Anguish: ‘Severe Mental Pain’

Abstract

Abstract The right-winger who drove down the M6 from Blackpool following the 1980 Labour conference and who found himself thinking about what a new party might be called had, without having previously realized it, ‘resigned psychologically’ from the Labour party. He had taken no positive action, but an emotional tie had been broken. How many Labour MPs at the beginning of October 1980 were in a similar position, assuming already that sooner or later they would leave Labour and join some new political grouping? The short answer is: almost none. Probably the only ones who had already made the break in their own minds were the Jenkinsite MPs mentioned in Chapter 3, together with Richard Crawshaw, the moderate MP for Liverpool Toxteth. Few others, if any, had travelled that far—certainly not any of the Gang of Three. One reason was that the total rout of the right at Blackpool had come as a complete surprise as well as a shock, and it was going to take some time for its full implications to sink in. But a far more important reason was that most Labour MPs, however right wing, could hardly bring themselves to contemplate leaving the party they loved.