The Young Liberals actually walked out of the Broad Left around 1970 because they considered it too right-wing! These were the days when many Young Liberals called themselves “libertarian socialists”, and some were basically anarchists - or what Sue Slipman famously termed “anarcho-syndicalists”.

The Communists who pulled the strings in Broad Left were from the Euro-Communist wing of the CP (the sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants who had joined to fight Mosley). They were at daggers drawn with the more trade union based Stalinist old guard and uncomfortable with the anti-Semitism of the Soviet elite.

In reality, the CP element in Broad Left was well to the right of NOLS (National Organisation of Labour Students), leading to the eventual NOLS breakaway (of course, NOLS realised that without Militant getting in the way it was powerful enough to control the NUS on its own).

Some of those “libertarian socialists” are still in the Liberal Democrats, a few of them running councils. The craziness that was the 1970s Young Liberals is history.

It doesn’t undermine my basic argument though: that leftwing student politicians in the 70s are still replaying the battles they had in NUS politics.

The reason victims of crime get such paltry handouts from the state is that it is criminals, not the state, who cause their injuries.

Victims of miscarriages of justice, on the other hand, have incurred public disgrace, imprisonment and financial ruin as direct and reasonably foreseeable consequence of the state’s negligence and/or misfeasance. They are therefore entitled to the full tortious measure of damages (or should be).

Nicholas Van Hoogstraten would no doubt have his damages reduced for contributory negligence, if he had the cheek to sue in the first place.