Derek Hatton
Encyclopedia
Derek 'Degsy' Hatton is a broadcaster, businessman and after-dinner speaker. He won celebrity status as a local politician in Liverpool during the 1980s, where he was deputy leader of the city council, and a supporter of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency
.
from 1959 to 1964, having passed the 11 plus examination. His subsequent academic success was limited, but he enjoyed sports and appeared on stage as Gratiano in a school production of Merchant of Venice with the future theatre producer Bill Kenwright
.
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, somewhat reluctantly, joined the rate-capping rebellion
in 1985 under which the council refused to make a rate increase. In June, the council changed tactics and set an illegal "deficit budget" which committed the council to spend £30 million in excess of its income, claiming that the excess represented grant "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. 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 a lengthy trial he was exonerated.
, 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.
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. In the 1990s, he worked as Talk Radio
's morning phone-in presenter. In 1996, he was the subject of a BBC
documentary, My Brilliant Career.
In 2010, he appeared in Channel 4
's alternative election night special episode of Come Dine With Me
alongside Brian Paddick
, Edwina Currie
and Rod Liddle
.
Derek Hatton now works as a motivational speaker and is chairman of the new media company Rippleffect. His son Ben Hatton is its managing director.
in May 2007 that Hatton had recently rejoined the Labour Party and intended to seek selection as a parliamentary candidate in the North West. Hatton also said 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 his 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.
He appears to contradict this view when in an October 2008 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Hatton reveals that he has become a capitalist running a property company in Cyprus and drives a £60,000 Range Rover. He justifies his change in attitude as "My days in politics were a very long time ago and I lost interest in it after I was expelled from the city council."
Hatton gave another interview to the Liverpool Daily Post in December 2008 in which he stated that his previous claim to the paper that he wanted to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was a joke referencing his time holding this position - and the de facto leadership - in Liverpool City Council. However Hatton also said that his other statements had been meant seriously and that he would seek selection as a parliamentary Labour candidate for one of the Liverpool constituencies (or failing that, another North West constituency) at some point in the future and that he has had a strong ambition to be a Liverpool MP for several years. Hatton stated that he may challenge "one of the neo-Tory types currently representing Liverpool, like Maria Eagle
maybe".
Militant Tendency
The Militant tendency was an entrist group within the British Labour Party based around the Militant newspaper that was first published in 1964...
.
Early life
He attended Liverpool Institute for BoysLiverpool Institute for Boys
The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was an all-boys grammar school in the English port city of Liverpool.The school had its origins in 1825 but occupied different premises while the money was found to build a dedicated building on Mount Street. The Institute was first known as the...
from 1959 to 1964, having passed the 11 plus examination. His subsequent academic success was limited, but he enjoyed sports and appeared on stage as Gratiano in a school production of Merchant of Venice with the future theatre producer Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright CBE is a leading West End theatre producer and film producer.He is also the Chairman of Everton Football Club, an English professional football club from the city of Liverpool....
.
Political career
By then a firemanFireman
Fireman may refer to::* Firefighter, person who extinguishes fires and rescues people from harms way.* Fire Safety Officer, a senior ranking firefighter or Fire Safety Inspector in the UK...
by occupation, Hatton became a member of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and later the high-profile deputy leader of Liverpool City Council
Liverpool City Council
Liverpool City Council is the governing body for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. It consists of 90 councillors, three for each of the city's 30 wards. The council is currently controlled by the Labour Party and is led by Joe Anderson.-Domain:...
in 1983. Hatton was the most vocal, prominent member of the council's leadership and a member of Militant Tendency
Militant Tendency
The Militant tendency was an entrist group within the British Labour Party based around the Militant newspaper that was first published in 1964...
, a Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
organisation then pursuing entryist
Entryism
Entryism is a political tactic by which an organisation or state encourages its members or agents to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits, or take over entirely...
tactics within the Labour Party. The Leader of the council, John Hamilton
John Hamilton (Liverpool)
John Hamilton was a British politician. He was a member of the Labour Party and Leader of Liverpool City Council from 1983 to 1986.-Municipal life:...
, was a quietly spoken but much admired and passionate non-Militant socialist member, with great standing in the Liverpool party.
Hatton, somewhat reluctantly, joined the rate-capping rebellion
Rate-capping rebellion
The rate-capping rebellion was a campaign within English local councils in 1985 which aimed to force the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher to withdraw powers to restrict the spending of councils. The affected councils were almost all run by left-wing Labour Party leaderships...
in 1985 under which the council refused to make a rate increase. In June, the council changed tactics and set an illegal "deficit budget" which committed the council to spend £30 million in excess of its income, claiming that the excess represented grant "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
National Executive Committee
The National Executive Committee or NEC is the chief administrative body of the UK Labour Party. Its composition has changed over the years, and includes representatives of affiliated trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party and European Parliamentary Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties,...
of the party voted to expel Hatton by 12 votes to 6, the move being a policy aim of Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
and the reformers around him. 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.
Trial
In 1993 Hatton was accused of corruption during his time as deputy leader of Liverpool City CouncilLiverpool City Council
Liverpool City Council is the governing body for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. It consists of 90 councillors, three for each of the city's 30 wards. The council is currently controlled by the Labour Party and is led by Joe Anderson.-Domain:...
. After a lengthy trial he was exonerated.
Media career
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 YouHave I Got News for You
Have I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been broadcast since 1990, currently the BBC's longest-ever running television panel show...
, where he was given a particularly rough ride by regular panellist Paul Merton
Paul Merton
Paul Merton is a British comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Known for his improvisation skill, his humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and sometimes dark comedy...
, 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.
Hatton presented the lunchtime phone-in on 105.4 Century FM
105.4 Century FM
105.4 Real Radio is an independent local radio station controlled by GMG Radio. It is the flagship station of the Real Radio network and has a regional license to broadcast to North West England. The station was part of the Century Network for over ten years until it was rebranded in 2009.The...
when it launched in 1998, titled "The Degsy Debate". The BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
fly-on-the-wall documentary Trouble at the Top
Trouble at the Top
Trouble at the Top was a business-based BBC television fly on the wall documentary broadcast on BBC2.A spin off four-part series, Trouble at the Big Top, followed developments at the Millennium Dome in a similar style....
followed the station's launch, and Hatton's training. In the 1990s, he worked as Talk Radio
TalkSPORT
Talksport , owned by UTV radio, is one of the United Kingdom's three terrestrial analogue Independent National Radio broadcasters, offering a sports and talk radio service broadcast from London to the United Kingdom....
's morning phone-in presenter. In 1996, he was the subject of a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
documentary, My Brilliant Career.
In 2010, he appeared in Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
's alternative election night special episode of Come Dine With Me
Come Dine With Me
Come Dine With Me is a popular Channel 4 television programme shown in the United Kingdom, produced by Granada Television and first broadcast in January 2005. The show has either four or five amateur chefs competing against each other hosting a dinner party for the other contestants...
alongside Brian Paddick
Brian Paddick
Brian Leonard Paddick is a British politician, and was the Liberal Democrat candidate for the London mayoral election, 2008, coming third behind Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone...
, Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie
Edwina Jonesnée Cohen is a former British Member of Parliament. First elected as a Conservative Party MP in 1983, she was a Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over the controversy over salmonella in eggs...
and Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle
Roderick E. L. Liddle is an English print, radio, and television journalist.He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You , Love Will Destroy Everything , and co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain...
.
Derek Hatton now works as a motivational speaker and is chairman of the new media company Rippleffect. His son Ben Hatton is its managing director.
Political aspirations
It was reported in the Liverpool Daily PostLiverpool Daily Post
The Liverpool Daily Post is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Friday and is published in Merseyside, Cheshire, and North Wales editions, and is a morning paper...
in May 2007 that Hatton had recently rejoined the Labour Party and intended to seek selection as a parliamentary candidate in the North West. Hatton also said 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 his 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
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
", as Hatton puts it) and return to its traditional values.
He appears to contradict this view when in an October 2008 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Hatton reveals that he has become a capitalist running a property company in Cyprus and drives a £60,000 Range Rover. He justifies his change in attitude as "My days in politics were a very long time ago and I lost interest in it after I was expelled from the city council."
Hatton gave another interview to the Liverpool Daily Post in December 2008 in which he stated that his previous claim to the paper that he wanted to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was a joke referencing his time holding this position - and the de facto leadership - in Liverpool City Council. However Hatton also said that his other statements had been meant seriously and that he would seek selection as a parliamentary Labour candidate for one of the Liverpool constituencies (or failing that, another North West constituency) at some point in the future and that he has had a strong ambition to be a Liverpool MP for several years. Hatton stated that he may challenge "one of the neo-Tory types currently representing Liverpool, like Maria Eagle
Maria Eagle
Maria Eagle is a British solicitor and Labour Party politician. She is the Member of Parliament for Garston and Halewood, having been the MP for Liverpool Garston from 1997 to 2010....
maybe".