Brighthelm Community
Centre has a very large hall.  I have
never previously seen seen it so full. 
This was probably the largest meeting it has ever held.   Not only was the hall jam packed solid, as
you will see from the photographs but so was the café area at its rear, so much
so that people were spilling out on the streets.  At the main door to Brighthelm Centre there
were another couple of hundred people.  I
would estimate that there were probably between 800-1,000 people there.

There were no national
speakers but people were determined that the coup by 172 Labour MPs against the
democratically elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn would not
succeed.  Brighton & Hove Labour Party’s
AGM happened to fall just as the chicken coup was in full swing with the result
that the Momentum group didn’t need to do any mobilising.  The Right did our job for us.

The Labour Party AGM
was scheduled to start at 4 pm.  It had to
be held in 3 different halls within City College because the outgoing
right-wing Executive had refused to book a hall large enough.  Being suspended I was unable to attend but my
wife and two of my sons, all Corbyn supporters, attended and I was left looking
after my other son who is autistic. 
Whilst outside waiting I encountered an old foe and squatting mate, a
glum looking Lord Steve  Bassam of Brighton,
who is now Leader of Labour in the House of Lords which has declared UDI from
the Shadow Cabinet and it would seem the Labour Party.  Bassam used to be on the far-left before a
glittering career brown nosing Blair beckoned.  Another old foe I encountered was an
ex-Councillor from Queens Park Ward, which I once chaired, Jackie Lythell.

It was only late in
the day that the Right woke up to the fact that their grip on Brighton and Hove
Labour Party was endangered.  When I was
last suspended in 1982 along with about 30 other comrades, the Brighton Party
covered both constituencies and when the Right failed to gain control the whole
party was suspended by Neil Kinnock after desperate pleas by Bassam, then
leader of the Labour Group.  In the
interim, the Party was organised and a District Party, to which any member can
turn up and vote, was established.  It
covered the two Brighton constituencies and Hove.  Under New Labour it had MPs for all 3 constituencies
but in 2010 Caroline Lucas gained Pavilion from Labour and the Tories regained Brighton
Kemptown and Hove.  In 2015 the arch
apostle of New Labour, Peter Kyle, narrowly gained Hove.  Kyle is a paid up member of Progress and his
partner Ivor Caplin was the previous Hove MP and a  junior Defence Minister under Blair and thus a
junior war criminal too.

On Friday (see figure)
Council Leader Warren Morgan woke up to what was happening.  He and Kyle were scheduled to address a Local
Government Conference but when  they saw
what was happening they decided to stay in Brighton.  They feared that their useless and incompetent
friends, such as John Warmington the previous Secretary, who hasn’t once got a
notice of a meeting out 7 days beforehand as constitutionally required, were
facing defeat.

Warren Morgan
therefore sent a panicked last minute email round to his friends saying that
the far Left was in danger of taking control of the only ‘critical friend’ that
the cutters and carvers in the Labour Group had. 

Timing in politics is
everything of course and it didn’t help that the Brighton & Hove Labour AGM
took place in the week of Chilcot, when the New Labour brand is not all that
popular, but there is also another consideration which is probably beyond the
imagination or understanding of Warren Morgan, Kyle and Bassam.  New Labour, with its devotion to market
economics and its attempt to continue where the Tories have left off, is no
longer attractive if it ever was. 

The ‘centre ground’ of
politics has imploded.  The Lib-Dems got 8
seats at the last election, which is almost as low as the six they gained in
1964.  People want answers not
compromises.  The muddled middle holds no
attractions.  Six years of austerity has
meant that many people are hurting badly. 
They don’t want to be told that there is no alternative to laissez faire
capitalism.

The irony of the
chicken coup against Corbyn, which has run up against the fact that he won’t
resign even after a vote of no confidence, which is in reality a vote of no
confidence in the membership of the Labour Party, is that it uses the Brexit
vote as its pretext.  It was New Labour
politics that led to the disenchantment of many Labour voters.  In Scotland they simply led to the wholescale
abandonment by the working-class of Labour for the SNP.

The Leave campaign won
amongst the working-class of Northern England (and also in one of the poorest
areas, Cornwall).  The reason is because
these are the areas which have been devastated by first Thatcherite economics
and then New Labour.  The free market has
meant the destruction of industry, the privatisation of nationalised
utilities,  a declining standard of living
and low wages – all of which have been falsely blamed on immigration and thus
the European community.

The politics of Corbyn
have had greater resonance with supporters of UKIP than New Labour because it
is only radical ideas of renationalisation, rent controls, taming the market, a
National Investment Bank and workers rights, coupled with ousting the private
sector from the NHS, which has any appeal. 
The politics of the Warren Morgans and Peter Kyles are completely
unattractive.

Suffice to say,
although the election for the non-officership posts haven’t yet been counted,
all the Officers of Brighton & Hove Labour Party were won by Momentum,
meaning the grip of New Labour in Brighton and Hove is now finally over.  The post of Secretary was won by my good
friend Greg Hadfield by nearly 400 to 200 votes, which bodes well for the
future!

Tony Greenstein