On 1 October 1985, the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, launched a blistering attack on the far-left Militant tendency during a landmark speech at his party’s annual conference in Bournemouth.

Kinnock famously excoriated Militant for causing “grotesque chaos” in its management of Liverpool City Council – “a Labour council”. He referred to “tendency tacticians” and “gesture-generals”.

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At the time of Kinnock’s address, a series of left-wing Labour councils were engaged in a high-profile dispute over budget cuts imposed by the Thatcher government. Liverpool City Council, controlled by the Militant tendency, issued 31,000 redundancy notices to its own workers, using a fleet of taxis to deliver them. Militant described the move as a “tactic” to buy time.

The most memorable passage of Kinnock’s speech directly condemned this action.

The Labour leader declared: “I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions.

“They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”

He added: “I am telling you, no matter how entertaining, how fulfilling to short- term egos – I’m telling you, and you’ll listen – you can’t play politics with people’s jobs, and with people’s services or with their homes…

“Understand that, please, comrades. In your socialism, in your commitment to those people, understand it. The people will not, cannot, abide posturing. They cannot respect the gesture-generals or the tendency-tacticians.”

He quoted Aneurin Bevan, declaring that the victory of socialism did not have to be complete to be convincing. “There are some who will say that power and principle are somehow in conflict”, he declared.

“Those people who think that power and principle are in conflict only demonstrate the superficiality, the shallowness, of their own socialist convictions”.

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The speech was met with both heckles from Militant-aligned delegates and loud applause – resulting in a uniquely tense atmosphere.

Eric Heffer, a Liverpool MP and prominent left-wing figure, stormed off the conference stage in protest. Derek Hatton, deputy leader of Liverpool council, repeatedly shouted “lies” at Kinnock.

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Kinnock’s address is today remembered as the beginning of a leadership crackdown on the Trotskyist group – and a moment of immense oratory.

Militant had previously been found to contravene the Labour Party’s constitution. In June 1986, Hatton was expelled from Labour.

The speech set about establishing Kinnock’s authority over a divided party. In retrospect, it has been seen as a clear signal of Labour’s newfound commitment to electability – a process later continued and consolidated by John Smith and Tony Blair, who succeeded Kinnock as party leaders.