Lesley Mahmood

Lesley Mahmood is an English politician. She was active in Militant Tendency and Liverpool politics along with her brother Roy Farrar in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mahmood was prominent in the Liverpool District Labour Party's campaign for more money for the city from the government of Margaret Thatcher, and was elected to the city council as part of the 'Liverpool 29' who replaced the 'Liverpool 47' when they were surcharged in 1986. [http://www.liverpool47.org/] She was also prominent in the campaign against the Poll Tax and was put forward to be the Labour candidate in the Liverpool Walton by-election caused by the death of Eric Heffer in 1991. Although she won a majority of 92 out of 140 Walton Labour Party members, once the union votes were counted, Peter Kilfoyle became the official Labour Party candidate.In the ensuing by-election, Kilfoyle, standing as the official Labour Party candidate, heavily defeated Lesley Mahmood standing as 'Walton Real Labour', although she did secure a creditable 2,613 votes in the teeth of an unprecedented campaign against her in the local and national press and media.

The Walton by-election was a big factor in the decision by Militant Tendency to leave the Labour Party, setting up first Militant Labour and then the Socialist Party of England and Wales [cf the papers on the debate within the Militant Tendency. For instance, see the opening remarks in [http://www.marxist.net/openturn/main/f3-2.html Marxism and the British Labour Party , For The Scottish Turn: Against Dogmatic Methods In Thought And Action] ] . Mahmood continued her activity in the Campaign Against Domestic Violence (CADV). [http://www.cadv.org.uk/]

She was later also active in support of the sacked Liverpool Dockers.She left the Socialist Party in 1998 in disputes over the Euro, trade unions, and the relevance of democratic centralism to modern socialist politics. She became a supporter of the Socialist Solidarity Network.

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