Interesting it's the same mechanism Militant used to inflitrate branches of the Labour Party in the 80s, via "caucuses". Not relevant, but thought I'd throw that in for good measure and general interest.
Interesting use of language there. There was me thinking that all I did at the age of 16 was fill in an application form, pay my subscription and attend branch and YS meetings, ie join the Labour Party, but apparently I was infiltrating!
I think what you're missing here is that Militants support was recruited from the Labour Party, from people like me that were already members. There wasn't some big covert operation where a couple of thousand Trot revolutionaries all joined the party under false names or something you know.
If you're not careful you'll start to sound like the twats that constantly referred to anyone who's politics they didn't like as "outside agitators". Quite where they thought we all lived I don't know.
I was one of about 7 people that organised the rather marvellous Poll Tax protests in Swindon; at the first of which several thousand locals lobbied the council, stated their refusal to pay, and eventually forced the doors to the council chamber and disrupted the meeting, (where I
still maintain that legally there was no way a poll tax rate was set, I know 'cause I was 2 foot from the chair of the meeting shouting through a megaphone when the whole thing broke up in disarray, and I didn't see any kind of recorded vote).
The presence of Militant papers and stickers caused the inevitable knee jerk reaction and the whole thing was put down to "outside agitators". Some of the people that used this phrase used to see us at branch, GMC, and TDLP meetings every bloody month. I'd lived in Swindon since the age of 8, and all but one of the rest of us had been born, and lived their entire bloody lives there.
If you want to talk about the Labour Party being infiltrated mate, you're looking in totally the wrong direction.
Historically the party always had a fairly broad spectrum of left wing political opinion. You'll know about the ILP affiliation, that CP members used to hold party cards and all that. Just about anybody in the TU movement with a left wing agenda was a member or an affiliated member.
Its the Blairs and Mandelsons of the world that are the ones that are completely alien to the roots of the party. Ex-public school, in Blairs case a former tory. Those people have infitrated, taken over and remade the party in their own image.
And isn't it doing a great job!
That gap between the poorest in society and the wealthiest has grown even bigger, the NHS is on the brink of bankruptcy, they've managed to introduce loans to replace grants and tuition fees in HE that even Fowler failed to do under the Thatcher government. All that and a couple of wars that make that little Falklands adventure seem like a masterstroke of foreign policy.
I've spoken to people that say when they look at this Labour government they're reminded of the closing paragraph's of Animal Farm when the animals look between the men and the pigs and can no longer tell the difference between them. But for me that analogy is a bit flawed. After all you can only complain that your leaders have failed and betrayed you if they promised one thing and then did another. The current LP membership haven't really got that excuse. They elected Blair knowing he was a right wing fucker that cared only about being PM. In fact that's why they elected him.
And that lovely smile of his got irritating really quickly didn't it.
