None of my many new Corbynista critics could imagine that I was once known as “Tommy the Red”, the Marxist involved in the student occupation of the London School of Economics 50 years ago – a headline story at the time. Back then, protesting about the Vietnam War, apartheid and the LSE’s link to white Southern Rhodesia, I also could not have imagined that I would ever write a book describing the leader of the Labour Party as communist. But Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power, which is published this week, is very much the product of those heady days of intense debate, in the LSE’s crowded Old Theatre, about the prospect of a Marxist revolution in Britain.
Led by American graduates from Berkeley, California, LSE’s Marxists believed that they were the vanguard of a worldwide revolution – students first and the workers would follow. Among those leading the British Trotskyists on the LSE’s stage was Tariq Ali. While researching Jeremy Corbyn’s life, I was reunited with Ali over an enjoyable lunch. We started with a toast that we were still alive. “I shared many platforms with Jeremy,” he recalled, “but I can’t remember what he said except that he was on the right side.”
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