingstone, its prime organiser, as a ‘great success’. Like all such groups, Briefing’s credibility depended on publishing a newspaper. ‘Even if it’s not read,’ said Veness, laughing, ‘we’ve got to have one.’ The editorial board of the weekly news-sheet included Corbyn as the group’s general secretary, the reliable dogsbody prepared to undertake the unglamorous chores. Their aim was to deselect moderate Labour councillors and take over constituency parties, which would vote for Tony Benn as Labour leader when Jim Callaghan, as was expected, resigned. In the alphabet soup of initials of the rival left-wing groups, London Labour Briefing was affiliated to the London Representation Committee (LRC), a group chaired by John McDonnell, a member of Liverpool’s Trotskyite Militant Tendency. The LRC urged ‘mass extra-parliamentary action’ to disrupt the economy, and published hit lists of Labour MPs it described as ‘traitors’. McDonnell openly enthused about riots as the precursor to an uprising. That difference did not prevent him and Corbyn bonding during the endless meetings favoured by the left.
In their joint cause, Corbyn eagerly began to organise his supporters in Hornsey to force out his enemies. He particularly targeted Douglas Eden, not least for his having mocked him as ‘public-school-educated’. ‘It was a grammar school,’ Corbyn told the Hornsey Journal, adding that it was ‘now happily a comprehensive’. This was another small untruth. The school remained fee-paying for selected children. If it burnished his left-wing credentials, Corbyn was still willing to lie about trivialities.
Chairing the inquiry into Eden’s loyalty, Corbyn allowed the social democrat to speak in his own defence for forty-five minutes – then promptly announced his expulsion. Eden protested to Reg Underhill, Labour’s national agent at party headquarters, that he had been ‘hounded out by Corbyn’. Underhill, who was leading the hunt against Trotskyist infiltration, notified Haringey’s branch secretary that she had failed to follow the proper procedures, and the inquiry should be reheld. Unabashed, Corbyn started the expulsion process again, with the same result.
Eden’s fate was replicated across London. As moderate members were forced out of the party, Corbyn, Knight, Livingstone and McDonnell were elected to the national executive of the London Labour Party, and immediately began the deselection process of moderate councillors who had been put forward as candidates for the May 1981 GLC elections. Under the banner of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, every candidacy was to be openly contested, ostensibly to allow greater democracy but in fact to allow the left to take over. This would, to use Tony Benn’s catchwords, transform Labour into a ‘pluralist grassroots party of the masses’, one that would exclude dissenters, especially social democrats. In Brent East, where Livingstone hoped to snatch the parliamentary nomination from a moderate MP, he, like Corbyn, had forged close relations with immigrant groups by pledging to remove the restrictions on migrants settling in Britain. In return, over a hundred Asians – many of them unable to speak English – were enrolled as party members in the constituency and obediently voted against Livingstone’s rivals. A similar pattern emerged in Islington. ‘If voting changed anything,’ sniped one moderate, ‘they’d abolish it.’
Livingstone asked Corbyn if he planned to stand in Haringey for the GLC, and was surprised when Corbyn said he did not. As a full-time NUPE official, he explained, he would find it difficult to attend the GLC’s daytime meetings. The truth was different. Corbyn was sceptical about joining an authority with limited powers, and was still harbouring his secret ambition to become an MP. His allies were unaware that because of his extremism he had already been rejected as the prospective parliamentary candidate in Enfield North. Next, he had unsuccessfully applied in Croydon, but a chance encounter in the Croydon party’s headquarters with his old friend Val Veness, who was also applying for the seat, changed his life. ‘I didn’t realise you wanted to be an MP,’ she said. ‘I might be able to help you. But it’s got to be kept secret.’ Keeping secrets had never been a problem for Corbyn.
For years, Keith and Val Veness and their claque had been trying to remove Michael O’Halloran, the Labour MP for Islington North. Despite being accused of corruption and incompetence, O’Halloran had allegedly been installed, then protected, by ‘the Murphia’, the local Irish mafia. O’Halloran accused the Venesses of bombarding him and his family with personal abuse in their attempts to hound him out. In the standoff, the Venesses had agreed with their group that if O’Halloran were removed, none of them would seek the nomination to replace him. The left therefore needed a candidate to counter any moderate applicants. Secrecy, they decided, was essential if they were to outwit their opponents. When Livingstone persisted in his attempts to secure Corbyn’s nomination to the GLC, he was told sharply by Val Veness, ‘Keep your hands off our candidate.’ He backed down, accepting Corbyn’s promise that he would work tirelessly to execute the coup at the GLC and also act as the agent for Kate Hoey, a member of the Marxist IMG, to win the Labour GLC nomination for Haringey.
During that frantic period of plotting, Corbyn paid little attention to Diane Abbott, who by then was working as a TV producer in London. ‘She was noisy, ambitious, lefty and overweight,’ was Jonathan Aitken’s impression during their encounters in the television world. In her excitable manner, Abbott fretted that Corbyn and Chapman were still meeting each other at Haringey council. Chapman recalled a ‘nervous, tense and slightly hostile’ Abbott knocking on her door one evening, and when Chapman answered making her demands clear.
‘Get the hell out of here,’ said Abbott. ‘You’re in the media and everywhere and I want you out of town.’
‘I can’t,’ replied Chapman. ‘I’ve been elected to office.’
Abbott was clearly disgruntled.
Later, Chapman explained, ‘She wanted a clear run. I was in the media a lot then because of my political work and she wished I wasn’t.’ Abbott was also fed up with Corbyn’s way of life; just as he had ignored Chapman, he was now ignoring her. Although she had enjoyed many relationships, none had led to as intense a friendship as she now had with Corbyn, but that too was failing. At twenty-seven, she wanted marriage and eventually children. Corbyn wanted neither.
One morning, Bernie Grant called Keith Veness. ‘Diane’s had enough of Jeremy. She’s moving out. Come and give us a hand.’ Veness arrived at Lausanne Road in a large van. The flat was strewn with papers and clothing. ‘It’s hard to have a relationship with someone who doesn’t come home for two weeks,’ said Abbott defensively. She, Grant, and Veness set about packing away her things. Suddenly the door opened, and in walked Corbyn. ‘Hello, mate,’ he said to Grant. Then he saw Veness carrying out Abbott’s possessions. After hearing why the two men were there, he walked away without comment; he was off to a meeting, he said. Appalled by the way Abbott, a fellow child of the Caribbean, had been treated, Grant chased after Corbyn. ‘Get real,’ he said, knowing full well that Corbyn remained insult-proof, and would certainly feel no guilt. Later Corbyn would recall, ‘Diane always says to me, “You learned everything you know in Shropshire, and unfortunately you’ve forgotten none of it.”’
In his political life at least, Corbyn was feeling empowered. Inflation was still rising, and Tory cuts were causing high unemployment and widespread distress. Daily, he would rush off to join picketing strikers or anti-government marches through another city centre against cuts and apparent Tory heartlessness towards the sick and unemployed. In March 1980, convinced that Labour’s 1979 election defeat could be reversed by direct action, Corbyn and twelve other left-wing Haringey councillors urged Robin Young not to bow to government pressure to limit rises in the rates in order to control inflation, then running at 14 per cent. Young refused to act illegally, and set a 36 per cent