As a young teenager in the early 1980s, I remember chatting to someone involved with the Labour Party hard left. He was of the firm view that the Metropolitan Police should be wound up. While I don’t recall this position being particularly mainstream, the policy of the hard-left administration on the Greater London Council at the time was certainly that police officers should become local authority employees. Yes, they were planning to defund the police nearly 40 years ago. The Brixton riots of 1981 had been sparked by aggressive policing of young black men and officious use of stop and search. In an era of recession, high unemployment and social tension, we saw a huge ideological rift between the Thatcher government (which stood for authoritarian law and order policies) and leftists of various persuasions who flew the red flag over town halls from Sheffield and Liverpool to Brent, Haringey and Lambeth. The London politics of the era were shaped by figures such as John McD
Phil Woodford co-hosts Colourful Radio's weekly news review show from London. He previously stood on two occasions as a Labour Parliamentary candidate.