Momentum in ‘Militant takeover’ of Labour

Hard-Left’s plan includes drive against moderates and accepting members rejected by own party

‘It increasingly looks, acts and sounds like the new Militant tendency and that is not what we need’

MOMENTUM, the hard-Left group backed by Jeremy Corbyn, is aiming to become a party within the Labour Party focused on eradicating the Blairite legacy in echoes of the divisions which ripped the Left apart in the 1980s.

The group, which was created from Mr Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign, has been run by four interim staff but now wants to hire eight permanent employees on salaries estimated at a total of £243,000 a year, an internal document discloses.

It also wants to counter attempts by Labour Right, representing moderates within the party, to secure more delegates, the document reveals – raising fears highlighted in a Telegraph investigation that its leadership is explicitly plotting a “civil war” to get rid of moderate Labour MPs. The disclosures will alarm grassroots supporters who saw Labour torn apart by bitter infighting between the Left and Right of the party in the early 1980s.

The Left-wing faction, the Militant tendency – now the Socialist Party – gained notoriety as a hard-Left Troskyist splinter group whose leaders were expelled from Labour during that decade.

One of the veterans of the 1980s hard-Left faction-fighting is Jon Lansman, now the director of Momentum and a close ally of the Labour leader. Other key figures were Tony Mulhearn, a member of the Militant-dominated Liverpool Council, and Peter Taaffe.

Wes Streeting, the Labour MP for Ilford North, said: “The priority for every Labour member in the next few months should be to ensure we win elections across London, England, Scotland and Wales and not more internecine factional warfare.

“Momentum increasingly looks, acts and sounds like the new Militant tendency in the Labour Party and that is not what we need.” On Saturday, about 60 of Momentum’s leading figures met in central London for the first official gathering of its national committee to discuss how to restructure the group.

A document circulated to those attending shows a planned escalation in Momentum’s activity. The group wants to begin its own membership base despite previous concerns it would de- tract from the growth of the Labour Party. It was suggested 20,000 people could sign up at a cost of £10 a year – or £5 for the unemployed – and generate £150,000 annually.

Among six proposed “campaign objectives” in the next three months, two internal battles are picked: the election of delegates for the annual conference and positions on Labour’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee.

“Labour First, representing the Right of the party, are organising as best they can to secure delegate position to conference for their minority wing of the party,” the document warns. It claims the rival activist group is “hostile” to the leadership and must be countered. In a section on how Momentum membership could work, the most radical proposal suggests letting the group’s executives allow people to join who were “unfairly excluded” from the Labour Party.

Momentum sources claimed the proposals would help build “firm foundations” for the future. The group was created from Mr Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign in an attempt to keep alive the energy and enthusiasm that propelled the Islington North MP to unexpected victory.

However, the hard-Left group’s lobbying against Syrian air strikes and pressure on moderate Labour MPs has led to claims of intimidation, and criticism from senior figures in the party.

Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, has called Momentum “a bit of a rabble” and Michael Dugher, the former shadow culture secretary, branded it a “mob”. Mr Corbyn has declined to criticise it.