Dangerous Hero. Tom Bower

– quoting E.P. Thompson’s judgement on the socialist poet and textile designer William Morris – as ‘unsteady among generalisations, weak in analytic thought, his response to life was immediate and concrete’. And that was a friend talking. Corbyn was not a willing martyr, but he was vindictive. Max Morris (no relation), the chairman of the ward that was opposing Ali’s membership, was ousted by an influx of thirty Trotskyists at an ‘emergency meeting’.

      There was good reason for Corbyn to hasten the end of the saga. Unexpectedly, the Labour MP for Islington North, Michael O’Halloran, switched his support to the SDP. In the next general election, he announced, he would stand as their candidate. Most of the constituency’s moderates joined him in defecting, giving the left a sudden advantage. This was Corbyn’s chance. He badly wanted the seat, but accepted the advice of Val Veness, for some time now a powerbroker in the local party, that his nomination would have to be handled discreetly if he was to secure the support of both the party and the constituency at large.

      He approached Clive Boutle, a linguist and publisher, to organise his campaign for selection. Boutle left their initial two-hour discussion about strategy convinced that Corbyn was ‘left-wing, experienced and not self-important like others’. In the selection process, Corbyn was introduced as Val Veness’s preferred candidate. In exchange, she applied to be the Labour candidate in Hornsey, where his influence would be crucial.

      Corbyn’s emergence as a candidate surprised Toby Harris. Like others, he had not realised his ally’s burning ambition for national recognition. To Harris and other enquirers, Val Veness claimed that Corbyn was a ‘reluctant’ candidate who she had had to persuade to apply for the seat. ‘They seem certain to pick an extremist,’ a Labour moderate predicted, ‘who will be fully in step with the mad majority.’ Others reckoned that ‘left-wing revolutionaries’ like Val Veness were ‘unacceptable to Michael Foot’.

      In the final race, a month before the June 1983 general election, the choice was between Corbyn and Paul Boateng, a barrister educated in Ghana. Corbyn won the contest by four votes. Aware that Michael O’Halloran for the SDP could expect substantial support, he promised in his campaign to prevent mass unemployment following the inevitable recession if the Tories were re-elected. The working class, he was convinced, would be attracted by higher taxes, more powers for trade unions, unilateral disarmament and the renationalisation of shipbuilding, aerospace and steel. George Cunningham, the SDP MP for Islington South, urged electors to consider the reality of socialism. He portrayed Islington’s Labour council as resembling an East European communist authority. While council tenants waited ‘months’ for repairs to their homes, Labour officials spent huge amounts of public money to promote their political ambitions, and wasted more on illegal projects. ‘The Labour Party in Islington,’ Cunningham told the Commons, ‘has gone a long way down into the swamp of corruption.’ While chasing around the constituency, Corbyn ignored such criticisms.

      That year’s Labour manifesto was famously dubbed ‘the longest suicide note in history’; certainly the electorate was terrified by the party’s extremist pledges and Militant Tendency’s noisy demands for the draconian confiscation of wealth. Across the country, Labour secured its lowest percentage of the vote since 1918 – just 27.6 against the Tories’ 42.4. Those working-class voters who owned cars and homes voted 47 per cent to 26 per cent for the Tories. As usual, the left interpreted their defeat as victory. Tony Benn, who lost his seat in Bristol South-East, welcomed the result, because ‘for the first time since 1945 a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards.’ Corbyn himself avoided the rout. Despite the SDP winning 22 per cent of the vote in Islington North, and Labour’s share falling by 12 per cent, his exhaustive campaign won him a majority of 5,607. Four miles to the north-west, John McDonnell was defeated in Hampstead by the sitting Tory MP, Geoffrey Finsberg. McDonnell had also contrived to lose Labour’s seat in his own branch, Hayes and Harlington. Neville Sandelson blamed McDonnell’s persecution when he was deselected after thirty-two years as the constituency’s Labour MP. He stood as the SDP’s candidate, splitting Labour’s vote and allowing Terry Dicks to become the constituency’s first Conservative MP since 1950.

      Corbyn and McDonnell blamed Michael Foot for Labour’s defeat. The party leader, said McDonnell, was a right-wing ‘welfare capitalist’. Even the manifesto’s promise to impose socialist protectionism and ban the import of foreign cars was too liberal. Labour would have won, both men believed, by promoting the complete renationalisation of the British economy, the ruthless confiscation and redistribution of wealth and the disbandment of the military to transform Britain into a pacifist, nuclear-free, non-aligned nation. Convinced of that error, Corbyn spoke at Marxist meetings about working through Labour to democratise Parliament out of existence. In public speeches he ridiculed the moderates’ suggestion that the far left had failed to recognise the working class’s appreciation of consumerism, of mortgages to buy their council homes and of the abandonment of restrictions on foreign travel. He told his allies in London Labour Briefing about his determination to reverse Thatcherism’s plot to destroy ‘class solidarity’. After all, he was now an MP, on a national stage that offered unlimited opportunities.

      5

       Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad

      Dressed in a dirty jacket, creased trousers and open-necked shirt, Jeremy Corbyn arrived in Westminster unmoved by the British electorate’s rejection of Labour. He joined thirteen other far-left MPs who sympathised with East Europe’s communist governments and supported trade union militancy to break Margaret Thatcher’s government. He told the Venesses that he considered Parliament ‘a waste of time’. Westminster’s agenda bore no relevance to his Islington constituents, especially the immigrant communities. ‘I don’t like this place,’ he told Keith Veness as they walked through the arched corridor from St Stephen’s Entrance to the central lobby. As they passed the huge paintings depicting the glories of British history, Corbyn added, ‘It’s all phoney, set up to make you feel intimidated.’ The advantages for him personally were a good income and a job for the foreseeable future, with the opportunity to indulge his interests, especially foreign travel.