KEN LIVINGSTONE is embroiled in fresh controversy after allegations that his most senior aides have been members of a Trotskyite faction that plotted to turn London into a “socialist city state”.

The advisers, who include the mayor’s chief of staff and his principal economic adviser, have refused to say whether they remain members of the secretive group Socialist Action, whose members greet each other using codenames.

Livingstone also faced claims that his aides breached the Greater London Authority’s codes of conduct by engaging in election fundraising while continuing to draw public salaries.

The allegations of Marxist infiltration at City Hall will embarrass Livingstone as he begins his campaign for a third term, running on a moderate, pro-business platform. He faces challenges from Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate, and Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat contender, in the May election.

The hidden lives of the mayor’s aides are revealed by Atma Singh, who until recently was the mayor’s senior adviser on Asian issues. Singh claims Simon Fletcher, Livingstone’s £100,000-a-year chief of staff, John Ross, the economic adviser, and Redmond O’Neill, the deputy chief of staff, as well as Mark Watts, the green adviser, and Jude Woodward, the culture adviser, were all members of Socialist Action.

He says O’Neill went by the pseudonym of “Lark”, Woodward was “Lee”, while another Socialist Action member, Anne Kane, who has worked as a consultant to Livingstone, was known as “Swift”.

Singh, 47, himself a former Socialist Action member operating under the name “Chan”, said that until 2000 they used to meet in the upstairs room of the Cedar Room pub in Islington and a down-at-heel printer’s shop in Hackney. But after Livingstone’s election, with so many getting jobs in the mayor’s “cabinet”, the faction began holding meetings in the GLA’s offices.

Singh said: “Socialist Action believed themselves to be the inheritors of the Fourth International - an International Marxist Group seen as the true inheritors of Trotsky’s political vision. They believed that Britain needed a workers’ revolution.”

However, Singh said the group changed its tactics in the late 1990s: “Socialist Action decided to operate as an ‘entryist’ organisation. One of their key objectives was to put their own people in positions of responsibility in other organisations.”

He went on to explain how this marginal group came to form a close relationship with the future mayor. “Ken Livingstone wanted political power. Socialist Action organised his campaigns successfully and dealt with spin. Livingstone was never a member of SA but he was close to the group - almost like the leader,” Singh claimed.

After the 2000 election, members of Socialist Action were rewarded with well-paid jobs in City Hall. Singh said: “The Socialist Action meetings continued while advisers were in office, until at least 2001 - that’s the last one I attended. Members discussed everything from politics in the Balkans to whether the congestion charge in London should be set at £6 or £5.”

But as well as debating routine policy issues, the aides dreamt of creating a socialist state. “They regularly returned to the theme of ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’: essentially, that London should be a city state and a beacon for socialism. They saw themselves as holders of political power in London.”

Singh, who makes further claims about Livingstone’s regime in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary tomorrow, says the mayor’s link-up with Venezuela’s left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, was driven by his Socialist Action advisers. The controversial barter deal means Venezuela provides cheap fuel for London buses in return for Livingstone sending a team of consultants to South America to advise on recycling and public transport.

Singh, who earned £41,000 a year in his GLA post, claims the management style of the clique surrounding Livingstone also owes much to Trotskyite training - even if they abandoned their ideological purity. “They are driven by a desire to maintain as much political power as possible,” he said, “through control of London’s finances, control over the staff who run London and the removal of opposition.”

The London officials named by Singh have all refused to say whether they are still members of Socialist Action. One, Mark Watts, told Dispatches that to ask about his political affiliations was a witch-hunt.

Singh claims his career and health suffered after a series of rows with Livingstone’s inner circle and that he was bullied out of his job.

A spokeswoman for the authority refused to comment on Socialist Action but said: “Atma Singh was removed from his job in the GLA for failure to discharge his duties, most seriously in failures to meet requests for assistance from the Metropolitan police antiterrorism unit in early 2005 and to contact the GLA during the terrorist attacks on London on 7 and 21 July. This person is an embittered ex-employee.”

Read Atmah Singh's full article on Ken Livingstone

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