Regular readers will know that we are big fans of Millenium Elephant. Today he has turned his attention to former Communist and authoritarian poster-boy John Reid, and relates the anecdote that:

A story that appears in BOTH papers – so no doubt it is one he is PARTICULARLY proud of – is the one about how he was in the bar at the Labour Conference in 1983 and when someone suggested that the party was split by the strife between the Marxists and the non-Marxists he quickly put them right:

"We are the Judean People's Party and the People's Party of Judea are SPLITTERS!" he said.

Such was the laughter that Mr Kinnock himself came down to the bar to appoint Dr John special advisor on the spot. The Labour never looked back and only fourteen short years later that decision PAID OFF!

All this talk of splitters puts me in mind of an article in the Independent from 2004, written by Francis Beckett. Prompted by a letter from Jack Straw where he took the paper to task for call him an "old Trot" (He was "taught to spot a Trot at 50 yards in 1965 by Mr Bert Ramelson", apparently), Beckett neatly summarises the Hard Left past of many of the New Labour elite. Except, of course, Anthony Charles Linton Blair:

HOW RED IS THE LABOUR PARTY?
Old Trots and old Stalinists now glower at each other across the Cabinet table, where they feel at home because Blairism demands the religious loyalty they are used to. They include:

THE STALINIST WING

Jack Straw
Former Broad Left president of the NUS; branded "a troublemaker" by the Foreign Office when, on an NUS trip to Chile, his "childish politicking" aimed at embarrassing his right-wing opponents, was "nearly disastrous" for Anglo-Chilean relations.

Charles Clarke
Former Broad Left president of NUS; led demonstrations for higher student grants, and was, he admits, "a strong opponent of the foreign policy of the USA".

John Reid
Former Communist and researcher for the Scottish Union of Students. Claimed he joined the CP because it was the only non-Trotskyist political group on campus when he was an undergraduate student at Stirling University.

Peter Mandelson
Former Communist and chairman of the British Youth Council. Led a BYC delegation to Cuba in the 1970s.

Trevor Phillips
Former Broad Left president of NUS, led sit-ins, went to Cuba with Mandelson's delegation.

Alan Johnson
Says he was close to the Communist Party in his youth, and gets agitated if you suggest he might have been a Trot.

THE TROTSKYITE WING

Gordon Brown
Showed political colours by choosing to do his PhD thesis on James Maxton, the leader of the rebel Independent Labour Party in the 1920s and 1930s. The ILP was accused by Stalin of being a Trotskyist front.

Alan Milburn
Before joining Labour Party in 1983, Milburn was the manager of a socialist bookshop in Newcastle, and a CND activist, described, by Roy Hattersley, as "incapable of writing an election manifesto without drawing the battle lines of the philosophical struggle".

Paul Boateng
Former left-wing rebel. Once called on Labour Party to "have the guts to support workers who have the guts to fight Thatcher".

Denis MacShane
Former left-wing NUJ leader, arrested on picket lines in the 1970s, once alongside Arthur Scargill. Led the NUJ's biggest strike.

David Blunkett
Former leader of Sheffield City Council, which was known as "the socialist republic of South Yorkshire".

Margaret Hodge
Former leader of Islington Council where she had a bust of Lenin installed in the town hall. During her tenure, it became known as the "Socialist Republic of north London".

NEITHER ... NOR ...

Tony Blair, Prime Minister
Not known to have believed in anything when young, except God.