Tuesday immediately Neil Kinnock had launched his attack on Liverpool council, Eric Heffer, himself a Liverpool MP, responded. He said:
I WANT to say one or two words in relation to this afternoon. I think that it is important that should understand why we feel so strongly about the situation, and why I found it necessary after listening the leader of the party to walk off the platform.
I would like to tell you that I had absolutely no intention of doing that. I didn't know there was going to be that reference to Liverpool. listened, as I'm sure those of you who are delegates or saw it on television also ustened, witn very great interest ane I'm certain you would admit that the majority of the speech was one we could all agree with. In particular, when Neil spelled out once again the pledge of the party to get rid of nuclear weapons and nuclear bases, it semed to me that at least that aspect of our party policy was safe and we going forward with But I was absolutely horrified and stunned at the attack that he made on the Liverpool councillors. I tell you frankly there some supporters on the Liverpool council, there are some supporters of Militant in the party in Liverpool and in the various constituencies. But they don't happen to b the majority of the pary and they, like all the other members of the party i Liverpool, are carrying out the deci sions of the party which were decided at the municipal policy conference many years ago.
Do you know what the councillors have done? They have built, as I said in the housing debate, 3,800 houses in two years. More are going ahead. Three sports centres have been built by the Liverpool city council and they have done many, many other things.
They have done that in the face of real opposition by the government, under the penalty that the government are operating, and knowing that if they continued sooner or later they could well come into a confrontation with the government's policies That council was faced with the choice of either cutting the services to the people and jobs permanentl being made redundant - not the whole of the city workforce as a while meantime definitel trying get some money BrOT somewhere to solve the problem anc spotlighting the question. But there would have 7-8,000 workers permanently joining the ranks of the unemployed in the city.