History of the British Labour Party

This article examines the East London-based Institute of Community Studies, and its founder, Michael Young, to show that sociology and social research offered avenues for left-wing political expression in the 1950s. Young, who had previously been Head of the Labour Party Research Department during the Attlee government, drew upon existing currents of psychological and sociological research to emphasize the continuing relevance of the extended family in industrial society and to offer a model of socialist citizenship, solidarity and mutual support not tied to productive work. Young and his colleagues at the Institute of Community Studies promoted the supportive kinship networks of the urban working class, and an idealized conception of the relationships between women, to suggest that family had been overlooked by the left and should be reclaimed as a progressive force. The article shows that the Institute’s sociological work was informed by a pre-existing concern with family as a model for cooperative socialism, and suggests that sociology and social research should be seen as important sources of political commentary for scholars of post-war politics.

Were women agents of their own political emancipation or did politicians preemptively grant rights to them in a bid for electoral success? This article claims that both electoral politics and the ordinary strategies of women’s movements explain the timing of female suffrage. Drawing on archival evidence from the United Kingdom, I show how in an electoral environment where the incumbent Liberals saw disadvantage to reform, an enterprising group of Liberal suffragists formed a pact with the Labour party, trading economic resources for the party’s promise to push for suffrage reform. The Election Fighting Fund, as the pact was called, was key to securing women’s place in the 1918 Representation of the People Act. In raising the possibility that ordinary instead of revolutionary tactics proved key to voting rights reform, women emerge as an interesting new case for the study of democratization.

Si la recherche dans les domaines institutionnel, juridique ou économique de l'évolution des Communautés européennes est abondante, force est de constater que les "Europe que dessinent les partis politiques" ne sont que très peu étudiées. Cet ouvrage se veut donc une contribution à l'étude des acteurs politiques face à la Communauté européenne et à leurs jeux d'influences réciproques. L'analyse offre, dans une perspective historique, un tableau de l'évolution du mouvement socialiste en Europe occidentale depuis 1945 et des rapports complexes de la social-démocratie à la construction européenne. Tant il est vrai qu'au-delà de leur internationalisme proclamé, le champ d'action privilégié des partis socialistes, au cours du vingtième siècle, a été l'espace national. L'édification des différents modèles d'Etat-providence s'est réalisée à cette échelle et les rapports de forces sur lesquels se sont appuyés les partis socialistes étaient également nationaux. Dans ces conditions, l'édification de la Communauté européenne s'est posée comme un défi.



A partir d'un examen minutieux des partis socialistes belge, français et du parti travailliste britannique, l'auteur examine, dans une approche comparative, les différences d'attitudes des socialistes face à la construction européenne, l'évolution des points de vue et les enjeux contemporains du positionnement des socialistes face à l'Union européenne.

Article published in the Western Mail 09/10/15 as part of Welsh History Month

Abstract:

When asked to name a notable Welsh
politician who has had significant
impact beyond Wales, most will turn to
the two great orators, David Lloyd George and
Aneurin Bevan; Lloyd George’s place secured
by his wartime premiership and role in laying
the early foundations of the welfare state and
Bevan for creating its longest-lasting achievement,
the NHS. Roy Jenkins is unlikely to be
the first name that comes to mind.

Examines the extent and geographical spread of the entry of women into local government leadership (as mayors and alderman) in boroughs in the period 1918-39, with particular focus on the 30+ Liberals. The article analyses the social, economic and political profile of these pioneers and the obstacles that prevented a larger number of women from achieving leadership roles in this period.

2018 Note then original Summary

Martin Kemp
‘The Left and the Debate over Labour Party Policy, 1943-50’
PhD Thesis, submitted 1985
Explanatory Note, 2018
By the time I had completed this thesis I had a ticket booked for newly independent Zimbabwe, where I immersed myself in the study of African history – the subject I was to teach for the following two years in a ‘high density suburb’ of the capital, Harare. I had no headspace to respond to an enquiry from an Oxford publisher about preparing the thesis for publication. When, years later, I googled the title, I was pleasantly surprised to find Stephen Brooke, in the bibliographical essay that appended his 1995 book Reform and Reconstruction: Britain After the War 1945-51, describing the work as ‘important but regrettably unpublished.’ 
Many years have passed since, and it may well be of little interest today. Still, when I recently re-read the thesis, it seemed to me to have some interest given recent developments in Labour Party politics in the UK. The prevailing assumptions of British history in the 1980s were those with which the post-war generation had been raised. The ‘social problem’ had been solved. It was no longer meaningful to worry about the destructive, wasteful or socially divisive nature of capitalism, as developments in economic theory had transformed the prospects for a managed, socially inclusive, mixed economy. Those who were regarded as having been sceptical or reluctant to accept the new truths were dismissed as dinosaurs. History being on the side of the ‘revisionists’, the ‘Left’ were regarded askance in works such as Ben Pimlott’s Labour and the Left in the 1930s and Paul Addison’s The Road to 1945.
Yet, even while I was studying Labour and the Left in the 1940s, these assumptions were themselves already becoming history. This was the time of the defeat of the miners’ strike, a most dispiriting moment, and of Thatcherism and the wholesale rejection of Keynesian notions of economic management. The Left of the Labour Party attempted to construct a socialist alternative, but their ideas were denounced as extremist by the media, and defeated by a ‘centrist’ leadership which ultimately, in the absence of any more creative vision, embraced neo-liberalism and privatisation itself as the basis on which to reduce poverty and sustain public services. As we now emerge from the Blair years, amazed and heartened by the upsurge of radical energy that found its expression in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, we witness another exciting attempt to challenge the thinking behind austerity. And to transform the party from an efficient electoral machine into a real movement of people and ideas. The era when progressives had to channel their energies into a range of single issue campaigns may be over. Ultimately, the Baloghs, Coles and Kaleckis may have more to say about the future than the Durbins and the Croslands.
The Left in the 1940s was stricken by the split between Labour and Communist Parties. The group I was interested in could be characterised, I felt, as opportunists in the best sense of the word, seeking to maximise the potential at any one time, given the international situation, the state of the economy and above all the public’s openness to radical ideas. It allowed them a flexibility and creativity that seemed denied the leaderships of the two main parties on the Left, neither of whom trusted or respected them.
I have reproduced the text exactly as it was submitted in 1985, except in one or two sentences which were really too ugly to allow through. For the most part this has been done by scanning each page onto a computer. It seems that the computer could read English and reproduce it in editable form, but that it had no idea of page set-up. I am not happy at the result –  and apologise to readers who will quickly realise what I’m referring to – but not having the time to re-type the entire thesis, this will have to do.

Summary.
This dissertation traces the intellectual and political development of Labour's Left-wing during the 1940s, concentrating on the groups which produced the Tribune and the New Statesman.
The first section considers the 1930s. to 'establish the essential background to later debates, and to clarify the character of long-standing divisions in the Labour Party. The period 1939 to 1942 is considered briefly in the Prologue, on the basis that it constitutes an exceptional period for left-wing politics in Britain.
The end of 1942 is the point at which an
analysis of the Left's politics is resumed in more details. The Left's part in the discussion of post¬war reconstruction plans and future economic' policy is examined. Another chapter looks at the political atmosphere in the decade's middle years, and the state of relations between the Left and the rest of the Party and, briefly, in contrast', the outlook of Labour's Right wing. The Left's view of foreign affairs forms another part, and the last chapter dealing with this period examines the left's analysis of Government economic policy, both domestically and in relation to the outside world.
The last section of the thesis, covering 1948-50, is divided into two chapters. The first relates the political situation, foreign affairs and economic developments to the shifting aspirations of the Labour Left. The final chapter considers the role of the debate on Labour's future direction in the divisions that beset the Party from 1951.

While the turbulent history of the Labour Party in the 1980s and 90s has been subject to a great deal of scholarly attention, the factional fragmentation of the Labour left from 1985 to 1994 has thus far received little in-depth study beyond partisan accounts or teleological narratives of ideological ‘modernisation’. This thesis seeks to fill this significant gap in Labour’s historiography through a detailed study of the so-called ‘realignment of the left’, the difficult process through which the left split between its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factions, the former remaining loyal to the radical left-wing policies of Tony Benn, and the latter becoming supporters of Neil Kinnock’s leadership. Through a consideration of published and archival primary sources, along with oral histories from key Labour politicians, this thesis firstly demonstrates how the realignment was far from a linear process of right-ward ideological ‘modernisation’ but was instead chronologically complex and deeply protracted. Secondly, studies of Kinnock’s leadership during key moments of conflict with the left will demonstrate the centrality of institutional factors rather than ideological or electoral concerns in shaping Labour’s ideological change. Finally, the thesis challenges popular mythologies around the the role of the ‘soft left’ as a political faction, arguing that rather than being a coherent or uniform ideology it was instead a label ascribed to a diverse collection of individuals who shared a common political style but lacked a developed programme or factional leader. These conclusions will supplement wider interpretations both of Labour’s ideological change during this period and the exact nature and role of some of its leading political actors.

This article looks at Neil Kinnock's appearances in Labour's 1987 election broadcast and the promotional video for Tracey Ullman's My Guy in 1984, in order to evaluate the relationship between political communication and popular culture. After the first British television broadcasts, television moved from a means of observing politics and politicians to an active agent and participant in politics. In the 1980s this relationship became more complex: it was politicians and politics that became participants in television. New media technology helped the televising of Parliament and new current affairs broadcasting formats to extend the opportunities for political communication through television. Engagement with television, and popular culture more generally, had a specific pull for Labour under Kinnock as the party strove to engage with first time voters without alienating their traditional voters. Discussion of politics and popular culture in the 1980s generally takes place around issues of party policy on the media industry or censorship, of promotional culture configured as PR or spin, or of the artificiality of politicians engagement with youth culture at events like Red Wedge. Instead this article argues for the importance of understanding politicians engagement with television through the lens of changing broadcast cultures and technologies, rather than as illustrative of traditional political communication.

After the British-Soviet occupation of Iran during the Second World War, Iran became the key battleground for the international labour movement. The plight of the workers had become an important political issue with the Iranian government in conflict with the socialist Tudeh party for leadership over the trade unions. The Labour government in Britain was also deeply interested in the matter but regarded the Tudeh as too dangerous and too aligned with the Soviet Union to be supported. Within this climate, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) made an official visit to Iran. With its international delegates, they represented different views over the Tudeh, which caused much conflict during the visit. This article sheds crucial light on this important visit and reveals how international the Labour questions were in Iran and how the WFTU visit brought the various tensions to light. This research will also show how the timing of the visit may have impacted on the removal of the Iranian strong-man Ahmad Qavam by the end of 1947. This work is of particular significance as it looks at the previously understudied role and interest of the British government on the Iranian labour.

The disaffiliation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) from the Labour Party in 1932 has been characterized in ways that make the decision almost inexplicable. This dominant view can be challenged by reconstructing the differing reasons for that decision. By stressing the importance of the increasingly troubled relationship between the ILP and the larger organization, and especially the role of the dispute over the standing orders of
the parliamentary Labour Party, one strand of ILP thinking is revealed. By showing the tensions between this and other arguments for political separation, which stressed the
need for a new and revolutionary political strategy, a nuanced explanation is provided for the disaffiliation decision.

Until the restoration of democracy in 1974 Greek historiography had shown minimal interest in the study of the 1940s. The post-civil war political climate - for Greece the 1950s and 1960s were a period of conservatism, nationalist paroxysm and communist phobia - the inaccessibility of source materials and the emotionally charged nature of the events in the 1940s impeded scholarly investigation. Attempts to examine the `troubled decade' thoroughly and objectively remained difficult, and few in number, and official explanations went mostly unchallenged. Since the early 1970s, however, a number of scholars, both in Greece and abroad, have studied the records in the British and American state archives and ably documented and analyzed many important aspects of the period: the military and political character of the resistance movement; the role played by Britain and the United States; the policies of the Greek governments, the establishment of the parakratos - a power apparatus independent of the constitutional authorities - and the phenomenon of the `white terror'; the aims and tactics of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), its internal divisions and its relations with the other communist parties in the Balkans; the attitude of the Soviet Union.1 Within this general and even detailed knowledge there is, however, an area that has not hitherto received the attention it has deserved. This concerns the response of the British Labour movement to the Labour government's policy in Greece from 1945 until the end of the civil war in 1949. What follows is an attempt to analyze that response, to relate it to contemporary attitudes and concerns, and to assess the impact Cold War developments in the early postwar years had on critics of Labour's foreign policy both in Parliament and the trade union movement.

Conflicts of legitimacy within the labour movement have repeatedly raised the issue of who can claim to speak on behalf of labour organisations and working-class people. This volume brings together historical and contemporary perspectives on the study of the British labour movement, from the point of view of the tensions that have, time and again, challenged it, if not fractured it, from the inside. The study of labour organisations as such has sometimes been discarded as too institutional. Yet the editors of this volume believe that the turn towards a ‘new labour history’ in the 1960s-1970s and a ‘global labour history’ since the 2000s, far from making the study of organisations outdated, has continuously generated, and will continue to generate, innovative research on ‘old’ topics such as: the Labour Party, the CPGB, the trade-unions, the cooperative movement, the friendly societies, etc. The focus on internal dissensions is a particularly enticing avenue of investigation, precluding any celebration of a linear and consensual ‘forward march of Labour’. The ‘disputed legitimacies’ evoked in the title of the volume are analysed on three different levels: the level of intra-organisational tensions (i.e. tensions specific to each type of organisation); the level of inter-organisational tensions (i.e. tensions between different types of organisations); and the level of tensions between labour organisations and spontaneous working-class protests, and, more recently new social movements, where new modes of organising may emerge. The distinction between these three levels is seldom so clear-cut, and there is a need to emphasise the intricacies and complexities of such situations. This volume therefore seeks to identify more clearly and under new angles long-term convergences and divergences in terms of both organisational structures and decision-making processes.

Zygielbojm is one of the key figures of Jewish resistance to Shoah – a representative of the Jews in the US and then the UK, who fought against the indifference of the western world in fate of total annihilation of the Jews in Europe. His suicide in April 1943 has become a symbol of a struggle that cannot be won. YIVO archive holds a large collection correspondence of Zygielbojm – his private letters and official ones as well. They all tell the story of his public activity during the Second World War. Is that narration different than the official one we know? What new information can we get from it? Was the decision to commit suicide motivated by personal reasons or was it a political act? What is also very interesting – is it a proper way to analyze a person’s biography through such a radical act?

Abstract:
Despite the Anglo-Hungarian Trade and Cultural Exchange
Agreement having been signed in 1955, following the Hungarian
Revolt of 1956 the bilateral relations once again sank to a low ebb. The
Intelligence Department of the Hungarian Ministry of Internal Affairs
then launched a campaign for the persuasion of those British trade union
leaders who positioned themselves left from the centre of the Labour
Party in order to reach the acceptance of the Kádár regime. The endeavour
aimed at finding an ally in order to break out from the diplomatic isolation
provided Labour would form the government after the general election
of 1959. The London residency sought the contribution of the honorary
president and the general secretary of the Association of Supervisory
Staffs, Executives and Technicians (ASSET) but to no avail.

This article examines the Labour Party’s attitude to the finance of the British rearmament programme in the later 1930s, principally with reference to debates in the House of Commons. It is suggested that the party’s opposition to the National Government’s borrowing for rearmament was strongly influenced by continuing bitterness over the political crisis of 1931; and that focussing criticism on the economic aspects of the rearmament programme helped Labour to mask its divisions over the validity of rearmament itself. Labour politicians’ varying reactions to John Maynard Keynes’s arguments in favour of defence borrowing are explored; as is the party’s attitude to, and impact upon, Neville Chamberlain’s 1937 proposals for a ‘National Defence Contribution’. Moreover, it is argued that, as the political situation in Europe deteriorated, Labour’s policies were influenced further in the direction of central planning and ‘conscription of wealth’, as an alternative to borrowing, which was alleged to be inflationary. Finally, it is suggested the party’s attitude to these questions is illustrative of the way in which economic ideas in the public sphere are inevitably conditioned by the political interests of the politicians who promote them.

Une focale territoriale sur la spécificité britannique dans l'ensemble européen occidental traité par le livre "Le travail en Europe occidentale des années 1830 aux années 1930, Mains-d'oeuvre artisanale et industrielle, pratiques et questions sociales" coordonné par Fabien Knittel, Nadège Mariotti et Pascal Raggi. Synthèse publiée par Ellipses en vue du CAPES abordant l'historiographie, la périodisation, le contexte économique, politique, international, social, le mouvement ouvrier et ses multiples formes. Liste des co-auteurs: 

ISBN : 9782340042070

This book describes how, after the Second World War, the Labour Party assumed leadership of the International Socialist Movement, thanks to the achievements of the Attlee Government. International Secretary Denis Healey guided the reconstruction of the Socialist International through the early Cold War, making the British vision for socialist internationalism prevail over the French and Belgian. At first, the provisional Socialist International (International Socialist Conference and Comisco) supported cohabitation with pro-communist socialists and the USSR, but with the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe it committed to militant anti-communism. Ambiguity between the Labour Party and Labour Government influenced British policy in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy and Poland, while the characterization and stereotypes of Eastern and Southern Europe shaped the language and actions of the British. Furthermore, the book shows how international contacts and the British and Swedish model encouraged the transition of socialist parties to responsible government parties fully embracing Western democracy and prepared the ideological revision of the 1950s.

The Labour Government's decision to withdraw from Britain's overseas bases east of Suez in the 1960s had profound repercussions for British grand strategy. One of the last colonies to be evacuated was the port town of Aden, located on the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula. First seized by the East India Company on behalf of the British Empire in 1839, it became a Crown Colony almost a century later in 1937. By 1963, the British government had presided over Aden's entry into the fledgling Federation of South Arabia, a transitional body that was envisaged as a vehicle for independence. Drawing on the Labour's Party's archives, amongst a range of other sources, this article examines the shift in policy within the Labour government on the issue of Aden. It makes the case that, in contrast to the Conservative government's wholehearted support for Britain's tribal allies in South Arabia, Labour hedged its bets by balancing its policy off between the tribal rulers and the new radical nationalist opposition. By refusing to back the fledgling Federation government, Labour, instead, adopted a non-committal stance that would lead to greater strategic inertia in its policy towards the Middle East during the Cold War.

New Labour claimed to be the pioneering political party for Britain at the frontier of the twenty-first century. With a brand-new image, policy platforms and a charismatic leader in Tony Blair they won a landslide victory and the New Labour engine was maintained for three terms in office. But was New Labour really a novel entity? Or was it something more derivative. This paper finds that though New Labour successfully used new media and journalistic expertise in a new and interesting way, the bulk of their party image and their ideology was that of old stock, be it from Clinton, Thatcher, or the 'old' Labour endeavors.

This biography of Lord Tom Sawyer recaptures the former Labour Party General Secretary's role as one of the main architects in Labour's modernisation in the 1980s and 1990s. From his positions as the Deputy General Secretary of NUPE and Unison, alongside his longrunning membership of Labour's NEC, and his later work as General Secretary, Sawyer engineered the Party's Policy Review, Inquiry into the Militant Tendency in Liverpool, and Partnership in Power. These projects greatly contributed towards the election of a Labour Government in 1997. This work, published by Teesside University utilises Sawyer's previously untapped Archive and Diaries to reclaim his prominent role in the rise of New Labour. The work was published in June 2017 alongside an exhibition on Sawyer's life held at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

A microscopic study of Liberal-Labour relations in the era of the secret Macdonald-Gladstone Pact in Burnley, Stockport and Warrington. It shows different political cultures meant different type of relationships and a great deal of party competition. It helps to reveal much about the confused relationship between Liberals and Labour on the eve of World War I.