Derek Hatton - Political Career

Political Career

Afterwards a fireman by occupation, Hatton became a member of the Labour Party and later the high-profile Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council in 1983. Hatton was the most vocal and prominent member of the Council's leadership and a member of Militant Tendency, a Trotskyist organisation then pursuing entry tactics within the Labour Party. The Leader of the Council, John Hamilton, was a quietly-spoken and much admired Liverpudlian local politician and was held in great stead by the Labour Liverpool Party, but was ineffectual in curbing Militant tendencies.

Hatton joined the rate-capping rebellion in 1985 under which the Council refused to make a rate increase. In June, the Council changed tactics and set an illegal "deficit budget" which committed the Council to spend £30 million in excess of its income, claiming that the excess represented grant "stolen" by central government. Once adopted by the Liverpool District Labour Party and a broad coalition of 49 Councillors on the Liverpool City Council (reduced to 47 by the deaths of two Councillors), this policy catapulted Hatton and the City Council into massive media attention and conflict with the then-Conservative Government.

Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party in 1986 for belonging to Militant, which Hatton argued was a legitimate Marxist tendency within the Labour Party, but the National Executive Committee of the Party voted to expel Hatton by 12 votes to 6, the move being a policy aim of Neil Kinnock. Hatton claims that the faults of his time in office were the result of the policy of the Thatcher Government, and that the UK Labour Party should have supported the Council's demand for the "return" of the £30 million "stolen" from the Council as a result of unfairly reduced government rate support grants for Liverpool.

In 1993 Hatton was accused of corruption during his time as Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council. After a lengthy trial he was found innocent.