An encounter with the shy Bishop Taaffe
The pensions demo on 30 June was exciting enough, but I felt an extra thrill at the start in Lincoln’s Inn Fields when I spotted Peter Taaffe. There he was, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party! The "legendary Peter Taaffe", as his friend and disciple Derek Hatton said of him in his memoirs. Peter Taaffe, the main man responsible for the great victory of the Liverpool labour movement over Thatcher and the Tories in 1985. ( The one associated with the name of Derek Hatton and the image of a fleet of council-hired taxis dashing around Liverpool to deliver notices to council workers...