45 years ago this weekend Tony Benn came within 1% of being elected Labour Deputy Leader
Labour Conference is meeting in Liverpool this weekend but 45 years ago in September 1981 it was in Brighton.
In January 1981 a Labour Conference at Wembley had agreed to introduce an Electoral College for Leader and Deputy Leader. Previously only MPs had vote. Michael Foot, the leader at the 1981 Conference had been the last to be elected by MPs only. The right had wanted a one member, one vote system (to cut the unions out of it). When they lost, many, but not all, left to form the SDP.
At the Election for Deputy Leader on Sunday 27th September 1981, Benn and Denis Healey were the second round ballot candidates. Both were political heavyweights with considerable experience of Government, Benn on the left, Healey on the right.
The Labour left, what in a sense became the ‘Bennite left’, mounted an energetic campaign but the assumption was the Healey would get much of the union vote and win.
Benn recorded in his diary that as he entered the conference hall at 5pm he was ‘prepared for a massive defeat’
In the first round ballot Healey got 44.536% Benn 36.639% and John Silkin 18%. He was eliminated. The T&G (now part of Unite) who had backed Silkin switched their vote to Benn.
In the second ballot Healey got 50.426% while Benn got 49.547%. He lost by 0.8%. Benn noted that he then went off to a rally called by London Labour Briefing.
Benn lost but in doing so laid at least part of the basis for a left-wing presence in the Labour Party that still exists today…..
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