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NEW ERA FOR LONDON AFTER GLA ELECTIONS?

• Time for the electorate to send London's Red Brigade a 'no thank you' message by voting Red Ken Livingstone out of office!

Red Ken Livingstone has tried to neutralise the controversy after allegations that his most senior aides have been members of a Trotskyite faction that plotted to turn London into a “socialist city state”. This latest development in 'Red' Ken's career is a virtual throw back to the Socialist Republics of Weimar Germany which led the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The Red Brigade advisers, who include the mayor’s chief of staff and his principal 'economic' adviser, have refused to say whether they remain members of the secretive group Socialist Action, whose members allegedly greet each other using codenames: Red 1, Red 2, Red 3....

Livingstone also faced distrubing claims that his aides breached the Greater London Authority’s codes of conduct by engaging in election fundraising while continuing to draw public salaries. The latest damning allegations of Marxist infiltration at City Hall have embarrassed Livingstone in his campaign for a third term, running on a moderate, pro-business platform.

The hidden lives of the mayor’s aides were revealed by Atma Singh, who until recently was the mayor’s senior adviser on Asian issues. Singh claims Simon Fletcher, Livingstone’s £100,000-a-year chief of staff, John Ross, the economic adviser, and Redmond O’Neill, the deputy chief of staff, as well as Mark Watts, the green adviser, and Jude Woodward, the culture adviser, were all members of Socialist Action/Red Brigade.

Singh says O’Neill went by the pseudonym of “Lark”, Woodward was “Lee”, while another Socialist Action member, Anne Kane, who has worked as a consultant to Livingstone, was known as “Swift”.

Singh, 47, himself a 'former' Socialist Action member operating under the name “Chan”, said that until 2000 they used to meet in the upstairs room of the Cedar Room pub in Islington and a down-at-heel printer’s shop in Hackney. But after Livingstone’s election, with so many getting jobs in the mayor’s Red “cabinet”, the faction began holding meetings in the GLA’s offices in scenes reminiscent of the Weimar Republic.

Singh said: “Socialist Action believed themselves to be the inheritors of the Fourth International - an International Marxist Group seen as the true inheritors of Trotsky’s political vision. They believed that Britain needed a workers’ revolution.”

However, Singh said the group changed its tactics in the late 1990s: “Socialist Action decided to operate as an ‘entryist’ organisation. One of their key objectives was to put their own people in positions of responsibility in other organisations.” A classic case of infiltration by stealth.

He went on to explain how this marginal group came to form a close relationship with the future mayor. “Ken Livingstone wanted political power. Socialist Action organised his campaigns successfully and dealt with spin. Livingstone was never a member of SA but he was close to the group - almost like the leader,” Singh claimed.

After the 2000 election, members of Socialist Action were rewarded with well-paid jobs in City Hall. Singh said: “The Socialist Action meetings continued while advisers were in office, until at least 2001 - that’s the last one I attended. Members discussed everything from politics in the Balkans to whether the congestion charge in London should be set at £6 or £5.”

But as well as debating routine policy issues, the aides dreamt of creating a socialist state. “They regularly returned to the theme of ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’: essentially, that London should be a city state and a beacon for socialism. They saw themselves as holders of political power in London.”

Singh says the mayor’s link-up with Venezuela’s left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, was driven by his Socialist Action advisers. The controversial barter deal means Venezuela provides cheap fuel for London buses in return for Livingstone sending a team of consultants to South America to advise on recycling and public transport. The international brotherhood together in a united front but do the British people really want 'their' ca[ital city to become a Marxist utopia?

The Greater London Authority elections on 1st May, will provide the people of Greater London, the majority of whom do not support Red Ken and his extremist Marxist hidden agenda, a chance to return the Capital into the hands of safer, saner pro-British candidates from the Conservatives and the BNP.

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