Derek Hatton, Former Labour Politician HARDtalk

In the blue corner, a formidable woman Prime Minister

Leader of the Opposition seen by many on his own

It is how things look today as they did in the mid-1980s,

when Derek Hatton was the poster boy of Britain's far-left,

confronting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over funding for his city

of Liverpool, he gambled by threatening 30,000 council

Now Jeremy Corbyn is leader, Derek Hatton wants to come back.

If Labour leans further left, is it lost all over again?

It is 30 years since you were thrown out of the Labour Party,

why in the last year or so have you wanted to go back again?

I think it all happened at the last election,

where the day after, or it wasn't even the day,

it was the morning after, I just looked at what happened

and I knew that Miliband was on his way out.

And I thought, if ever there was a time

that there needs to be some sort of comment, now is the time.

Whilst I was not arrogant enough to think that my opinion would make

all that much difference, I wanted to make it.

I applied about 6:00am or 7:00am in the morning when the results

were coming through, and I realised what was happening.

First of all, I got the usual standard letter saying welcome

from the General Secretary and then I got the membership card

And a couple of weeks later, it became public that I had

done that, and then I got a letter saying, this has to go

That is the ruling committee of the Labour Party?

It is now 18 months later, apparently it has still not been

Do you think anyone in the Labour Party wants you back?

I have not asked them all, I am sure there are a number that do

You were thrown out for being a member of Militant Tendency,

a group that operated inside the Labour Party

The Co-op party is seen as being complimentary to Labour's

values, Militant Tendency was seen as being hostile.

In many ways, we were not hostile to the values of the Labour Party.

You have to remember that Militant Tendency at the time,

The reality is that at the time, I suppose many people argued

and we would argue, that the people involved in it were people who had

been in the Labour Party a long time and that membership is more

important regardless of whether we read a newspaper

or we had meetings outside of the Labour Party.

Peter Kilfoyle, who went on to be, one might call him

the hammer of militants in Liverpool, said it was a separate

party and they were a very large cuckoo in the nest and they have

been compared, rather as Lenin told British Communists to join

the Labour party in the 1920s, as a rope supports the hanged man,

so militants and Labour in the early 1980s.

I have used that expression many times only in other ways.

Peter Kilfoyle, talking about entryism, I mean,

he just came from Australia, no-one ever knew him

part of the party at all, he appeared as the hatchet

It could have been anyone, he got well rewarded for it.

I do not know what the criticism is you have levied.

The criticism is that this was an organisation that

It had a revolutionary approach to socialism.

As others have put it, Jane Kennedy, later a Labour MP,

now Police and Crime Commissioner in Liverpool, told the local

newspaper about three years ago that the Labour Party meetings

were manipulated and dominated by this small group of people.

They had a particular viewpoint.

There was no discussion, they were not representative

Talking abour this small group, I bumped into Malcolm Kennedy,

her ex-husband, the other day, a councillor in Liverpool,

I'm sure he won't mind me saying this.

They're no longer together but he said to me that at the time,

him and Jane and a small group of people opposed us.

Credit to them, they always turned up and gave a different opinion,

not like a lot of the other hangers on who jumped on afterwards.

He reminded me of a time when he led a walk-out in my local constituency,

The small group you're talking about actually was a big number

and the vast majority within the Labour Party.

These were not members of Militant Tendency,

these were members of the Labour Party.

There might have been a small number with there who happened to read

the militant newspaper, or go to militant meetings

But the vast majority were good, honest, hard-working Labour Party

members who actually went along the street knocking on doors,

putting leaflets through the doors and campaigning for the Labour Party

And is that a parallel you see now, as a large number of people

are attracted into the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn,

the leader elected only one year ago with 60% of the vote,

and yet finding that he is now opposed by 80%

of the party's MPs, and challenged again, lots of new people

coming into the party, some people are suspicious.

I think a lot of people are suspicious about what's

happening, for all sorts of different reasons.

I think the one really encouraging thing at the moment,

is that you are starting to get a politicisation around the country

where you're getting not just within the Labour Party

but within pubs and discussions, I have just come away now

from a discussion with someone who is not at all political

but he started talking to me about what is happening

He wasn't giving an opinion either way,

Two years ago he would not have wanted a conversation,

he would've talked about football, not politics.

And it reminds me of the 1980s, when virtually every

pub in Liverpool had a city treasurer, because there was always

and figures and said, I found this and that

and it was great that people wanted to get involved in that

and they want to get involved on a national basis.

First and foremost, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies have got

politicisation not just within the Labour Party

but within the country as a whole and that has to be a good thing.

That is fine except the opinion polls suggest he cannot win.

It is strange, every single Tory newspaper,

the BBC and others who certainly have got no love for the left,

suddenly are saying that it is unwinnable.

The same ones are spending every moment of the time in attacking him,

with the most vicious, vicious campaign that I have seen

Let us be honest, if he was so unelectable

and it was so unwinnable, then the Tory newspapers,

the likes of the Mail and others, would be sitting back and saying,

let him carry on, because this will guarantee the Tories

The reality is that the reason why they are so opposed

to him, and so vicious in their condemnation

not only could he win, but he could win by a big majority.

It is interesting that you say that, not only is his net approval rating

just last week -28, only Donald Trump does worse than that

at the moment, but Saqiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London,

arguably the most successful Labour politician at the moment,

You can say all you like, the reality is that he actually won

He would say he won despite Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Just on your point about the media, let me touch on what he said

in an article for the Observer on Sunday.

You cannot just blame a hostile media and let Jeremy and his team

I know from my own election up against a nasty and divisive Tory

campaign that if we are strong and clear enough in our convictions,

the message will get through to the public.

He is basically saying that Jeremy Corbyn has failed to connect

with the public, and that is why he should not be leader.

No, I know he said that, and a lot of others have as well.

Within the Parliamentary Labour Party there is a problem

and there is a large number of Labour MPs who actually now

are opposing Jeremy Corbyn, and that does give a problem.

The reality is, you've got to think what those Labour MPs are all about.

I would argue that the vast majority of members of Parliament,

all sides, their first and foremost concern,

yes, a lot of them are principled, a lot of them have good ideas,

a lot of them believe in certain ideals, the reality is that first

and foremost, they like their position.

They love being MPs, they love the power,

the authority, and they love the credibility,

they love everything that goes with it.

And more than anything they want to stay as members of

All of a sudden, they start panicking and saying,

if the press are saying that it is unwinnable,

The polls have been saying it as well.

The polls have been saying it only since the coup

Prior to that, the opposite was happening.

He actually got to a stage where he was virtually on line

Look at any papers you like, you will find that is true.

The reality is that that was the case then.

Since the Parliamentary party have started their chicken coup,

all of a sudden it is very different.

And yes, the confusion in the minds of ordinary people up and down

the country is as a result of Parliamentary Labour Party

behaving like they have, in the most despicable, disgraceful way.

There have been frequent claims that Labour were equal to or even ahead

of the Tories before the Labour leadership troubles erupted,

the so-called coup to which you refer.

This is a disingenuous claim at best, and seems to rest

At no point this year have the polls showed a consistent Labour lead.

That is the UK Polling Report, which is regarded...

Are they the ones that predicted the Tories would not

Did they predict that Brexit was not going to win?

They are the same polling people that said the same thing.

The reality is that I think the polls have got

You are a passionate pro-European, and you say that you wish Britain

was an enthusiastic member of the European Union.

I would not say I am a passionate supporter,

I am a supporter and I did not want Brexit to happen.

I think for all sorts of different reasons I would rather have stayed

And I still think, by the way, that there is going to be major

I think Theresa May was clever in the way she put three individuals

who were so, so, so against Europe to actually run the campaign

We're now going to be in a position where if they cannot do it,

she will be like, hang on, I told you so.

Do you think that Jeremy Corbyn could have done more to put

I think he argued quite vociferously that the Labour Party was behind

the campaign to actually stay in Europe.

And I think that maybe he didn't argue it in the way that others

would have wanted, but it did not mean

He was very loyal to the Labour Party position,

and no-one could suggest for one

We had talked a bit about what is happening

in the Labour Party now, the parallels with what was

I think that the first big parallel is that you're coming off the back

of a very right wing Tory government and Tory leadership.

You saw under Thatcher and you saw it under the whole gang

that was behind Brexit, and everything that goes with it.

But you're also seeing people wanting something new.

I think in the '80s, you have to remember

that although it was only in Liverpool,

after city after city, speaking at rallies.

And those rallies have the same sort of numbers that

There were 2,000 or 3,000 at these rallies.

It was funny, that many of the Labour leaders who later

on became very much against us after Kinnock's speech,

a very large number of those leaders used to ring up and say can we speak

on the platform with you, because they knew that

if they'd had a rally they would not have filled

a telephone box, and yet we were having rallies

in their cities of two and 3,000 people and they wanted to be there.

We will come back to Neil Kinnock who was then leader

of the Labour Party when you were Deputy Leader

Let me put to you what Tom Watson, who was elected Deputy Leader

of the Labour Party at the same time as Jeremy Corbyn.

He now says, there is a parallel with the 1980s.

He said, entryism is happening again.

What Militant was accused of doing back then.

Old hands twisting young arms in this process.

They're putting pressure where they can.

That's how it operates, sooner or later it always ends

When the deputy leadership came, and I thought he'd be a good person

One of the big trade unions in Britain.

Very strong with the General Secretary.

Unfortunately, he has allowed himself to be used and abused

What he's doing is not only making a fool of himself,

but making a fool of the arguments as well.

Because to throw up all these Trotskyist bits again,

Hang on, which ones of the 2,000 or 3,000 at the rallies have hands

You can't get, you can't make 2,000 or 3,000 people go to a rally

Let me put to you the remarks of another leading

figure in the Labour Party now, who back

in the day, in the '80s, would

have been regarded very much as on the left,

perhaps not as far left as

you were regarded, nonetheless certainly not hostile.

By the way she was never on the left.

Leader of the London borough of Islington.

By the way, she was never on the left.

Bricks being thrown through windows, people

being called scum, this is not the new politics, this is the old

I had people tearing up wood from the council chamber and

I'm seeing today in 2016 the same as in the '80s.

Margaret, for your information, was leader of Islington Council during

There was never a time that I can remember, any way, where

Margaret Hodge was in favour of the real

campaign against Thatcher in

She became very close to Tony Blair over the years.

It doesn't surprise me at all the sort

of things she's saying and the

fact that she's jumping on that bandwagon.

Rape threats, death threats, smashed cars and bricks through

windows, this is acknowledged by all factions.

45 other MPs writing to Jeremy Corbyn...

A journalist like you, who actually, usually

Has she produced one group of people?

We were accused in the 80s of bullying.

We were accused all the

time that we were telling people what to do.

We were gathering people, a committee.

There was never one ounce of evidence.

She and 45 other MPs who signed this letter are

They're doing that because they want something

You have got to remember that those MPs want to get re-elected the

You've got to remember that one of the things that may come out of

Jeremy Corbyn and by the way, I would support this, is reselection

I think a member of Parliament, yes, they can claim that

they were elected by the electorate of a constituency, but the reality

is the only reason why they've been elected

by the members of that constituency is because the members of the Labour

Party put them forward as a Labour candidate.

They don't get elected in

Of course, Militant Tendency wouldn't have done that either?

I was a member of the Labour Party then longer than I was

You were Militant in the period up to being Deputy Leader of the

You would say it didn't alter your view as a Labour man?

You were Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council,

one of the most important councils in this country, representing one of

our largest cities, a city that had suffered

considerably because of the

problems in the economy, big collapse in manufacturing jobs.

You took over after council elections in

May '83, did things like building new council houses, new leisure

centres, investing in the infrastructure of the city,

but you did it knowing you didn't have the

We also campaigned to get more money.

Don't forget we were the only council at the time that

conducted a campaign against Thatcher and got ?30 million extra.

We did in '83, '84 got more money out of the Government.

You got that by talking to the Government.

Patrick Jenkin was shown round, he recognised the problems

The reason we got that money was because there were

hundreds of thousands on the streets of Liverpool, and they thought,

Patrick Jenkin would have never come to Liverpool.

Margaret Thatcher would have never come to Liverpool if

those demonstrations hadn't have happened.

They didn't want a day out in Liverpool.

They came up because they saw the threats that were there.

And you made the argument and you won the case and you got the

Then the following year, asked for more money and they

Your response was to initially set a budget which was a

deficit budget, which legally you weren't allowed to do.

Anyone with a budget has different options.

You sent out redundancy letters to thousands of council

employees telling them that they faced

the sack at the end of the

year unless the Government intervened.

Are you going to say what was in that

What gets me is that you come up with the fact that, the

statement, hang on, you sent out 30,000

redundancy notices, which we

What you failed to say, I've said this a thousand times, yet the

press never actually choose to actually print it.

With every single redundancy notice that was sent out,

there was a letter signed by me and John

Hammilton, the leader at the

time, saying clearly, these will not be carried out.

It was simply a tactic in order to set a legal

budget and immediately after we set a legal budget, we could then carry

However much we were sure the redundancies

wouldn't be carried out, it's still a redundancy notice

and there will be that panic, that what you told a

journalist last year when you spoke to her.

You accept people were going to be frightened.

Every single trade union, every group of

shop stewards had discussions with us,

accepted the strategy, the

She said that the trade unions wouldn't

They distributed letters saying what was

Every single trade union warned members what was going

Then we saw this confrontation between you and the

then leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, at the party

I tell you what happens with impossible promises.

You start with far-fetched resolutions.

They're then pickled into a rigid dogma

And you go through the years sticking to that, outdated,

misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs.

You end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour

Council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city, handing out

redundancy notices to its own workers.

Let's leave the audience to judge that one.

The result was that you became practically a pariah in

I mean, it was certainly true as a result of that

That was the tragedy of that speech. who beforehand had supported us went

Thatcher in her memoirs said her two greatest

successes were changing the Tory Party and changing the Labour Party.

That was the beginning of Thatcher's work when Kinnock said that.

If he'd have at the time supported the

miners, which he didn't, and supported Liverpool, which he

didn't, not only didn't support, he went against, there would have

To be honest, I think he was far more responsible for us

losing in Liverpool, losing jobs, losing more houses,

more leisure centres than Thatcher was.

Let me bring you back up today. The mirror of London said that opposing

Victoria policies is not enough. You need to knock the sharp edges of at

best. When you win elections you make a difference because your

wiring control. He says that that is the sort of thing he was talking

about. A self-indulgence. A confrontation he knew you couldn't

win, it ends up hurting people. We never lost an election. We never

lost an election. Women won every single election. The House of Lords

got rid of us. Can it can never won an election. -- Kinnock Neville won

an election. In reality, the House of Lords got rid of us. Kinnock

never won a single election. Kinnock referred to the people of this

country and got battered. So his policies and his ideas did not get

support. So with Jeremy Corbyn ignores the example and takes your

example do you think he is more likely to win? Without question.

Why? What has changed? Our position was never put nationally. People

used to say that we won in Liverpool but we would never win a elsewhere.

But we went around to other cities, cities like London and Glasgow and

we got fabulous support. The reality is that the Labour leaders there

were prepared to adopt the campaign that we did and when Kinnock came

along they ran around, understandably, maybe, but they ran

away. It sounds as if you may be itching to get back into politics.

No chance. And if Jeremy Corbyn conducts a sort of election, I think

he will win the election. Thank you very much for joining us.

Tuesday may have been disappointingly cloudy and cool

for much of Scotland and Northern Ireland,

but with the sun out in England and Wales,