Questions of principle factional stuff is a zero sum game,” says Jon Crud- mon] Women addressed us,” he recalls. “They das, sat in his parliamentary office. The Labour MP were trying to buy bolt-cutters to cut the fences at for Dagenham and Rainham’s ideology is difficult Greenham Common, but anytime they turned up at to pin down. One person close to him describes a shop anywhere near, they were denied the right him as “not of left or right – a floating voter in to buy them. So, each Campaign Group member the Labour Party”, while new MP Lisa Nandy says agreed to buy one set of bolt-cutters and donate he’s “distinctly different from the shadow cabinet to the Greenham Women. Which we duly did!” mainstream”. A lazier description could be ‘soft left’. Now, other left-wing clusters are overshadow- There’s nothing soft about Cruddas, mind. ing the Campaign Group. MPs Kelvin Hopkins and He’s raw London Labour – a man who took Grahame Morris along with Dr Éoin Clarke have on the BNP and won. He crashes his feet recently established a new left-wing Labour think onto his desk and wheezes with laughter. tank called GEER UK (Gender, Environment, Equal- Clockwise from opposite page “Labour became a party of centralised ity and Race UK). It has been dubbed a possible Tony Benn in 1961; Hugh Gaitskell government,” he says, “but it’s at its best when ‘Red Labour’ alternative to Maurice Glasman’s Blue was a hate figure for the left when part of broader alliances, dating back to Keir Labour. Separately, former Tony Blair was a small child; May Day march in 1975; Diane Abbott Hardie. The pressure will come from outside Labour leadership hopeful MP addresses an Anti-Racist Action the party. The solutions aren’t going to be, Michael Meacher has founded conference in September 1992; Jeremy Corbyn MP (2nd left); Jon Cruddas as Ed Balls might say, ‘endogenously created’. a new regular meeting in Parlia- MP during the deputy leadership They’re broader movements and ideas.” ment for those on the left. It has contest in 2007; Ronnie Campbell But the idea of creating ‘broad alliances’ on the attracted some new Labour MPs. MP in his previous life as a miner left, across parties and including outside interests, Lisa Nandy, part of the 2010 is not new. Radical left thinker Ken Coates spent intake, says: “I’ve never been to The supposed blocking of Labour four decades trying to give greater coherence the Campaign Group, but I ex- left candidates, and lack of career to militant left politics. In his 1971 book,The pect that Meacher’s group pulls prospects once they enter Parlia- Crisis of British Socialism, he wrote: “What is really in broader sections of views than ment, means that there’s been a the former.” Nandy herself has “hollowing-out” of potential leftie been described as “one of leaders, as one MP put it to me. the few left-wing members” Lawson agrees: “People like Tony Until the left can discuss Benn emerge in conditions that create what New Labour did, Benns – the militant shop steward examine and understand movements, the alternative economic strategy of the 1970s. A mixture of ide- what went wrong, we’re as and social forces combine to create never going to work out was removed from the Labour candidacy short- the circumstances. You ma