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The Labour Party could split with the radical left leaving to form their own party, a veteran MP has warned.

Ronnie Campbell said left-wing MPs and activists could give up on Labour if those opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, who he described as behaving “like wild animals”, succeed in forcing their leader out.

Mr Campbell, MP for Blyth Valley, was speaking as he celebrated a remarkable anniversary.

He spent 29 years down the pit before becoming an MP - and now he’s spent 29 years in the House of Commons, after being elected on June 11, 1987.

Mr Campbell said the left had agreed to support former Labour leader Tony Blair’s government even though they disagreed with many of the things it did. But now Labour right-wingers were refusing to show the same respect to Mr Corbyn.

“We were told, don’t rock the boat, don’t say anything.

“And we didn’t. The left was very quiet when Blair came in.

“These lot, with Jeremy Corbyn, they are like wild animals some of them. They’re just the opposite.”

He added: “They only want a broad church if they are in charge. That’s the problem with a lot of Members of Parliament. They want you out if you are not of their way of thinking.”

Mr Campbell pointed out that the party split once before, in 1981, when senior figures on the right of the party left to form the SDP.

“There could be a split in the future. We did it before.

“This time it could be actually the radical left that leaves. If Corbyn gets kicked in the teeth, you might see a lot of left people saying ‘that’s it’.”

Asked whether the public would vote for a radical left-wing party, he said they had not so far been given the opportunity.

“What we haven’t seen from Jeremy Corbyn is policy. And I think when we see some of the radical policies that he could put forward then I think the working side of the country could vote for them.”

Many Labour MPs were simply unwilling to accept that different points of view could exist within the party, he said.

“The party is either a broad church or it’s not.

“It was always accepted that there were left wingers - Michael Foot or Tony Benn.

“But now, it doesn’t seem to be tolerated. The attitude is that if you are on the left of the party you shouldn’t be in this party.”

Mr Campbell was on the left of the party back when he became an MP, but he said Labour had changed enormously since then.

He said: “The Commons hasn’t changed that much. But I think the people change.

“When I came in here the first thing I had to do was join the miner’s group. The miners’ group had 29 members, and you had to be a miner to get into it. Now there’s about three of us.”

Today’s Labour MPs tend to be university graduates, he said

“I hear some of them and I begin to wonder what they are half the time.

“I think I’m still a socialist but I think I’m way out here. I’m in the wrong party.

“Some of them could be equally at home with the Tories.”

He added: “There’s not enough left-wingers coming forward.”

The MP, who is 72, has not confirmed whether he intends to stand again at the next general election.

He became a miner at the age of 15, and was reluctantly drawn into politics after becoming involved in a dispute.

“I left school at 15 and I went down the pit.

“When I got my first pay, I went down the bicycle shop in Blyth and bought myself a racing bike.”

He stood up for local miners at the age of 21 when a number of smaller pits were closed and trained staff were moved to the larger pit to work on the coalface - potentially robbing other workers of the chance to be trained and move on to higher-paid work.

“They pushed me forward to be the spokesman. I was the yappy one.

“We won our case. We got trained and we got parity.”