The Old Lie

A poster on Jo Salmon's blog http://www.josalmon.co.uk/2006/07/suspended-for-disagreeing-with-the-government/#comment-28568

repeats the old lie that "it was always the hardest left in the party that were the door knocking, reading board activists". Piffle. Er... who does the poster think did all the work before the Hard Left came into existence in the 1970s ... all the poor folk who spent decades sustaining the Labour party before being purged by the Bennites and Militants from their branch officerships and council seats in the 1978-82 period - the moderate, usually working class, often trade unionist ballast of the party who were dismissed as "politically dead old men and women" by the bed-sit left as they swept through the urban Labour Party in the '70s.

I've met honourable exceptions in all the CLPs I've been involved in who have been very left
wing but work hard at election time (even when I'm the candidate which must involve gritted teeth). I've also met far more ultra-leftists who reject campaigning as "an organisational solution to a political problem", are just plain lazy, or who think that activism is about counting the number of meetings attended and resolutions moved, not doors knocked on or leaflets delivered.

Equally I've met fair-weather Blairites who have swanned through the worlds of government policy wonkery and think-tanks and look down their noses at those of us engaged in the grubby reality of council meetings and canvassing.

A major cross cutting divide in most CLPs is that people vote for colleagues who go out and campaign hard whatever side of the party they are from.