At the end of May 1983, less than two weeks before the June 9 General Election, the late Labour Party leader Michael Foot was at a rally at St George’s Hall to try to unite his divided party.

Behind the banner of ‘Think Positive, Act Positive, Vote Positive’, he shared a platform with National Union of Mineworkers’ leader Arthur Scargill, Left-wing Labour MP Bob Cryer, Pat Wall, a Militant Tendency supporter who went on to represent Bradford North, Tom Torney, MP for Bradford South, and prospective parliamentary candidates Martin Leathley and Max Madden – who won the Bradford West seat.

Those were the days when people turned out for political rallies. Foot, who led the party from November 1980 to October 1983, was in town to rally Labour Party members who were badly split, locally and nationally, between Left and Right.

It was after the Falklands War and before the year-long miners’ strike when the party was divided over nuclear weapons and membership of the European Economic Community, and felt deeply threatened by the newly-formed Social Democrat Party, which held part of its inaugural rally at St George’s Hall in October 1981.

Barry Seal, Labour’s Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire West at the time, was at St George’s in his capacity as a member of Foot’s General Election campaign committee, along with Barbara Castle.

He recalls: “The point of the rally was an attempt at conciliation between the leader of the party and Pat Wall, who was supported by Militant Tendency. There were quite a lot of nasty people at that meeting. It didn’t go down well with Michael.

“I went away with the impression that he felt he didn’t succeed; these people were going to go their own way. It was one of the biggest meetings that Labour had in Bradford; it was very Left-wing, too far Left for Michael.”

Nevertheless the Labour leader did his oratorical best to bring everybody together with a rousing speech on health, social welfare, unemployment and nuclear disarmament. Hecklers who called out on the subject of Militant Tendency and their attempt to de-select Bradford North Labour MP Ben Ford were ejected from the rally.

Barry says: “Michael was the kindest guy I knew, the kind of gentlemen you could trust; but he was hopeless as a leader and organiser. The organisation of the election campaign was a shambles."