John McDonnell (politician) - Greater London Council

Greater London Council

In 1981, McDonnell was elected to the Greater London Council (GLC) as a member for Hayes and Harlington. He became the Chair of Finance, responsible for the Greater London Council's budget, and was Ken Livingstone's deputy leader. In an interview with Ronan Bennett for The Guardian newspaper, he described his role during this time as being "to translate policies into concrete realities on the ground." He further discussed his performance by indicating, "I was a fairly hard-nosed administrator. We set in train policies for which we were attacked from all sides but are now accepted as mainstream: large-scale investment in public services; raising the issue of Ireland and arguing for a dialogue for peace; equal opportunities; police accountability. We set up a women's committee, an ethnic minorities committee".

Livingstone removed McDonnell from the post of deputy leader in 1985, shortly after they came into conflict over the GLC's budget. Margaret Thatcher's government first cut central government funding to local government, and then introduced rate capping, preventing selected councils from raising local taxation beyond a set level as a means of reducing public spending. Encouraged by the success of the Liverpool City Council, which delayed issuing a budget in 1984 until the government agreed to restore some funding cuts, twelve Labour councils that had the cap imposed on them chose not to set a rate at all in the spring of 1985, demanding that the government lift the cap. The GLC also faced capping, and McDonnell headed a campaign amongst Labour members to adopt this strategy in response. Unlike the local councils, however, the GLC faced a legal obligation to set a rate by mid-March. McDonnell contended that accepting the cap would lead to a reduction in spending and prevent the GLC, which had already lost all of its funding from central government, from honoring the manifesto pledges Labour had been elected on in 1981.

In his book If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It, Livingstone outlines his belief that McDonnell presented exaggerated figures in order to support his proposal. Despite paying lip service to the campaign, the GLC set a legal rate on schedule, passed by moderate Labour councillors with the support of Conservative opposition members.