John Mutton
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John Roderick Mutton (b. 20 September 1947) is the current Labour group leader and Leader of the Opposition on Coventry City Council, and a former Lord Mayor of Coventry. He lives with his wife Marilyn, known as Mal.
He was elected to Coventry City Council in 1984 for the Binley and Willenhall ward. At that time he was a member of the Militant Tendency, which was carrying out an entry tactic inside the Labour Party. Binley and Willenhall was their strongest area in Coventry, it lay within the constituency of their MP Dave Nellist, and it included the Willenhall housing estate, a rather bleak post-war housing estate on the edge of the city, quite similar to the sort of areas in Glasgow where Scottish Militant Labour had some electoral success in the early 1990s. Mutton was responsible for getting the then Leader of Council Peter Lister deselected and replacing him.
He only became eligible to stand for the council when shortly before this he was sacked for assaulting his foreman when working as a bin man. Rather ironically, Peter Lister had been the chair of the council tribunal which rejected his appeal against sacking. Although, as one member of the Binley and Willenhall Labour Party commented at the time, he believed that Mutton had really been sacked for his union activity, since if they sacked somebody every time there was a fight in the council bin department they would not have much of a workforce left.
When Militant split from the Labour Party around 1990, their councillors in Coventry stayed with the Labour Party.
