In 1981, the historian Eric Hobsbawm, a communist for more than half a century who could hardly be suspected of pandering to social-democratic revisionism, warned against the excessive idealisation of rank-and-file activities. He argued against the belief that the Labour Party could be captured by ‘a smallish minority’ without reference to the masses outside of it. He warned against the illusion that ‘organisation can replace politics’, the expectation that the ‘old calls for socialism’ would have ‘the same resonance as in the past’, the idea that ‘all that stands between us and the next Labour government is a good Left-wing programme’.