It's hard to decide what was the most unedifying aspect of last Saturday's short-lasting punch up between Mike Tyson and Julius Francis. It could have been the fact that an unrepentant rapist, misogynist and thug came out on top over someone who'd not exactly led a saintly life himself but was now trying to set a different sort of example to the kids who look up to him. Or it could have been the fact that our Labour Home Secretary bent over backwards to twist the rules to let Tyson in, just as he's bending over backwards to change the rules to keep more deserving cases out. Or then again it could have been the fact that Rupert Murdoch showed that when it comes to a choice between his born-again Christian ethics and the chance of some easy money, he goes for the quick profit every time.

If there had been any justice, Mike Tyson would have been on the receiving end of a good kicking. I'd have preferred a judicial kicking of the sort that kicked him out of the country and let a few rape-victim refugees in instead. But failing that (and despite my pacifist tendencies) I'd have settled for a 12-round kicking of the sort that ought to be stopped in the first round but isn't because the viewers on Sky Television are on pay-per-view and want their money's worth.

Instead, Tyson walks off with £5 million (Francis got just £375,000) and the memory of a bunch of idiots in Brixton celebrating his presence there because they think it matters more that he's a 'brother' than it does that he's a rapist.

Actually, it's worth pointing out that the media hype surrounding that infamous visit to Brixton disguised the fact that the 'crowds' who turned out to greet him were in reality never more than a few hundred strong. And even among them, I doubt that there were really very many who went along with the nonsense comparing Tyson's welcome to that accorded on previous occasions to Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali.

Mike Tyson might like to think of himself as a good brother to the black people of Brixton, but in his quiet moments surely even he cannot escape the realisation that his contribution to the cause of equality consists of raping a black teenager and then denouncing his female critics as 'desperate for a man' and his male critics as 'pussy-whipped'. Tyson's career self-destructed as the result of his own actions. This is a world apart from Ali, who danced like butterfly despite the racist weights upon his wings and was stripped of his title for refusing to fight in Vietnam because he had 'no quarrel with the Vietnamese people'.

These things do matter. They matter because of the effect they have on young men who look towards the likes of Tyson as would-be role models. And they matter because what the Tyson story tells them is that the best way out of poverty and oppression is by using what strength you have to get what you want -- and to give damn-all about who you happen to impoverish and oppress yourself if they get in your way.

Mohammed Ali once spoke of 'this nightmare image I always have -- like in the old days on the plantations, with two of us big black slaves fighting, almost on the verge of annihilating each other, while the masters are smoking big cigars and urging us on, looking for blood'. Ali fought the plantation masters' fight, but you always felt that he understand what he was doing -- and if he got the chance he'd make sure the plantation masters got a bloody nose too.

With Tyson, you get the impression that the masters would never have had to order him to fight. (This is a man, after all, who'll bite a brother's ear off as soon as look at him.) But, oh, how you wish when you see that majestic, muscular, almost-unstoppable punching machine in full flow -- how you wish that once, just once, he'd punch the plantation masters of today rather than the soft targets that he's always chosen outside of the boxing ring.

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The deed is done. A cross against the name of Ken Livingstone, a man whose most effective recruiting sergeants during the hustings for Labour's London mayoral candidate have been Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and poor old Frank Dobson himself. I don't know about the rest of you, but the socialist deep inside of me baulked at the attempt to rig, railroad and otherwise render any principled notion of internal party democracy worthless. Every time Tony hollered 'Get serious!', the more I resolved that this was precisely what must be done. Too much needless damage has already been done by the control-freak tendency to the Labour party in Wales, Scotland and now London. It's time we told them: No more.