In 1981, the LCC supported the campaign of Tony Benn against Denis Healey for the deputy leadership of the party, but many were deeply unhappy with Benn's campaign and approach and the LCC began to evolve into a body aiming to rescue the party from the mess it found itself in as the SDP split and Benn's campaign imprinted an image of extremism in the minds of the voters.
In 1983, the LCC organised a conference, After the Landslide, to examine the lessons from the party's catastrophic defeat of that year: the tone the conference set, that organisational and political modernisation and change were essential, was to become the dominant theme in the party's internal life in the following decade.
Cherie Booth was also an active member, serving on the LCC executive.
Under Neil Kinnock's leadership the LCC became fully engaged in the struggle against Militant and the LCC was broadly supportive of the leadership, though it backed John Prescott's unsuccessful 1988 challenge to deputy leader Roy Hattersley.
The defeat of Militant left the group without a real cause and membership began to decline, although it sponsored the launch of a new discussion journal, Renewal, in 1993 and firmly repositioned itself as a group of modernisers rather than on the soft left.