I started work in City Hall in July 2001 as a policy adviser on Asian Affairs for Ken Livingstone. I had previously worked on his 2000 campaign and even entered Romney House on the Sunday after his election with his team. Norman Foster’s Greater London Assembly (GLA) building had not been even been built.

I was introduced to Ken Livingstone years earlier in the 1990s through involvement with the Anti-Racist Alliance (ARA). I worked on the GLA executive and about three months after the ARA had started in November 1991. I was involved in left-wing politics and respected him as a prominent figure on the left of the Labour party. I had come to know many of those who now make up his most trusted advisers years earlier through a Trotskyite group called Socialist Action. I joined in 1981.

Socialist Action believed themselves to be the inheritors of the Fourth International — a Marxist group seen as the true inheritors of Trotsky’s political vision. Essentially, they believed they were working towards a global revolution. Their support of Hugo Chavez today reflects these earlier political beliefs. The Venezuelan president’s stated aims of establishing a workers’ state chime with Socialist Action’s own objectives in the 1990s and early 2000s of advancing global revolution.

They believed Britain needed a workers’ revolution and hoped to foment anti-state forces. In the early days, they held rallies and marches and published pamphlets in the hopes of mobilising a political alliance with forces of international socialists.

Socialist Action’s leaders were John Ross, who has acted as economics adviser to Ken Livingstone for many years, and Redmond O’Neill, his deputy chief of staff. Other members of the group included Anne Kane, who has undertaken consultancy work for the mayor, and Simon Fletcher, the mayor’s chief of staff, who was always on the periphery.

We would meet in pubs and community centres around London, although the hub was in Shacklewell Lane in Hackney, where Lithoprint printed Socialist Action’s monthly magazine and other pamphlets.

In the late 1990s, Socialist Action decided to operate as an entryist organisation so at meetings and rallies we would use code-names. I was called Chan.

One of their key objectives was to put “their” people in positions of responsibility in other organisations. I suppose they wanted to ensure they would not be marginalised and would always be tapped in to left-wing politics. In the last 20 years they have had members working for the National Assembly Against Racism, the National Abortion Campaign, Labour CND, NUS Black Students Campaign, Stop The War and even at one time Sinn Fein.

But those jobs have often been given at the expense of others who actually understand the issues better. It is a trend which I have observed continuing to the present day at the heart of the mayor’s office.

This is typical of the behaviour of many Marxist organisations and after a while I began to feel it wasn’t right especially when it came to Asian affairs. They always wanted to impose their own views and positions on what I was going on behalf of my community. I officially left Socialist Action in 1994; I wrote to Redmond O’Neill at the time to explain that I no longer wanted to be considered a member. Socialist Action didn’t understand the basic principles of black politics, which has to begin with respect and honesty and a willingness to promote black people as political figures.

Despite this rift I continued working closely with SA members, and even carried on paying a small subscription into the group’s bank account until 2004.

In the mid-1990s Socialist Action became very loyal to Ken Livingstone. I think that Ken Livingstone ultimately wanted political power so he didn’t object to Socialist Action pursuing their agenda as long as this coincided with him having an increase in power. They organised his campaigns successfully and deal with spin. Ken Livingstone was never a member of SA but he was close to the group. Almost like the leader – certainly the most prominent politician that the group is associated with.

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