In its April 2nd edition The Observer published an article by Andrew Anthony, a journalist at the Sunday paper’s sister publication, The Guardian, since 1990, under the heading, ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s last stand: should he run and could he win?’

The article included a reference to “when Militant-supporting MPs Dave Nellist and Terry Fields were deselected as Labour candidates in 1992”.  By using the word ‘deselected’ – a specific procedure in the Labour Party when local party members have the opportunity to remove their sitting MP – rather than the correct term, which is ‘expelled’ (by the national party over the heads of the local members), the article is misleading. 

Andrew Anthony, who was around at the time, should know this.  Terry and Dave were prominent parliamentary representatives of the mass campaign of non-payment of the poll tax, the critical factor behind the resignation of Margaret Thatcher in November 1990.  Terry was actually jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay the tax in solidarity with his working class constituents who couldn’t pay.  Labour, under Neil Kinnock, ‘opposed’ the poll tax verbally but, much like Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘disagreement’ with austerity today, went along with its implementation.

But if Andrew Anthony had genuinely forgotten what happened at least a ‘progressive’ publication like The Observer would print a corrective letter, surely?  The late Terry Fields is not here to defend himself but Dave Nellist, a member of the Socialist Party, the Militant’s successor, and the chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), is.  And so Dave sent a letter for The Observer’s April 9th edition, setting the record straight but also urging Jeremy to stand as a candidate in the next general election. 

But encouraging in any way a bold stand against the capitalist establishment’s austerity consensus is a little too much for its ‘liberal’ media arm.  So we are publishing Dave’s letter below.  Because The Observer wouldn’t. ■

Letter to The Observer from Dave Nellist

Andrew Anthony is mistaken (Corbyn’s last stand? Observer, 2nd April).  The late Liverpool MP Terry Fields and I were not ‘deselected’ in 1992; the national Labour Party expelled us. The distinction is important.

Like Jeremy Corbyn today, I had, in 1992, the overwhelming support of local Labour members – 500 held a special meeting in Coventry in January 1992 to endorse my candidacy as Independent Labour.  In April 1992, we came very close to retaining the seat.

If Jeremy were to hold a similar meeting, I suspect it would be larger, and he, with a much higher profile, would win a subsequent election.  If, as I hope, along with even just a couple of unions he initiated a new democratically-organised party, I would wager it would be the third largest in the country, with 100,000 members, within one week!

But the moment won’t last forever.  Shakespeare was right in Julius Caesar: there is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

According to Anne McElvoy’s unnamed Labour source (also in The Observer on April 2nd), the next election is currently shaping up to be a choice between “Tories being crap and Labour being a bit less crap”.  Working people deserve better than that.

Jeremy being the impetus for a new party, rooted in the organisations and communities of the working class, could provide a real alternative at the general election.