Loony left
Encyclopedia
The Loony Left was a pejorative
label used in the campaign for the United Kingdom general election, 1987
, and subsequently, both by the Conservative Party
and by British newspapers that supported the Conservative Party. The label was directed at the policies and actions of some Labour Party
controlled inner-city local government authorities
, and some Labour Party politicians. Although the labels "hard left
" and "soft left" reflected a genuine political division within the Labour Party, "Loony Left" was by far the more often used label than either.
Jolyon Jenkins recorded in 1987 that 1986 was the climax of the Loony Left campaign, that it was the year:
The ridicule of the political left by some British newspapers has a far longer history. Petley observes that the British press had long-since "perfected a way of representing the ideas and personalities associated with socialism as so deranged and psychotic that they represented a danger to society", thus rendering them fair game for editorial vilification. After his party's defeat in the 1983 General Election, one newspaper had characterised Michael Foot
's habit of swinging his walking stick
around as he went for his morning walk as being "like an escaped loony". The election of Ken Livingstone
to leader of the Greater London Council
in 1981 had him regularly described in newspapers as "barmy" or "loony", with the GLC's policies labelled "crazy". These labels were increasingly also applied to local councils within London: The 1983-03-13 Sunday People labelled Islington local council the "Bananas republic"; and the 1983-02-13 Mail on Sunday labelled it "The mad mad mad mad world of Islington". In some ways, the "Loony Left" campaign was a generalisation of the Conservative campaign of demonising Livingstone and the GLC.
As recorded by Jenkins, the climax of the campaign was in 1986, and pivotal moments in its history were the London local council elections held in May 1986, and the Greenwich by-election, 1987
, as well as of course the campaign for the 1987 General Election.
The general theme that the "Loony Left" label suggested was twofold: Labour Party local government authorities were perceived to be:
"Loony Left" was also used to describe specific individuals. Neil Kinnock
, who had been subject to press vituperation since his election as party leader was associated with the "Loony Left" when in March 1987 he endorsed a rise of 60% in local council rates in Ealing, where he was a rate-payer. The Sun gave this the headline "Kinnock admits — I back loonies." and other newspapers put this forward as an example of support for extremism by the Labour Party leadership. A later story in the Daily Express, about how Ken Livingstone purportedly had a left-wing takeover of the party arranged, was denied by the Labour leadership only to have that reported as "Neil Denies Truth About Left Plot".
Similarly, Deirdrie Wood, Labour candidate in the 1987 Greenwich by-election, came to be known in the press as "Dreadful Deirdrie". Wood had been selected by her local constituency party against opposition from the Labour leadership. Privately, she had promised Kinnock "I won't drop you in it.", to which he had replied "It's not you, it's those bastards out there.", i.e. the press. Labour presented her as "a hard-working local woman with sensible policies", but the press portrayed her as a radical extremist both by association, as an IRA sympathiser living with a militant shop steward who was not the father of her children, and directly as a "hard left feminist, anti-racist and gay-rights supporter" (as one News of the World report put it) who wanted to twin London schools with PLO camps.
However, local authorities were the primary targets, in part because that is where progressives had found their platform in the 1980s. This was caused by two factors: a change in the composition of local authorities, and the General Election defeats for Labour from 1979 onwards. Partly because of structural changes to local authorities enacted in 1974, including the end of local aldermanic dignities, and partly simply as a result of an influx of new people whose background had been in the radical youth movements of the 1960s, local government authorities became highly partisan political battlegrounds in the 1970s and 1980s, that a canny politician would be able to use to construct a power base and as a stepping stone to a career in national-level politics.
This was compounded by the General Election defeats for Labour, leaving the party with little ability to push its agenda at a national level in Westminster. As a result, local authorities became hotbeds of progressive and radical ideas, and a conflict between local Labour local authorities and the Conservative central government on many issues ensued. Like municipal socialism
before it, Labour leaderships at local level saw themselves as stronger than their Westminster party colleagues, and capable of pushing socialist political agendas where they could not be pushed at national level. This resulted in an era of "grand gesture politics", with local authorities taking highly visible stances on national political issues such as declaring themselves Nuclear Free Zones, and "rainbow coalitions" between local Labour party politicians and pressure groups for causes outside of Labour's traditional working class roots, such as anti-racism, gay rights, disabled rights, and feminist groups.
Unfortunately for Labour, the wide range of local-level policy initiatives that this engendered made it easy for Conservative opponents to then apply the "Loony Left" blanket label that the news media had handed to them, a political card that the Conservatives played at both local and national levels. The label was a particularly effective tactic against Labour-controlled local education authorities
, because the suggestion of innocent children being manipulated to further cynical adult political goals was a very potent image.
, less even (according to academic studies by Butler and Kavanaugh) than Labour Party officials themselves believed at the time post-election.
In part these changes were an increased awareness of how important news media were to Labour's election campaign. One party press secretary said, of Labour's attitude to the news media in the 1983 General Election campaign, that "If a miracle had happened and Fleet Street had suddenly come clamouring to Walworth Road for pro-Labour material, they would have been sent away with a copy of the manifesto each.". The party leadership noted afterwards that it had been the effect of the "Loony Left" image that had caused it to lose the 1987 Greenwich by-election by such a large margin. This is not to say, of course, that Labour ignored the press. However it became reluctant to talk to it. Kinnock refused to talk to the press on the flight back from his visit to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan
after British journalists had continually sought a story that would represent the trip in a negative light. Similarly, Patricia Hewitt
, then party press secretary, considered abandoning holding daily press conferences in the run-up to the 1987 General Election, because "they allow the newspaper journalists to set the agenda … and we know where they stand".
In a widely leaked letter written to Frank Dobson
after the Greenwich by-election, and published by the Sun under the headline "Gays put Kinnock in a panic — secret letter lashes loonies", Hewitt said
Nick Raynsford
similarly ascribed the General Election defeat to the "Loony Left" and other factors stating after the election that there were "too many worrying skeletons in the Labour Party cupboard deterring voters". In general, the "soft left" portion of the Labour Party blamed the "Loony Left" perception for this, third, General Election defeat, despite the election campaign having been, in Larry Whitty's words, "the most effective campaign the party has ever waged". According to the "soft left", the Labour-controlled local government authorities' had made errors in both pace and presentation, albeit that almost any initiative relating to race or sex, no matter how presented or paced, would have been seized by the press and held up for vilification.
Even before the election, Labour was working hard to distance itself from the "Loony Left" perception. Roy Hattersley
stated, at the time of the initiative of Brent Council to appoint race-relations advisors to schools, "I do not deny the existence of unacceptable behaviour in some local education authorities. I want to eliminate it.". Similarly, a question-and-answer pamphlet for voters prepared by staff at Labour headquarters had the question "But if I vote Labour won't I get a loony left council like those in London?" to which the answer given was "Left councils are exceptions, Neil Kinnock has told them to mend their ways and he is in full charge of the Labour Party.".
On several occasions, the Labour Party leadership and others attempted to take a hard line on the "Loony Left" in order to gain a more favourable impression in the media. On 1987-04-03, for example, five Labour MPs with constituencies in Birmingham — Roy Hattersley, Denis Howell
, Jeff Rooker, Terry Davis, and Robin Corbett — wrote to Sharon Atkin, Bernie Grant, and Linda Bellos
, in letters that they themselves leaked to the newspapers, demanding that they not attend a meeting in Birmingham, scheduled for 1987-04-07, of activists campaigning for Black Sections within the Labour Party. Similarly, after the Greenwich by-election defeat, five London Labour Party members — Brian Nicholson, Roger Godsiff
, John Spellar
, Roy Shaw
, and Dianne Hayter — formed the "Londoners for Labour" association, aimed, according to their press releases, at reclaiming the London Labour Party from "the loonies".
The 1980s U.K. press campaign against the "Loony Left" was echoed in the 1990s in the U.S. where sections of the press campaigned against political correctness
, using much the same rhetoric. The same accusations made by the British press in the 1980s were levelled by U.S. newspapers such as The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic
, Time
, Newsweek
and New York
.
The report of the MRG investigation estimated that some 3,000 news stories about the "Loony Left" ran between 1981 and 1987 in the British tabloid press alone. It determined that a large proportion of these stories were either partially or wholly fabricated, and that their targets, against whom they aimed to inflame public opinion, were a small number of London local councils, that were under Labour Party control.
and The Herald
reported in 2002, for example, the same "Baa Baa White Sheep" story, ascribing it to a parent of a child attending Paston Ridings Primary School in London.
The original story reported a ban at Beevers Nursery, a privately run nursery school in Hackney. It was originally reported by Bill Akass, then a journalist at the Daily Star, in the 1986-02-15 edition under the headline "Now it's Baa Baa Blank Sheep". Akass had heard of a ban issued, by nursery school staff, on the singing of the nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", on the grounds that it was racist. In his story, he wrote:
The nursery was run by the parents, rather than by Hackney council. But Akass had telephoned Hackney council for its reaction to his story, Martin Bostock, then the press officer for Hackney council, reported that he had considered the possibility of simply responding that "We don't know what this nursery is doing, but whatever they're doing it is up to them.". However, council leader Tony Millwood, according to Bostock, refused this advice and wanted to take a more supportive stance on the alleged ban, and in conjunction with the press office drafted and issued a statement saying "that we supported what they'd done, although making it quite clear that it was not a council nursery and not a council ban".
Three days later, in the 1986-02-18 Hackney Gazette, Tim Cooper took up Akass' story. He went to Beevers Nursery and asked parents there what their reactions, in turn, were to the Hackney council statement, itself a reaction to the claim that Beevers had issued a ban. Cooper's story reported one of the nursery playleaders as saying "We're run by parents and if they want us to stop singing it, we would. But there have been no complaints so far, though someone once suggested it could be racist.". Cooper later stated that there had been no such ban, but that the statement issued by Millwood and Hackney council had given the story the impetus that it was then to run with:
And snowball it did. The story was carried by the Sun in its 1986-02-20 edition, under the headline "Lefties baa black sheep", with the ban attributed directly to "Loony left-wing councillors". The Sun's version of events was subsequently carried by the 1986-02-23 Sunday World
. It was taken to the letters columns of the 1986-02-28 and 1986-03-04 Hackney Gazette and the 1986-03-06 Ilford Recorder, and even reached the pages of the 1986-04-04 Knitting International. Despite neither the journalists nor the letter-writers presenting any evidence for their assertions, only one paper, The Voice
rejected the story in print, calling the story a deliberate attempt to discredit the council.
The 1986-10-09 Daily Mail carried the story further, with a story headlined "Baa baa, green (yes green) sheep!", reporting that Haringey (not Hackney) council had ordered playgroup leaders to attend a racialism awareness course, where they were instructed that the council had banned the rhyme with its original wording, mandating the alternative "green sheep" wording instead. This story was ascribed to an anonymous playgroup leader. From here, this new twist on the original story was carried by the Birmingham Evening Mail ("Silly bleat" and "Green sheep? They've got to be joking."), the Liverpool Echo
("Black sheep in the dog house"), the Yorkshire Evening Press ("So sheepish"), the 1986-10-10 Birmingham Post
("Racist sheep are a joke"), the 1986-10-12 Sunday People, News of the World
("Green sheep take over"), and Sunday Mercury
, the 1986-10-13 Carlisle Evening News and Star ("Bernie Bleat Barmy"), the 1986-10-14 Yorkshire Evening Courier, and the 1986-10-15 Liverpool Echo
("Just Barmy") and Ipswich Evening Star
("A load of wollies!").
Again, the story was a fabrication. In fact, the playgroup leaders had requested the racialism awareness course, to which attendance was not compulsory, there had been no ban imposed by Haringey council, and there was no evidence that the rhyme had even been discussed on the course. As before, only newspapers for the British black community reported these facts. The Daily Mails attempts to fact check the story that it had run, including posing as parents looking for playgroups and as supermarket managers wanting to run racialism awareness courses, had failed to elicit a single playgroup worker who would confirm the alleged council ban.
Haringey council attempted to get the story straightened. It initiated legal action against the Daily Mail, but was forced to drop it for lack of funds. The attempts by the council to rebut the story were ignored by the press for a week, its rebuttal only being first printed in the 1986-10-16 Haringey Advertiser ("Black sheep still in evidence"). But that was not enough to stem the tide, as the story was now running, without independent fact checking, in newspapers all across the country, from Men's Wear to the 1986-10-19 Sunday Times letters column, the 1986-10-23 Hendon Times ("Stop stirring up trouble"), and Auberon Waugh
's column in the 1986-10-19 Sunday Telegraph
. The 1986-10-23 Mail on Sunday letters column carried letters noting that black pudding was henceforth to be "green pudding", the same day's Sunday Times letters column noted that blackhead
s could no longer be called blackheads.
The Daily Mail ran the story again on 1986-10-20, comparing Haringey council to Nazi Germany. Again, the council attempted to set the record straight, with a press statement that noted the irony of the Daily Mail comparing the council to Nazi Germany when the Mail itself had supported Hitler right up until the eve of World War II
. And again, only the British black community newspapers (the 1986-11-03 Asian Herald and the 1986-11-05 West Indian News) carried Haringey council's corrections. The story continued to be carried by many newspapers for months thereafter, including The Economist
on 1986-11-01 and the Islington Gazette on 1987-02-20, this time with Islington council as the ban-issuer, a fact that was explicitly denied by a council spokesman in the piece, who said "it is not council policy to ban Baa Baa Black Sheep but if individual nursery workers find it offensive the council is not the business of forcing them to teach that rhyme rather than others". The Daily Express carried the new Islington variant on the same day ("School bars boy's Baa-baa Black Sheep 'racist' rhyme"), as did the Daily Telegraph ("Boy's first rhyme upsets nursery staff"), the Daily Mirror ("Baa Baa blacked"), and the Sun ("Baa Baa nursery ban on sad little Dan") whose lead article the next day then began with "Loony left councils have given us a good laugh over the years.".
Even other political parties ran with the story. A party election broadcast for the Social Democratic Party
, fronted by John Cleese
, named Islington council as "the council that accused a five year old of reciting a racially offensive poem". Islington council sought an injunction in the High Court to have this material excluded, but this was denied by Mr Justice Drake. David Owen
dropped the material anyway, stating that it was to avoid further distress to the five-year-old's family. Ironically, the press reported Owen's press conference, announcing this change, as "loony" David Owen "outclowning anything that Basil Fawlty
could have thought up".
Two newspapers recognised that the story had no foundation. The Yorkshire Evening Press printed on 1986-11-14 a correction to its earlier story, stating that "We regret that the editorial, which was written in good faith, was based upon an inaccurate report.". The Birmingham Evening Mail published a letter from Bernie Grant
on 1986-10-22 denying the story. Nonetheless, and despite the corrections, court actions, and attempts to set the record straight, the story has refused to die. The 1998-02-08 Sunday Times, for example, re-hashed the story once again, eleven years after the fact, in a story about Margaret Hodge
, former leader of Islington council. So, too, did the Daily Mail on 1999-10-04. The London Evening Standard
in 2000-07-06 reminded readers of Islington's reputation of being "one of the country's most celebrated loony Labour councils", again printing as fact the claim that Islington was where "Baa Baa Black Sheep was banned for being politically incorrect". Further stories about Hodge's ministerial promotions, in the 2003-06-14 Sun and the 2003-09-28 Daily Mail, also repeated this claim and attached it to Hodge.
, a columnist for The Guardian
and The Independent
, recorded policies which were dubbed "loony left" by the media. For instance, Haringey
council allowed only Nicaraguan coffee to be sold and introduced courses on homosexuality
into its nursery
and primary schools.
Hackney London Borough Council
ended its twinning
arrangements with France, West Germany and Israel and made new twinnings with the Soviet Union
, East Germany and Nicaragua
. A spokesperson for the council explained: "This will enable us to concentrate on our new friends". When Sinn Féin
representatives were invited to speak to Hackney council a revolver was fired by a Liberal
and there was a fight in the council chamber.
Lambeth London Borough Council
banned the word "family
" from council literature because this was 'discriminatory' and police were banned from using council facilities. Lambeth council's leader, Linda Bellos
, claimed: "I think the police are bent on war".
Ealing
council removed all books it considered to be "racist" and "sexist" from its local libraries. An ILEA
teaching pack titled Auschwitz: Yesterday's Racism drew comparisons between the trade union
legislation of Hitler and Margaret Thatcher
. Another ILEA school in Kennington
discouraged competitive games and making pupils write protest letters was made part of the school time-table.
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
label used in the campaign for the United Kingdom general election, 1987
United Kingdom general election, 1987
The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the British House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive election victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the 2nd...
, and subsequently, both by the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
and by British newspapers that supported the Conservative Party. The label was directed at the policies and actions of some Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
controlled inner-city local government authorities
Local government in the United Kingdom
The pattern of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to the local arrangements. Legislation concerning local government in England is decided by the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom, because England does not have a devolved...
, and some Labour Party politicians. Although the labels "hard left
Hard left
Hard left is a name often given to an internal tendency within the British Labour Party. Similar terminology is used also in the context of the Australian Labor Party....
" and "soft left" reflected a genuine political division within the Labour Party, "Loony Left" was by far the more often used label than either.
Origination and themes of the term
The term "Loony Left" as used to describe certain aspects of Labour politics was invented by the British popular press a couple of years or so before the 1987 General Election. Throughout the run-up to the election it became a staple feature of press-coverage of the election, with many stories running detailing the "antics" of Labour politicians and Labour-controlled local government authorities.Jolyon Jenkins recorded in 1987 that 1986 was the climax of the Loony Left campaign, that it was the year:
The ridicule of the political left by some British newspapers has a far longer history. Petley observes that the British press had long-since "perfected a way of representing the ideas and personalities associated with socialism as so deranged and psychotic that they represented a danger to society", thus rendering them fair game for editorial vilification. After his party's defeat in the 1983 General Election, one newspaper had characterised Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
's habit of swinging his walking stick
Walking stick
A walking stick is a device used by many people to facilitate balancing while walking.Walking sticks come in many shapes and sizes, and can be sought by collectors. Some kinds of walking stick may be used by people with disabilities as a crutch...
around as he went for his morning walk as being "like an escaped loony". The election of Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone
Kenneth Robert "Ken" Livingstone is an English politician who is currently a member of the centrist to centre-left Labour Party...
to leader of the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
in 1981 had him regularly described in newspapers as "barmy" or "loony", with the GLC's policies labelled "crazy". These labels were increasingly also applied to local councils within London: The 1983-03-13 Sunday People labelled Islington local council the "Bananas republic"; and the 1983-02-13 Mail on Sunday labelled it "The mad mad mad mad world of Islington". In some ways, the "Loony Left" campaign was a generalisation of the Conservative campaign of demonising Livingstone and the GLC.
As recorded by Jenkins, the climax of the campaign was in 1986, and pivotal moments in its history were the London local council elections held in May 1986, and the Greenwich by-election, 1987
Greenwich by-election, 1987
The Greenwich by-election of 1987 was a closely fought by-election often credited with boosting the SDP-Liberal Alliance shortly before the 1987 general election...
, as well as of course the campaign for the 1987 General Election.
The general theme that the "Loony Left" label suggested was twofold: Labour Party local government authorities were perceived to be:
- irrationally obsessed with minority and fringe issues,
- paranoid about racial and sexual "problems" that are wholly imaginary on their parts and that have no real existence.
"Loony Left" was also used to describe specific individuals. Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
, who had been subject to press vituperation since his election as party leader was associated with the "Loony Left" when in March 1987 he endorsed a rise of 60% in local council rates in Ealing, where he was a rate-payer. The Sun gave this the headline "Kinnock admits — I back loonies." and other newspapers put this forward as an example of support for extremism by the Labour Party leadership. A later story in the Daily Express, about how Ken Livingstone purportedly had a left-wing takeover of the party arranged, was denied by the Labour leadership only to have that reported as "Neil Denies Truth About Left Plot".
Similarly, Deirdrie Wood, Labour candidate in the 1987 Greenwich by-election, came to be known in the press as "Dreadful Deirdrie". Wood had been selected by her local constituency party against opposition from the Labour leadership. Privately, she had promised Kinnock "I won't drop you in it.", to which he had replied "It's not you, it's those bastards out there.", i.e. the press. Labour presented her as "a hard-working local woman with sensible policies", but the press portrayed her as a radical extremist both by association, as an IRA sympathiser living with a militant shop steward who was not the father of her children, and directly as a "hard left feminist, anti-racist and gay-rights supporter" (as one News of the World report put it) who wanted to twin London schools with PLO camps.
However, local authorities were the primary targets, in part because that is where progressives had found their platform in the 1980s. This was caused by two factors: a change in the composition of local authorities, and the General Election defeats for Labour from 1979 onwards. Partly because of structural changes to local authorities enacted in 1974, including the end of local aldermanic dignities, and partly simply as a result of an influx of new people whose background had been in the radical youth movements of the 1960s, local government authorities became highly partisan political battlegrounds in the 1970s and 1980s, that a canny politician would be able to use to construct a power base and as a stepping stone to a career in national-level politics.
This was compounded by the General Election defeats for Labour, leaving the party with little ability to push its agenda at a national level in Westminster. As a result, local authorities became hotbeds of progressive and radical ideas, and a conflict between local Labour local authorities and the Conservative central government on many issues ensued. Like municipal socialism
Municipal socialism
Municipal socialism refers to various historical movements to use local government to further socialist aims. The term has been used to describe public ownership of streetcar lines, waterworks, and other local utilities, as was favored by "Progressives" in the United States in the late 1890s/early...
before it, Labour leaderships at local level saw themselves as stronger than their Westminster party colleagues, and capable of pushing socialist political agendas where they could not be pushed at national level. This resulted in an era of "grand gesture politics", with local authorities taking highly visible stances on national political issues such as declaring themselves Nuclear Free Zones, and "rainbow coalitions" between local Labour party politicians and pressure groups for causes outside of Labour's traditional working class roots, such as anti-racism, gay rights, disabled rights, and feminist groups.
Unfortunately for Labour, the wide range of local-level policy initiatives that this engendered made it easy for Conservative opponents to then apply the "Loony Left" blanket label that the news media had handed to them, a political card that the Conservatives played at both local and national levels. The label was a particularly effective tactic against Labour-controlled local education authorities
Local Education Authority
A local education authority is a local authority in England and Wales that has responsibility for education within its jurisdiction...
, because the suggestion of innocent children being manipulated to further cynical adult political goals was a very potent image.
Persistence of the idea and counteraction by the Labour Party
The label still occurs in British political discourse, even in the 21st century, and has become a firmly embedded feature of British journalism. However, changes made by the Labour Party after the 1987 General Election to ensure that it was no longer associated in the public mind with the images of the "Loony Left" from 1986–1987 have since blunted its impact and reduced its power, to the extent that it had far less impact on the United Kingdom general election, 1992United Kingdom general election, 1992
The United Kingdom general election of 1992 was held on 9 April 1992, and was the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party. This election result was one of the biggest surprises in 20th Century politics, as polling leading up to the day of the election showed Labour under leader Neil...
, less even (according to academic studies by Butler and Kavanaugh) than Labour Party officials themselves believed at the time post-election.
In part these changes were an increased awareness of how important news media were to Labour's election campaign. One party press secretary said, of Labour's attitude to the news media in the 1983 General Election campaign, that "If a miracle had happened and Fleet Street had suddenly come clamouring to Walworth Road for pro-Labour material, they would have been sent away with a copy of the manifesto each.". The party leadership noted afterwards that it had been the effect of the "Loony Left" image that had caused it to lose the 1987 Greenwich by-election by such a large margin. This is not to say, of course, that Labour ignored the press. However it became reluctant to talk to it. Kinnock refused to talk to the press on the flight back from his visit to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
after British journalists had continually sought a story that would represent the trip in a negative light. Similarly, Patricia Hewitt
Patricia Hewitt
Patricia Hope Hewitt is an Australian-born British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Leicester West from 1997 until 2010. She served in the Cabinet until 2007, most recently as Health Secretary....
, then party press secretary, considered abandoning holding daily press conferences in the run-up to the 1987 General Election, because "they allow the newspaper journalists to set the agenda … and we know where they stand".
In a widely leaked letter written to Frank Dobson
Frank Dobson
Frank Gordon Dobson, is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Holborn and St. Pancras since 1979...
after the Greenwich by-election, and published by the Sun under the headline "Gays put Kinnock in a panic — secret letter lashes loonies", Hewitt said
Nick Raynsford
Nick Raynsford
Wyvill Richard Nicolls Raynsford , known as Nick Raynsford, is a British Labour Party politician. A government minister from 1997 to 2005, he has been the Member of Parliament for Greenwich & Woolwich since 1997, having previously been MP for Greenwich from 1992 to 1997, and for Fulham from 1986...
similarly ascribed the General Election defeat to the "Loony Left" and other factors stating after the election that there were "too many worrying skeletons in the Labour Party cupboard deterring voters". In general, the "soft left" portion of the Labour Party blamed the "Loony Left" perception for this, third, General Election defeat, despite the election campaign having been, in Larry Whitty's words, "the most effective campaign the party has ever waged". According to the "soft left", the Labour-controlled local government authorities' had made errors in both pace and presentation, albeit that almost any initiative relating to race or sex, no matter how presented or paced, would have been seized by the press and held up for vilification.
Even before the election, Labour was working hard to distance itself from the "Loony Left" perception. Roy Hattersley
Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
stated, at the time of the initiative of Brent Council to appoint race-relations advisors to schools, "I do not deny the existence of unacceptable behaviour in some local education authorities. I want to eliminate it.". Similarly, a question-and-answer pamphlet for voters prepared by staff at Labour headquarters had the question "But if I vote Labour won't I get a loony left council like those in London?" to which the answer given was "Left councils are exceptions, Neil Kinnock has told them to mend their ways and he is in full charge of the Labour Party.".
On several occasions, the Labour Party leadership and others attempted to take a hard line on the "Loony Left" in order to gain a more favourable impression in the media. On 1987-04-03, for example, five Labour MPs with constituencies in Birmingham — Roy Hattersley, Denis Howell
Denis Howell
Denis Herbert Howell, Baron Howell was a British Labour Party politician.Born in Birmingham, Howell was educated at Handsworth Grammar School, Birmingham and became a clerk and chairman of the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union standing orders committee. He was a Football League referee and...
, Jeff Rooker, Terry Davis, and Robin Corbett — wrote to Sharon Atkin, Bernie Grant, and Linda Bellos
Linda Bellos
Linda Bellos OBE is an English ex-politician and current businesswoman and activist for gay rights.-Personal life:Bellos was born in London to a Jewish mother, Renee Sackman, and a Nigerian father, Emmanuel Adebowale, who came from Uzebba and joined the merchant navy during the Second World War...
, in letters that they themselves leaked to the newspapers, demanding that they not attend a meeting in Birmingham, scheduled for 1987-04-07, of activists campaigning for Black Sections within the Labour Party. Similarly, after the Greenwich by-election defeat, five London Labour Party members — Brian Nicholson, Roger Godsiff
Roger Godsiff
Roger Duncan Godsiff is a British Labour politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath from 1992 to 2010, when he became Member of Parliament for Birmingham Hall Green.-Early life:...
, John Spellar
John Spellar
John Francis Spellar is a British Labour Party politician, and the Member of Parliament for Warley. He served as a Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, before returning to the backbenches in 2005...
, Roy Shaw
Roy Shaw
Royston Henry Shaw , also known as Roy "Pretty Boy" Shaw, Roy "Mean Machine" Shaw and Roy West, is an English millionaire, real estate investor, author and businessman from the East End of London who was formerly a notorious criminal and Category A prisoner...
, and Dianne Hayter — formed the "Londoners for Labour" association, aimed, according to their press releases, at reclaiming the London Labour Party from "the loonies".
The 1980s U.K. press campaign against the "Loony Left" was echoed in the 1990s in the U.S. where sections of the press campaigned against political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
, using much the same rhetoric. The same accusations made by the British press in the 1980s were levelled by U.S. newspapers such as The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
and New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
.
Exemplification
As Jenkins noted, the truth of the stories mattered less than their resonance with voter fears. Three of the most famously recorded instances of "Loony Left" activities, "Baa Baa White Sheep", renaming manhole covers, and "black bin-liner bags" were myths, outright fabrications by the press. Others stories, such as reports that London councils had insisted that homosexuals be placed at the heads of the waiting lists for council housing and that London councils had spent £0.5millions on "24 super-loos for gypsies" were found to be highly misleading upon investigation by the Media Research Group of Goldsmiths' College, University of London.The report of the MRG investigation estimated that some 3,000 news stories about the "Loony Left" ran between 1981 and 1987 in the British tabloid press alone. It determined that a large proportion of these stories were either partially or wholly fabricated, and that their targets, against whom they aimed to inflame public opinion, were a small number of London local councils, that were under Labour Party control.
Baa Baa White Sheep
The "Baa Baa White Sheep" story was a wholesale fabrication, reporting events that never happened. Nonetheless, the story "got legs" (as journalists put it) and was widely reported, modified, and re-reported by the press, to the extent that it has gained almost the status of an urban myth, being reported of people and institutions different to those of the original story of 1986. Both The AgeThe Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
and The Herald
The Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
reported in 2002, for example, the same "Baa Baa White Sheep" story, ascribing it to a parent of a child attending Paston Ridings Primary School in London.
The original story reported a ban at Beevers Nursery, a privately run nursery school in Hackney. It was originally reported by Bill Akass, then a journalist at the Daily Star, in the 1986-02-15 edition under the headline "Now it's Baa Baa Blank Sheep". Akass had heard of a ban issued, by nursery school staff, on the singing of the nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", on the grounds that it was racist. In his story, he wrote:
The nursery was run by the parents, rather than by Hackney council. But Akass had telephoned Hackney council for its reaction to his story, Martin Bostock, then the press officer for Hackney council, reported that he had considered the possibility of simply responding that "We don't know what this nursery is doing, but whatever they're doing it is up to them.". However, council leader Tony Millwood, according to Bostock, refused this advice and wanted to take a more supportive stance on the alleged ban, and in conjunction with the press office drafted and issued a statement saying "that we supported what they'd done, although making it quite clear that it was not a council nursery and not a council ban".
Three days later, in the 1986-02-18 Hackney Gazette, Tim Cooper took up Akass' story. He went to Beevers Nursery and asked parents there what their reactions, in turn, were to the Hackney council statement, itself a reaction to the claim that Beevers had issued a ban. Cooper's story reported one of the nursery playleaders as saying "We're run by parents and if they want us to stop singing it, we would. But there have been no complaints so far, though someone once suggested it could be racist.". Cooper later stated that there had been no such ban, but that the statement issued by Millwood and Hackney council had given the story the impetus that it was then to run with:
And snowball it did. The story was carried by the Sun in its 1986-02-20 edition, under the headline "Lefties baa black sheep", with the ban attributed directly to "Loony left-wing councillors". The Sun's version of events was subsequently carried by the 1986-02-23 Sunday World
Sunday World
The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Sunday Newspapers Limited, a division of Independent News and Media. It is the largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and is also sold in Northern Ireland .-Origins:The Sunday World was Ireland's first tabloid newspaper...
. It was taken to the letters columns of the 1986-02-28 and 1986-03-04 Hackney Gazette and the 1986-03-06 Ilford Recorder, and even reached the pages of the 1986-04-04 Knitting International. Despite neither the journalists nor the letter-writers presenting any evidence for their assertions, only one paper, The Voice
The Voice (newspaper)
The Voice is a British national weekly tabloid newspaper owned by the Jamaican publisher, GV Media Group, aimed at the British Afro-Caribbean community. The paper is based in the London Docklands and is published every Monday.-History:...
rejected the story in print, calling the story a deliberate attempt to discredit the council.
The 1986-10-09 Daily Mail carried the story further, with a story headlined "Baa baa, green (yes green) sheep!", reporting that Haringey (not Hackney) council had ordered playgroup leaders to attend a racialism awareness course, where they were instructed that the council had banned the rhyme with its original wording, mandating the alternative "green sheep" wording instead. This story was ascribed to an anonymous playgroup leader. From here, this new twist on the original story was carried by the Birmingham Evening Mail ("Silly bleat" and "Green sheep? They've got to be joking."), the Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
The Liverpool Echo is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Saturday, and is Liverpool's evening newspaper while its sister paper, the Liverpool Daily Post, is the morning paper...
("Black sheep in the dog house"), the Yorkshire Evening Press ("So sheepish"), the 1986-10-10 Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...
("Racist sheep are a joke"), the 1986-10-12 Sunday People, News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
("Green sheep take over"), and Sunday Mercury
Sunday Mercury
Sunday Mercury is a Sunday tabloid published in Birmingham, UK, and owned by Trinity Mirror.The first editor was John Turner Fearon , who left the Dublin-based Freeman's Journal to take up the position...
, the 1986-10-13 Carlisle Evening News and Star ("Bernie Bleat Barmy"), the 1986-10-14 Yorkshire Evening Courier, and the 1986-10-15 Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
The Liverpool Echo is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Saturday, and is Liverpool's evening newspaper while its sister paper, the Liverpool Daily Post, is the morning paper...
("Just Barmy") and Ipswich Evening Star
Evening Star
Evening Star is the name given to the planet Venus when it appears in the West after sunset; the ancient Greeks gave it the name Hesperus. It may also refer to:-People:* Arwen, an elf-maiden in J.R.R...
("A load of wollies!").
Again, the story was a fabrication. In fact, the playgroup leaders had requested the racialism awareness course, to which attendance was not compulsory, there had been no ban imposed by Haringey council, and there was no evidence that the rhyme had even been discussed on the course. As before, only newspapers for the British black community reported these facts. The Daily Mails attempts to fact check the story that it had run, including posing as parents looking for playgroups and as supermarket managers wanting to run racialism awareness courses, had failed to elicit a single playgroup worker who would confirm the alleged council ban.
Haringey council attempted to get the story straightened. It initiated legal action against the Daily Mail, but was forced to drop it for lack of funds. The attempts by the council to rebut the story were ignored by the press for a week, its rebuttal only being first printed in the 1986-10-16 Haringey Advertiser ("Black sheep still in evidence"). But that was not enough to stem the tide, as the story was now running, without independent fact checking, in newspapers all across the country, from Men's Wear to the 1986-10-19 Sunday Times letters column, the 1986-10-23 Hendon Times ("Stop stirring up trouble"), and Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
's column in the 1986-10-19 Sunday Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...
. The 1986-10-23 Mail on Sunday letters column carried letters noting that black pudding was henceforth to be "green pudding", the same day's Sunday Times letters column noted that blackhead
Blackhead
A blackhead is a yellow or blackish bump or plug on the skin. A blackhead is a type of acne vulgaris. Contrary to the common belief that it is caused by poor hygiene, blackheads are caused by excess oils that have accumulated in the sebaceous gland's duct...
s could no longer be called blackheads.
The Daily Mail ran the story again on 1986-10-20, comparing Haringey council to Nazi Germany. Again, the council attempted to set the record straight, with a press statement that noted the irony of the Daily Mail comparing the council to Nazi Germany when the Mail itself had supported Hitler right up until the eve of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. And again, only the British black community newspapers (the 1986-11-03 Asian Herald and the 1986-11-05 West Indian News) carried Haringey council's corrections. The story continued to be carried by many newspapers for months thereafter, including The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
on 1986-11-01 and the Islington Gazette on 1987-02-20, this time with Islington council as the ban-issuer, a fact that was explicitly denied by a council spokesman in the piece, who said "it is not council policy to ban Baa Baa Black Sheep but if individual nursery workers find it offensive the council is not the business of forcing them to teach that rhyme rather than others". The Daily Express carried the new Islington variant on the same day ("School bars boy's Baa-baa Black Sheep 'racist' rhyme"), as did the Daily Telegraph ("Boy's first rhyme upsets nursery staff"), the Daily Mirror ("Baa Baa blacked"), and the Sun ("Baa Baa nursery ban on sad little Dan") whose lead article the next day then began with "Loony left councils have given us a good laugh over the years.".
Even other political parties ran with the story. A party election broadcast for the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party (UK)
The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...
, fronted by John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
, named Islington council as "the council that accused a five year old of reciting a racially offensive poem". Islington council sought an injunction in the High Court to have this material excluded, but this was denied by Mr Justice Drake. David Owen
David Owen
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP is a British politician.Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War...
dropped the material anyway, stating that it was to avoid further distress to the five-year-old's family. Ironically, the press reported Owen's press conference, announcing this change, as "loony" David Owen "outclowning anything that Basil Fawlty
Basil Fawlty
Basil Fawlty is the main character of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, played by John Cleese. The character is often thought of as an iconic British comedy character, and has been deemed unforgettable despite only a dozen half-hour episodes ever being made....
could have thought up".
Two newspapers recognised that the story had no foundation. The Yorkshire Evening Press printed on 1986-11-14 a correction to its earlier story, stating that "We regret that the editorial, which was written in good faith, was based upon an inaccurate report.". The Birmingham Evening Mail published a letter from Bernie Grant
Bernie Grant
Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant , known simply as Bernie Grant, was a politician in the United Kingdom, and was Labour member of Parliament for Tottenham at the time of his death....
on 1986-10-22 denying the story. Nonetheless, and despite the corrections, court actions, and attempts to set the record straight, the story has refused to die. The 1998-02-08 Sunday Times, for example, re-hashed the story once again, eleven years after the fact, in a story about Margaret Hodge
Margaret Hodge
Margaret Hodge MBE MP, also known as Lady Hodge by virtue of her husband's knighthood, is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Barking since 1994. She was the first Minister for Children in 2003 and was Minister of State for Culture and Tourism at the Department...
, former leader of Islington council. So, too, did the Daily Mail on 1999-10-04. The London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
in 2000-07-06 reminded readers of Islington's reputation of being "one of the country's most celebrated loony Labour councils", again printing as fact the claim that Islington was where "Baa Baa Black Sheep was banned for being politically incorrect". Further stories about Hodge's ministerial promotions, in the 2003-06-14 Sun and the 2003-09-28 Daily Mail, also repeated this claim and attached it to Hodge.
Peter Jenkins
Peter JenkinsPeter Jenkins (journalist)
Peter George James Jenkins was a British journalist and Associate Editor of The Independent. During his career he wrote regular columns for The Guardian, The Sunday Times as well as the The Independent....
, a columnist for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, recorded policies which were dubbed "loony left" by the media. For instance, Haringey
London Borough of Haringey
The London Borough of Haringey is a London borough, in North London, classified by some definitions as part of Inner London, and by others as part of Outer London. It was created in 1965 by the amalgamation of three former boroughs. It shares borders with six other London boroughs...
council allowed only Nicaraguan coffee to be sold and introduced courses on homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
into its nursery
Nursery school
A nursery school is a school for children between the ages of one and five years, staffed by suitably qualified and other professionals who encourage and supervise educational play rather than simply providing childcare...
and primary schools.
Hackney London Borough Council
Hackney London Borough Council
Hackney London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Hackney in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. The council is unusual in the United Kingdom local government system in that its executive function...
ended its twinning
Town twinning
Twin towns and sister cities are two of many terms used to describe the cooperative agreements between towns, cities, and even counties in geographically and politically distinct areas to promote cultural and commercial ties.- Terminology :...
arrangements with France, West Germany and Israel and made new twinnings with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, East Germany and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
. A spokesperson for the council explained: "This will enable us to concentrate on our new friends". When Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
representatives were invited to speak to Hackney council a revolver was fired by a Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
and there was a fight in the council chamber.
Lambeth London Borough Council
Lambeth London Borough Council
Lambeth London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Lambeth in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London...
banned the word "family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
" from council literature because this was 'discriminatory' and police were banned from using council facilities. Lambeth council's leader, Linda Bellos
Linda Bellos
Linda Bellos OBE is an English ex-politician and current businesswoman and activist for gay rights.-Personal life:Bellos was born in London to a Jewish mother, Renee Sackman, and a Nigerian father, Emmanuel Adebowale, who came from Uzebba and joined the merchant navy during the Second World War...
, claimed: "I think the police are bent on war".
Ealing
London Borough of Ealing
The London Borough of Ealing is a borough in west London.-Location:The London Borough of Ealing borders the London Borough of Hillingdon to the west, the London Borough of Harrow and the London Borough of Brent to the north, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the east and the London...
council removed all books it considered to be "racist" and "sexist" from its local libraries. An ILEA
Inner London Education Authority
The Inner London Education Authority was the education authority for the 12 inner London boroughs from 1965 until its abolition in 1990.-History:...
teaching pack titled Auschwitz: Yesterday's Racism drew comparisons between the trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
legislation of Hitler and Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
. Another ILEA school in Kennington
Kennington
Kennington is a district of South London, England, mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, although part of the area is within the London Borough of Southwark....
discouraged competitive games and making pupils write protest letters was made part of the school time-table.
Further reading
See also
- Far leftFar leftFar left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
- MoonbatMoonbatMoonbat is a term used in United States politics as a political epithet referring to progressives or leftists.-Etymology:According to a 2006 article by New York Times self-described "language maven" William Safire, the term was first used by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in 1947...
- Political correctnessPolitical correctnessPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
- People's Republic of South YorkshirePeople's Republic of South YorkshireThe People's Republic of South Yorkshire or The Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, is a satirical reference to Sheffield. It refers to the left-wing Labour administration of Sheffield City Council during the 1980s, under the leadership of David Blunkett.The expression is said to have been...
- WintervalWintervalWinterval was a season of public events in Birmingham, England organised by Birmingham City Council in each of two consecutive winters: first from 20 November to 31 December 1997, and then again from mid-October 1998 to mid-January 1999...