London's political 'Loony Left'

London's political 'Loony Left'
While academics have depicted the era as of the "new urban left" (such as with the rate-capping rebellion) as a throwback to earlier municipal militancyand poplarism, but wider media coverage tended to focus on the personalities of city leaders such as the Greater London Council's Ken Livingstone and Liverpool's Derek Hatton. The Lambeth Borough leader 'Red' Ted night is often regarded as there spiritual founder. The Conservative Party and the popular tabloid press habitual mocked them and the GLC as part of a anti-Labour Party campaign run by the Conservatives (AKA- The Tories). Labour had got a firm controle of Greater London and Liverpool, which it ran as de facto quasi indipendent states through out the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The press accounts about the wider use of the nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, White Sheep", renaming manhole covers, and "black bin-liner bags" were urban myths caused by outright fabrications by the gutter press. The reports that London councils had insisted that homosexuals be placed at the heads of the waiting lists for council housing and that London councils had spent £0.5 millions on "24 super-loos for gypsies" were found to be highly misleading upon investigation by the Media Research Group of Goldsmiths' College, University of London.

The 'Loony Left' were Labour councilors, party associations and MPs who were considered to be-
 * Irrationally obsessed with minority and fringe issues,
 * Paranoid about racial and sexual "problems" that are wholly imaginary on their parts and that have no real existence (see- Baa, Baa, White Sheep).
 * Anti-Thacherite.

The accused councils

 * 1) Merseyside (Hard left)
 * 2) Liverpool (crooks/anti-Thacherite)
 * 3) South Yorkshire (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 4) West Yorkshire (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 5) Doncater (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 6) Slough (anti-Thacherite)
 * 7) Reading (anti-Thacherite)
 * 8) Oxford (anti-Thacherite)
 * 9) Sandwell (Hard left)
 * 10) Duley (anti-Thacherite)
 * 11) West Midlands (anti-Thacherite)
 * 12) Strathclyde (Hard left/quasi communist/anti-Thacherite)
 * 13) GLC/ILEA (Hard left)
 * 14) Basildon (Hard left/quasi communist)
 * 15) North Tyneside (Hard left)
 * 16) Newcastl upon Tyne (Hard left)
 * 17) Geatshead (Hard left)
 * 18) Suderland (Hard left)
 * 19) Teeside (anti-Thacherite)
 * 20) Humberside (anti-Thacherite)
 * 21) Kingston upon Hull (anti-Thacherite)
 * 22) Thamesdown (Hard left)
 * 23) Leicester (Asian Left)
 * 24) Glasgow (Hard left/quasi communist/anti-English/anti-Thacherite)
 * 25) Greater Manchester (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 26) Sefton (anti-Thacherite)
 * 27) Bristol (anti-Thacherite)
 * 28) Lewisham (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 29) Haringey (Loony Left/nti-Thacherite)
 * 30) Newham (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 31) Sheffield (Hard left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 32) Tower Hamlets (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 33) Hackney (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 34) Southwark (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 35) Islington (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 36) Camden (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 37) Greenwich (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 38) Lambeth (Loony Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 39) Coventry (Hard Left/anti-Thacherite)
 * 40) Birmingham (anti-Thacherite)

The "Baa, Baa, White sheep" issue


The 1986 incident concerned the suposed possible ( and false ) coded racist meaning behind the nersary rhyme, which was originally made hundred of years ago  to mock a medieval wool tax. The original story reported a Parent/Teacher Association (PTA) ban at Beevers Nursery, a privately run nursery school in the borough of Hackney. The loony Left Hackney council then offered them offical support and thought they were ideologically right.

It was originally reported by Bill Akass, then a journalist at the Daily Star newspaper, in the 15 February 1986 edition under the headline "Now it's Baa Baa Blank Sheep". Bill Akass had heard of a ban issued, by nursery school staff, on the singing of the nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", on the grounds that it was racist and portrayed black sheep (allegedly code fore Blacks ) as subservient to the people (allegedly code for the mostly  White  general public). The press then entered a political feeding frenzy for literally  anything  they could find that was a anti-Labour/left-wing in nature,  most of which was false! 

In a unrelated incident at about this time, Brent Council also chose to appoint race-relations advisers to schools and Ealing offered the local gay community 'gay only' days at council run swimming pools and sports centrrese even though the gays said they did not want or need it.

Her are some Baa, Baa, Black sheep variations.

Also see
[[London's