Derek Hatton
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Derek Hatton (born 17 January 1948 in Liverpool) is a broadcaster, businessman and after-dinner speaker. He won celebrity as a local politician in Liverpool during the 1980s.
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[edit] Life and career
He attended Liverpool Institute for Boys from 1959 to 1964, having passed the 11 plus examination. His academic success was subsequently limited, but he enjoyed sports and appeared on stage as Gratiano in the school play, Merchant of Venice with the future theatre producer Bill Kenwright.[1]
By then 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, prominent member of the council's leadership and a member of Militant tendency, a Trotskyist organisation then pursuing entryist tactics within the Labour Party. The Leader of the council, John Hamilton, was a quietly spoken but much admired and passionate non-Militant socialist member, with great standing in the Liverpool party.
Hatton championed the Militant tendency policy that the council should declare an illegal "deficit budget" and claim back £30 million "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 media attention and conflict with the Conservative led central government.
Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party in 1986 for belonging to the Militant tendency, which Hatton argued was a legitimate Marxist organisation 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 and the reformers around him. [2] Hatton claims that the faults and disasters of his time in office were the result of the policy of the Thatcher government, and that the Kinnock-led national 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.
After his expulsion from the party, Hatton pursued a career in the media, presenting a show on radio station Talk Sport, and appearing on such television programmes as Have I Got News For You, where he was given a particularly rough ride by regular panellist Paul Merton, who mocked his apparent aspiration to be a comedian. Hatton even began modelling menswear; he had worked in a men's tailoring shop as a teenager, and was famous during his time as a politician for his well-tailored suits. [3]
Hatton presented the lunchtime phone-in on 105.4 Century FM when it launched in 1998, titled "The Degsy Debate". The BBC2 fly-on-the-wall documentary Trouble at the Top followed the station's launch, and Hatton's training.
Hatton claimed that he was the inspiration for the character of Michael Murray (Robert Lindsay) in the acclaimed Alan Bleasdale television drama G.B.H., broadcast by Channel 4 in 1991. [4] In the 1990s, he worked as Talk Radio's morning phone-in presenter [5]. In 1996, he was the subject of a BBC documentary, My Brilliant Career. [6]
Derek Hatton now works as a motivational speaker [7] and is chairman of the new media company Rippleffect. His son Ben Hatton is its managing director.
It was reported in the Liverpool Daily Post in May 2007 that Hatton has stated that he has recently rejoined the Labour Party and that he intends to seek selection as a parliamentary candidate in the North West. Hatton also says that his ambition is to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and that he would run for the office in the summer in the unlikely event of him being able to enter parliament via a by-election. Hatton made clear that he is no longer a Trotskyist, but maintains that he remains firmly on the left of the party, expressing his belief that Labour has to abandon 'New Labour' ideology (or "neo-Tory", as Hatton puts it) and return to its traditional values.
[edit] References and sources
- Michael Crick The March of Militant, London: Faber, 2nd edition 1986. ISBN 0571146430
- ^ Derek Hatton Inside Left: The Story so Far [auto-biography], London: Bloomsbury, 1988. ISBN 0747501858
- ^ BBC News "On this day: 12 June 1986"
- ^ Regional politics in the Thatcher Era
- ^ IMDb entry for G.B.H.
- ^ Now You're Talking speakers profile
- ^ BFI entry for My Brilliant Career
- ^ Absolute Speakers profile
