Given that the UK Labour Party has just elected a new leader that the media continues to describe as ‘Left-wing’, it seems timely to re-visit the media coverage of the Labour Party’s ‘Left wing’ back in the 1980s.

In those days the tabloid media summed up their disdain for the Left by the creation and repeated use of the label ‘Loony Left’. Prominent members of this group were given their own labels such as “Red Ken” (Ken Livingstone, Leader of the Greater London Council), “Barmy Bernie” (Bernie Grant, Leader of Haringey Council) and “Red Pete, the Gay Rights Campaigner” (Peter Tatchell, Labour candidate in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election).

One of the reasons the ‘Loony Left’ were despised was because they openly supported LGBT rights. The Sunday Express cartoon above demonstrates this particularly clearly. Unsurprisingly, The Sun newspaper was a major cheerleader for the homophobia squad. In 1984, when Conservative-controlled Rugby Council declared that they would actively discriminate against queer people, The Sun called them “this brave little town” and urged everyone to follow their example.

In 1986, when Manchester Chief Constable James Anderton declared that people with AIDS were, “swimming around in a cesspool of their own making”, The Sun proclaimed:

“What Britain needs is more men like Anderton – and fewer gay terrorists holding the decent members of society to ransom.”

When Peter Tatchell stood as democratically-selected Labour candidate in the London Borough of Bermondsey, the media had a field day. According to the Daily Express, Tatchell’s candidacy sounded the death knell for the leadership of Labour Leader Michael Foot.

Interestingly, Michael Foot was considered to be a ‘Left-wing Labour leader’ at that time.