On 27 September 1981, minutes after Tony Benn’s defeat in the Labour deputy leadership election, his 24-year-old campaign co-ordinator, Jon Lansman, told ITN: “To be less than 1 per cent below Denis Healey is a terrific result…The campaign for the policies and the campaign for party democracy will go on – and there’s nothing that’s going to be stopping it.”
The campaign went on but Lansman and the left entered what he calls “the wilderness”. In the 1988 leadership election, Benn suffered a landslide defeat to Neil Kinnock (89-11 per cent) and the party moved rightwards. For decades, Lansman was a figure on Labour’s fringes, doughtily championing the policies of 1981. Few believed that the left would regain its past prominence. And then Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader.
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