PERHAPS it was an attempt to get the bad news out of the way, so that, by the end of Labour's conference this week in Blackpool, the announcement of the election of four hard-Left candidates to the party's national executive -- a result that had originally not been due until today -- might all be forgotten in a climax of stage-managed New Labour homage to Tony and Co.

But though they are old-style socialist dinosaurs, with as much electoral appeal as Arthur Scargill and the Flying Pickets, I am glad to see these "unreconstructed plonkers," as Mr Blair calls them (actually, he used a much more vulgar term), are still dreaming of a comeback.

To begin with, they remind us that in Labour's grassroots (where, for the lack of wine bars and trendy Conranesque restaurants, the party's Millbank manipulators are seldom likely to stray) the old cloth cap cult of the class war -- taxing the so-called rich and spending their money on projects for the people -- is far from dead.

It provides an ideal culture in which power-seeking unrepresentative Left-wingers -- such as banned parliamentary candidate, poll tax dodging barrister Liz Davies and Mark Davies, editor of Tribune, a Leftie magazine read (not) by zillions of ordinary people, both of whom are now on Labour's executive -- can thrive. And this is especially so when, as the low turn-out for these grassroots' elections for these NEC posts showed, the militants are ever ready to seize every opportunity.

At least we are warned that, for all Tony Blair's insistence that there will be no going back on New Labour modernisation, they are lurking in the background ready to do the opposite and put the clock back.

But, more than this, I welcome their existence for their refusal to follow the leadership's command or comply with its control freaks' attempts to massage Labour's image towards the Toryish fancies of Middle England -- when, in truth, the essence of New Labour is more that of bumptious, clever young people hooked on the drug of power, bossing people about and pretending that they are in tune with people who do get their hands dirty working for a living.

Bolshie and behind-the-times the militant Lefties may be, but thank heavens they are there to disabuse those basking in power of their certainty that they know what's best for us.

They have, after all, had a smooth ride so far.

But we'll see how cocksure and smart they are when they have a crisis or recession to contend with.

Meantime, keep up the healthy stirring, comrades.

After all, this is still a democracy -- though when this week at Blackpool climaxes with scenes worthy of a Nuremberg rally, it might seem that New Labour's chiefs have allowed their majority to let them forget it.

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