Jeremy Stangroom

I was involved in a protest to shut down a talk by this guy -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carlisle_(British_politician) … - at @unisouthampton. It was the wrong thing to do.

It was really just an exercise in power. Tory govt with huge majority meant we on the Left were reduced to rather pathetic gesture politics.

Big CND marches made you feel good, you got a sense of your own efficacy, but it was a sense of efficacy routed in confirmation bias.

You didn't have to think about the 70% of the population that thought you were bonkers, because they were clearly fascists and bigots.

And then, of course, elections came along, and not surprisingly you got annihilated. 1983 was a terrible result for the Left in the UK.

Anyway, by the mid-1980s, Neil Kinnock et al had had enough of this nonsense, and thankfully began to remold the Labour Party.

And sure, it became something different, no longer a party of the Left, but at least it could begin to take on Thatcherism in arenas...