Top aide shows off her own Militant tendency
THE spectre of a return of Labour’s Militant tendency was raised yesterday after a close adviser to Jeremy Corbyn appeared to praise a hard-Left council which broke the law.
Shadow Equalities Minister Dawn Butler angered Labour moderates by hailing the example of former Militant councillors in Liverpool, who set an illegal budget in 1985.
That act was famously condemned by then party leader Neil Kinnock, who denounced the ‘grotesque chaos’ of a Labour authority having to ‘hire taxis to scuttle around a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers’.
But addressing Labour’s women’s conference in Liverpool yesterday, Ms Butler appeared to salute the Militant defiance as she condemned current Conservative cutbacks. Ms Butler said: ‘Local councils have seen nearly 50 per cent of their funding cut – I want to give a shout out to all the councillors fighting every day against these Tory cuts.’
She added: ‘We are in Liverpool, where over 30 years ago, the council stood up to Thatcher and said, “Better to break the law than break the poor.” ’
Labour last night tried to minimise the damage by saying: ‘The point Dawn was making was that, like the Thatcher Government of the 1980s, this Tory Government has prioritised tax cuts for the rich.’
Labour officials also stressed that both Mr Corbyn, and the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, have urged Labour authorities not to resort to Militant-style, illegal budgets.
However, Ms Butler is one of Mr Corbyn’s closest advisers, helping to prepare him each week for Prime Minister’s Questions.
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis said: ‘Labour has learnt nothing from the past and would take the country back to bankruptcy, job losses and worse public services.’