Good to be back, says firebrand Derek

HARD-LEFT firebrand Derek Hatton last night crowed it was “good to be back” after Labour let him rejoin the party following three decades in exile.

The ringleader of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency that wreaked havoc in the 1980s insisted he had “no regrets whatsoever” about his past political actions.

Senior party figures said the timing of his readmission just as seven moderate MPs quit was not a coincidence.

Former minister Ian Austin branded the move “disgraceful”, adding: “On the day seven Labour MPs leave the party this happens. Talk about a slap in the face. Will anyone ever learn?”

Mr Hatton, 71, mocked the breakaway MPs

“run away”.

He told the BBC: “Of course it’s good to be back. In a way I’ve never left.

“For 34 years I’ve stayed absolutely solid with the Labour Party. And, believe you me, during the times of the Blair era, the Iraq war, the ending of Clause Four, etc, it wasn’t easy.

“And that’s why when you look at the seven who now have left you think, well, how pathetic is it.

“How really strong are you within the Labour movement to want to run away when there is something that you disagree with?”

He added: “I have never seen a leader that inspires me the way for wanting to Jeremy Corbyn does.” Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock expelled Mr Hatton in June 1986 for his Militant membership amid uproar at his running of Liverpool City Council.

There was an outcry after the council set an illegal budget and sent out redundancy notices to thousands of staff by taxi.

The authority also began a major building programme without having the money to fund it.

In 1986, protesters took to the streets in Liverpool waving placards calling Mr Hatton the “Gobfather” and claiming “Hitler only destroyed half our city, Hatton tried for the lot”.

Militant also tried to deselect moderate Labour MPs, including Birkenhead’s Frank Field, in the early 1980s. In a famous Labour conference speech, Mr Kinnock railed against “the grotesque chaos of a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its workers”.

Mr Hatton was kicked out after a disciplinary hearing along with a number of other politicians and activists and Militant was banned by the party.

But Mr Corbyn said there was a “witch hunt” against Militant.

Mr Hatton went into broadcasting and became a successful property developer. He has tried but failed to rejoin the party before.