Kinnock wins battle to try leftists

Press, 28 February 1986, Page 6

Kinnock wins battle to try leftists

NZPA-Reuter London Leaders of Britain’s Opposition Labour Party, fighting to promote a moderate image in preparation for the next election, moved yesterday to destroy an outlawed Marxist faction, the Militant Tendency. In a tough six-hour debate, the party leader, Neil Kinnock, won the support of a majority of senior colleagues to put 16 Leftists from the northern city of Liverpool on trial by the party for abuse of power and intimidation of Labour Party colleagues. The 16, including Derek Hatton, deputy leader of the hard Left Liverpool Municipal Council, were called to appear before party officials on March 12. If they are found guilty of abuses or of belonging to the banned Militant group they face almost certain expulsion. The police escorted Mr

Kinnock through a 600strong crowd of jeering Militant supporters shouting "scab” and “class traitor” as he arrived for yesterday’s meeting of Labour’s national executive.

Leading left-wingers who voted against yesterday’s action, including some of Mr Kinnock’s senior Parliamentary colleagues, accused him of a witch-hunt.

An internal investigation into the Liverpool Labour party reported widespread interference in the affairs of the local council, as well as verbal and physical abuse of those who did not share the views of the Left-wing leadership. The report said the local party was dominated by the Militant Tendency, a group with full-time paid organisers and outlawed by Labour as a party within a party.

Mr Hatton and other suspected Militant members acknowledge only that they support the views of the Militant newspaper, a Marxist daily.

Mr Kinnock has called Militant a “maggot in the body of the Labour Party” and blames it, in part, for Labour’s disastrous General Election defeat in 1983.

He has recently been striving to give Labour a more moderate image and to direct the party’s appeal to uncommitted middle-class voters.

Opinion polls show that, despite the unpopularity now of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government, Labour has yet to make sufficient headway to be assured of outright victory at the next General Election, in 1987 or 1988.