#OTD 1981. Labour unemployment rally in Birmingham as the Benn Healey nears its conclusion
Foot intervenes as Healey is heckled with chants of "Tory, Tory, Tory"
Roy Hattersley writes of "the orgy of intolerance" witnessed on TV which "must have cost Labour a million votes"
Tony Benn began the rally with an 'enthusiastic' reception at Aston Hall Park:
“The Labour Party speaks for Britain and the working class. It’s a broad part appealing to millions and millions of people. Which is why we are under attack by the press”
When Healey spoke, one minute in, he began to be heckled with chants of “Tory, Tory, Tory!”
Foot took the microphone and declared the hecklers “a disgrace to the Labour Movement”
Healey grabbed it back:
“When people watch these disgraceful scenes they will cast their votes for freedom and free speech in even greater numbers”
Thought to be supporters of Militant, the IRA and the Revolutionary Communist Party, Michael Foot criticised it as ‘a planned piece of hooliganism’
Foot added that they were a disgrace to the "traditions of free speech for which the Labour movement has always stood"
“Every enemy of Labour could sneer or gloat. Here was the wicked caricature of Labour which our bitterest enemies, old and new, would love to present as the true portrait”
Foot concluded that “the presentation was made not hy the press lords, not by the media, but by ourselves”
Tony Benn refused to take the bait, telling journalists "how do you know they were my supporters?"
Denis Healey added to the controversy when he accused Jon Lansman – on ITV Weekend World – of orchestrating the protest.
Lansman had been in Italy on holiday and demanded an immediate apology. By 6pm Healey was forced to backtrack.
Benn added: “The theory that I am commanding an army under instructions is totally wrong”.
Roy Hattersley took to the Daily Mirror to urge the party to ‘Stop the Mobsters’:
“Of course most of the howling mob were not real Labour supporters”
Hattersley added
“They were infiltrators from the fanatic fringes: cuckoo’s in our nest who parasite on our party because they know that if they fought under their true colours they could never be elected to anything”
“But to our shame we have only just begun to turn on them with the fury they deserve”
“They have no place even on the fringes of a decent democratic party”
*Benn Healey contest
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