In 1981, a year after the election of Michael Foot as party leader, and with the Thatcherite project in full flow, Tony Benn ran for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Foot’s ascent to leader had already provoked a right-wing split by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and Benn’s candidacy drew considerable opposition from Labour’s establishment — fearful it would mark a decisive shift to the left.

In the end, Benn’s narrow defeat — he lost by less than one percent to Denis Healey — was to represent a high watermark for the left in Labour for generations, not surpassed until the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2015.

One of those involved in both events was Jon Lansman, a prominent member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) in the early eighties who worked on Tony Benn’s campaign, and now a founder and chair of Momentum, the pro-Corbyn pressure group on the Labour left.