Chapter One
1. H. Pelling, The Origins of the Labour Party (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 225. William Gladstone was a Liberal leader and Prime Minister who carried out a popular reforming agenda.
2. Cited in G. Elton and B. Elton, ‘England, Arise!’: A Study of the Pioneering Days of the Labour Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1931), p. 177.
3. J. Schneer, Labour’s Conscience: The Labour Left, 1945–51 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 4.
4. What Socialism Is, Fabian Tract No. 13 (London, 1890).
5. Keir Hardie and Richard Bell, the first Labour MPs in Parliament.
6. Labour Leader, 8 February 1907.
7. C. Collette, For Labour and for Women: The Women’s Labour League, 1906–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), p.19.
8. G.D.H. Cole, The British Working Class Movement 1787–1947 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1952), p. 321.
9. G.D.H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement: 1900–1937 (London: Routledge 2002), p. 70.
10. The Great Unrest involved mass strikes by miners, dockworkers, transport workers and workers in many other industries.
11. G.D.H. Cole, The World of Labour (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), p. 38.
12. B. Holman, Keir Hardie: Labour’s Greatest Hero? (Oxford: Lion Books, 2010) pp. 167–8.
13. Holman, Keir Hardie, p. 168.
14. A. Leventhal, Arthur Henderson (Lives of the Left) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 8.
15. Leventhal, Arthur Henderson, pp. 8–9.
16. Cited in Leventhal, Arthur Henderson, p. 42.
17. R. Groves, The Strange Case of Victor Grayson (London: Pluto Press, 1975), pp. 66–9.
18. Grayson mysteriously disappeared in 1920 leaving nothing but rumours about his fate.
19. Quoted in Cole, Short History of the British Working Class Movement, p. 117.
20. Cole, Short History of the British Working Class Movement, p. 118.
21. Unsurprisingly as Blatchford and Hyndman had combined their socialism with a particularly nationalist viewpoint, both supporting the war against Prussian militarism while ignoring their own country’s particularly militaristic position.
22. Cited in R.E. Dowse, Left in the Centre (London: Longmans, 1966), p. 20.
23. Dowse, Left in the Centre, p. 22.
24. Daily Chronicle, 14 September 1914. MacDonald’s attitude was not unrepresentative of the mainstream view of the labour movement, which was opposed to conscription but in favour of voluntary patriotic efforts to win the war.
25. E. Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice (London: Odhams Press, 1955), p. 115.
26. Henderson went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934.
27. S. White, ‘Soviets in Britain: The Leeds Convention of 1917’, International Review of Social History, 19:2, 1974, p. 168.
28. 209 delegates from Trades Councils and local labour parties and 294 delegates from the ILP, among others.
29. Dowse, Left in the Centre, p. 29.
30. ‘Distribution and exchange’ were added in the late 1920s.
31. T. Nairn, ‘The Nature of the Labour Party, Part 1’, New Left Review, I/27, September–October 1964.
32. P. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London: Palgrave, 1987), p. 202.
33. R. Crossman, Introduction to Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Fontana, 1963), p. 42.
34. Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, p. 62.
35. Cited in M. Shipway, Anti-Parliamentary Communism: The Movement for Workers’ Councils in Britain, 1917–45 (New York: Springer, 2016), p. 70.
36. J. Schneer, George Lansbury (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 60.
37. Though as Maxton argued at the 1919 ILP conference: ‘Shinwell, so far from being an inciting factor in the whole of the forty-hour movement, was there all the time as a restraining element among the strikers.’ ILP Conference Report, 1919, p. 72.
38. Also known as Black Friday, when miners had their wages reduced by the mine owners. Their union’s alliance with rail and transport unions should have triggered solidarity action to help the miners get their wages back. But the rail and transport unions did not take action, leaving the miners isolated and defeated. The wage reductions were a huge social blow to the often impoverished mining communities across the country. Black Friday was a profoundly demoralising experience for trade unionists as their organisations rejected a path of solidarity, undermining the entire basis of trade unionism.
39. F. McLynn, The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution (London: The Bodley Head, 2012), p. 371.
40. Cited in Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, p. 95.
41. F. Brockway, Inside the Left (Nottingham: Spokesman, 2010), p.220.
42. P. Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism, and the British Left, 1881–1924 (Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 1998), p.193.
43. Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 95–6.
44. J.N. Evans, Great Figures in the Labour Movement (London: Pergamon, 1966), p. 109.
45. Cited in Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem (London: Abacus, 1996), p. 124.
46. A.J. Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem, p. 125.
47. P. Snowden, An Autobiography (London: I. Nicholson and Watson, 1988), p. 596.
48. Brockway, Inside the Left, p. 148.
49. Cited in J. McNair, James Maxton: The Beloved Rebel (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955), p. 187.
50. Brockway, Inside the Left, p. 198.
51. R. Arnott, The Miners: A Year of Struggle (London: Allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 430.
52. Cited in N. Bevan, In Place of Fear (London: William Heinemann, 1952), p. 41.
53. Bevan, In Place of Fear, pp. 20–1.
54. A quote from the Prussian Minister Von Puttkamer in the 1870s.
55. K. Laybourn, The Great Strike of 1926 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1993), p. 4.
56. Laybourn, The Great Strike of 1926, p. 71.
57. J. Paton, Turn Left! (London, M. Secker & Warburg, Ltd., 1936), p.245.
58. Bevan, In Place of Fear, pp. 17 and 25.
59. Bevan, In Place of Fear, p. 25.
60. MacDiarmid cited in C. Ferrell and D. MacNeil, Writing the 1926 General Strike (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p.126
61. Dowse, Left in the Centre, pp. 128–9.
62. K. Laybourn, The Rise of Labour: The British Labour Party 1890–1979 (London: Edward Arnold, 1988), pp. 54–5.
63. A.F. Havinghurst, Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979), p. 201.
64. Cited in Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, p. 153.
65. M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain (London: New Park, 1975), p. 180.
66. Woodhouse and Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism, p. 188.
67. Bevin is recorded as saying ‘I believe that even in our own country there will have to be the shedding of blood to attain the freedom we require.’ A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin: Trade Union Leader, 1881–1940 (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 75.
68. The government severely curtailed the rights of trade unions and forced them to alter their funding for the Labour Party – a direct attack on both the workers’ industrial struggle and their political representation. A similar scale of interference by a Tory government in the political representation of workers would not occur until the proposed Trade Union Act in 2015–16.
69. W. Knox, James Maxton (Lives of the Left) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), pp. 72–3.
70. W. Kenefick, Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872–1932 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p.200.
71. Knox, James Maxton, p. 75.
Chapter Two
1. Knox, James Maxton, p. 84.
2. I.S. Wood, John Wheatley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 181.
3. New Leader, 14 August 1931.
4. Cited in Wood, John Wheatley, p. 187.
5. N. Riddell, Labour in Crisis: The Second Labour Government 1929–1931 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p.160.
6. A. Morgan, J. Ramsay MacDonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 187.
7. Morgan, J. Ramsay MacDonald, p. 187.
8. R. Pearce, Attlee (London: Routledge 2014), p. 47.
9. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement: 1900–1937, p. 73.
10. C. Attlee, As It Happened: The Autobiography of Clement R. Attlee (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p. 4.
11. J. Lee, Great Journey (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), pp.108–9.
12. J. H. Brookshire, Clement Attlee (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 57.
13. G. Elliott, Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Death of Labour England? (London: Verso, 1993), p. 47.
14. Brockway, Inside the Left, p. 238.
15. R.K. Middlemass, The Clydesiders (London: Hutchinson, 1965), Chapter 12.
16. J. Lee, My Life with Nye (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1980), p. 67.
17. P. Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 64–5.
18. Party of Marxist Unification, led by Andreas Nin.
19. Several ILP members were killed in the fighting. Bob Smillie, a youth leader in the ILP, died suspiciously in a Republican prison in Spain in 1937. Arthur Chambers died fighting alongside an anarchist unit the same year. In all, 13 of the ILP volunteers were wounded or hospitalised. From ‘The ILP and the Spanish Civil War’, at www.independentlabour.org.uk.
20. Cited in R. Vickers, The Labour Party and the World: Evolution of Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1900–51, Volume 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 99.
21. M. Foot, ‘Credo of the Labour Left’, New Left Review, 49, May–June, 1968, p. 20.
22. Political Quarterly, July–September, 1932.
23. B. Betts, ‘Youth and Peace’, Socialist Leaguer, No. 5, October–November, 1934.
24. Labour Party Conference Report, 1934, p. 159.
25. Labour Party Conference Report, 1933.
26. G. Bennett, The Concept of Empire: Burke to Attlee, 1774–1947 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953), p. 406.
27. M. Bor, The Socialist League in the 1930s (London: Athena Press, 2005), p. 288.
28. Bor, The Socialist League in the 1930s, pp. 290–305.
29. M. Worley, Labour Inside the Gate: A History of the British Labour Party Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. 158.
30. B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 41–2.
31. Leo Panitch gives a slightly unwieldy definition of corporatism as ‘a political structure within advanced capitalism which integrates organised socio-economic producer groups through a system of representation and cooperative mutual interaction at the leadership level and mobilization and social control at the mass level’. ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’, New Left Review, I/125, January–February, 1981, pp. 21–44.
32. Scheer, Lansbury, pp. 65–6.
33. G. Foote, The Labour Party’s Political Thought (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 181.
34. D. Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 36.
35. Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism, p. 34.
36. Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism, p. 35.
37. P. Corthorn, In the Shadow of the Dictators: The British Left in the 1930s (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), p. 41.
38. L. Davies, Through the Looking Glass (London: Verso, 1996), p. 191.
39. Cited in Corthorn, In the Shadow of the Dictators, p. 46.
40. K. Martin, Harold Laski (1893–1958): A Biographical Memoir (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953), pp. 105–6.
41. T. Buchanan, The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 204.
42. Cited in B. Pimlott (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918–40, 1945–60 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 229.
43. B. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 181.
44. H. Dalton, Memoir: The Fateful Years – 1931–1945 (London: Muller, 1957), p. 130.
45. J.T. Murphy, New Horizons (London: John Lane, 1941), p. 321.
46. R. Groves, ‘The Socialist League’, Revolutionary History, 1, 1988.
47. Brockway, Inside the Left, pp. 269–70.
48. Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism, pp. 187–8.
49. A point made by Tawney in 1931, quoted in R. Harrison, ‘Labour Government: Then and Now’, Political Quarterly, 41:11, 1970, p.78.
50. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton, p. 229.
51. Schneer, George Lansbury, p. 174.
52. Cited in K. Laybourn, A Century of Labour: A History of the Labour Party 1900–2000 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000), p. 67. Bevin was even less kind after his victory: ‘Lansbury has been going about dressed up in saint’s clothes for years waiting for martyrdom. I set fire to the faggots.’
Chapter Three
1. Cited in N. Thomas-Symonds, Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), p. 92.
2. Bevan in Tribune, 10 March 1939.
3. Schneer, Labour’s Conscience, p. 159.
4. Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life, pp. 103–7.
5. Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life, p. 108.
6. Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life, p. 113.
7. I. Kramnick and B. Sheerman, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left (London: Allen Lane, 1993), p. 441.
8. C. Beckett and F. Beckett, Bevan (London: Haus, 2004), p. 41.
9. Hollis, Jennie Lee: A Life, pp. 97–8.
10. D. Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 87.
11. Schneer, Labour’s Conscience, p. 25.
12. A. Mitchell, Election ’45: Reflections on the Revolution in Britain (London: Bellew Publishing, 1995), p. 67.
13. S. Brooke, Labour’s War: The Labour Party During the Second World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
14. After the Tory R.A. Butler and Labour’s Hugh Gaitskill.
15. A. Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem (London: Abacus, 1996), p.210.
16. Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem, p. 227.
17. A.A. Rogow and P. Shore, The Labour Government and British Industry, 1945–1951 (Oxford: Blackwell 1955).
18. Hansard, 17 February 1943: 1818.
19. See Angus Calder’s The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969).
20. Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem, p. 228.
21. Havinghurst, Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century, p. 410.
22. Davies, To Build a New Jerusalem, pp. 225–6.
23. E.E. Barry, Nationalisation in British Politics: The Historical Background (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), p. 377.
24. It is worth noting that Attlee had backed an amendment to the 1933 Labour Party conference, moved by Cripps, to abolish the House of Lords, as described in Brookshire, Clement Attlee, pp. 57–8.
25. A. Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (British Studies Series) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 122.
26. Cited in Schneer, Labour’s Conscience, p. 32.
27. Vickers, 2004 p. 170.
28. G. DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life (London: Pimlico, 2005), p. 219.
29. Schneer, Labour’s Conscience, p. 44.
30. Vickers, The Labour Party and the World, p. 170.
31. New Statesman, 16 April 1949.
Chapter Four
1. M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography: Volume 2, 1945–1960 (London: Davis-Poynter, 1973), p. 304.
2. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, p. 305.
3. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, p. 342.
4. M. Jenkins, Bevanism: Labour’s High Tide (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 2012), p. 291.
5. As Miliband points out, the re-privatisation of steel and road transport was something of a boon for the leadership, because outspoken opposition to it gave something to throw back to the activists (Parliamentary Socialism, p. 322).
6. Bevan, In Place of Fear, pp. 97–9.
7. Jenkins, Bevanism, p. 150.
8. E. Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 47.
9. Cited in Jenkins, Bevanism, p. 158.
10. L. Hunter, The Road to Brighton Pier (London: Arthur Baker Publishing, 1959), p. 52.
11. M. Beech and K. Hickson, The Struggle for Labour’s Soul: Understanding Labour’s Political Thought Since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 15.
12. D. Kynaston, Family Britain, 1951–1957 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), p. 429.
13. Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party, p. 144.
14. F. Parkin, Middle-Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), pp. 38–9.
15. Cited in Foot, Aneurin Bevan, p. 576.
16. Cited in Thomas-Symonds, Nye, p. 231.
17. Thomas-Symonds, Nye, pp. 236–7.
18. Miliband, in D. Coates, Paving the Third Way (London: Merlin Press, 2003), p. 60.
19. The book Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose, made a similar assertion: that the working class was being stratified by ‘embourgeoisment’ and that class was a cultural relationship in society, not necessarily an economic one.
20. R. Miliband in Coates, Paving the Third Way, p. 57.
21. D. Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma (London: Heinemann, 1992), pp. 197–8.
22. W.H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition: The Ideological Heritage, Volume 2 (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 470.
23. R. Crossman, Towards a Philosophy of Socialism, New Fabian Essays (London: Turnstile Press, 1952), p. 27.
24. The rush to the right in Britain was part of an international trend within European social democracy, following similar capitalist dynamics (and integrationist tendencies) in other countries. The German SDPs conference at Bad Godesberg also agreed to formerly abandon their socialist programme and commit themselves to working for capitalism with a human face.
25. Labour Party Report of the 58th Annual Conference (London: Labour Party 1959), p. 154.
26. Cited in S. Matgamna, Seedbed of the Left (London: W.L. Publications, 1993), p. 7.
27. ‘Warning to the Unilateralists’, Guardian, 6 October 1960. Gaitskell also argued that ‘I sometimes think, frankly, that the system we have by which great unions decide their policy before even their conference can consider their executive’s recommendation is not really a wise one or a good one.’ It seems that when union policy which favours the right is decided by union leaders and not the union members then this democratic deficit goes unremarked. But on the rare occasions when this favours the left, the right became very agitated about this.
28. A party memorandum, circulated a few week before the conference by Morgan Phillips, was clear: ‘The Parliamentary Party could not maintain its position in the country if it could be demonstrated that it was at any time or in any way subject to dictation from an outside body which, however representative of the Party, could not be regarded as representative of the country.’ Cited by Julian Lewis, Labour’s Constitutional Crisis, Conservative Political Centre, September 1992, www.julianlewis.net/essays-and-topics/2942:labour-s-constitutional-crisis-13.
29. Membership continued to decline throughout this period – although the official numbers were artificially inflated by CLPs having to affiliate with at least 800 members (later raised to 1,000). This meant a lot of ‘ghost’ or paper members as many CLPs affiliated to the party claiming exactly 1,000 members which was usually an over-estimate.
30. Report from Anthony Greenwood, cited in ‘The Young Socialists’, International Socialism Journal, 10, Autumn, 1962, pp. 3–14.
31. J. Scholefield, ‘Labour Youth Against the Bureaucracy: 1960–64’, Permanent Revolution, 6, Autumn, 1987.
32. The Healy group – when it eventually formed the Workers’ Revolutionary Party some years later – was characterised by an explosive mixture of sectarianism mixed with opportunism, a revolutionary organisation that in its Labour Party entryism days repeatedly presented itself as only a reformist current.
33. Beech and Hickson, The Struggle for Labour’s Soul, p. 17.
34. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, p. 624.
Chapter Five
1. As the Cabinet papers explain: ‘The re-nationalisation of the steel industry by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1967 did not involve the entire industry but just 14 of the largest firms. Importantly, there was cross-party consensus on nationalisation and, by 1971, it was established that the Conservatives would not de-nationalise the industry.’ Cabinet Papers Summary, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/after-second-world-war.htm
2. Observer, 24 November 1985.
3. For more details, see Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party, pp. 129–40.
4. The seamen were on strike to try and force a shorter working week, from 56 hours to 40 hours. Their strike was solid, with many large ports grinding to a halt as ships couldn’t be unloaded. When Wilson declared a state of emergency that would allow him to use the Royal Navy to take over the ports and ensure the goods could still be transported he hypocritically tried to cover himself by appealing to national interests: ‘The government must protect the vital interests of the nation. This is not action against the National Union of Seamen.’ The Labour left came out unequivocally in support of the strikers, and Wilson hesitated on the issue of actually breaking the strike using the armed forces, but clearly he wanted to take action against the NUS because their strike threatened the precarious work being done to balance the deficit and restrict wage rises. In the end the strike was settled with a compromise deal.
5. Beech and Hickson, The Struggle for Labour’s Soul, p. 17.
6. Foot, ‘Credo of the Labour Left’, p. 21.
7. R. Opie, ‘Economic Planning and Growth’, in W. Beckerman (ed.), The Labour Government’s Economic Record 1964–70 (London: Duckworth, 1972), p. 170.
8. R. Miliband and J. Saville, ‘Labour Policy and the Labour Left’, The Socialist Register 1964, pp. 149–56.
9. David Wood, quoted in Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party, p. 162.
10. First reported in The Times, 5 March 1967.
11. Foot, ‘Credo of the Labour Left’, p. 22.
12. Foot, ‘Credo of the Labour Left’, p. 23.
13. Cited in P. Foot, ‘Harold Wilson and the Labour Left’, International Socialism (1st series), No. 33, Summer 1968, pp. 18–26.
14. J. Prescott and C. Hodgins, Not Wanted on Voyage: The Seamen’s Reply, National Union of Seamen Hull Dispute Committee (1966).
15. J. Saville, ‘Labourism and the Labour Government’, The Socialist Register 1967, p. 67.
16. Livingstone cited in M. Collins, Ireland After Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1985), p. 16.
17. S. Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 185.
18. Anti-Jewish and anti-Irish jingoism had existed pre-Second World War, but the nature of racism shifted due to the quantity of immigration after Windrush.
19. Cited in Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party, p. 180.
20. C. Knowles, Race, Discourse and Labourism (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 90.
21. C.T.B. Smith and R. Clifton et al., Strikes in Britain: A Research Study of Industrial Stoppages in the United Kingdom (London: Department of Employment, 1978).
22. Barbara Castle obituary, Guardian, 4 May 2002.
23. Cited in A.C. Crines, Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership (London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), p. 55.
24. R. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Volume 3 (Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1977), p. 925.
25. Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 372–3.
26. Cited in A. Freeman, The Benn Heresy (London: Pluto Press, 1982), p. 52.
27. Cited in P. Bell, The Labour Party in Opposition, 1970–1974 (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 15.
28. T. Benn, The Benn Diaries (London: Hutchinson, 1995), pp. 241–5.
29. K. Coates (ed.), What Went Wrong (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 2008), p. 129.
30. Workerism in Marxism generally refers to an accommodation to the perceived prejudices of what socialists think working-class people believe.
31. Michael Barrett Brown, in From Labourism to Socialism (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1972), outlines his key arguments.
32. Labour’s Programme for Britain (London: Labour Party, 1973), p.30.
33. Holland looked to the Italian Instituto di Riconstruzione Industriale as a model, focusing not just on saving ailing industries but on directing investment and growth towards prosperous sectors too.
34. N. Thompson, Political Economy and the Labour Party (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 217.
35. Cited in M. Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), p. 53.
36. S. Holland, The Socialist Challenge (London: Quartet Books, 1976), p. 155.
37. A reference to the form of state rule in France under Louis Bonaparte after 1851.
38. D. Coates, Labour in Power? Study of the Labour Government, 1974–79 (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1980), p. 248.
39. Coates, Labour in Power?, p. 251.
40. As Henry Kissinger argued: ‘I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.’
41. Heffer describes a visit to Allende months before he was murdered in the coup. Allende said that the Chilean revolution would not be like Russia with its vast bureaucracy, but ‘freedom, democracy, music and dance. Then he added: “If they let us”.’ E. Heffer, Never a Yes Man (London: Verso, 1991), p. 143.
42. The Sunday Times published an article on 29 March 1981 outlining rumours of a coup plan in 1968. See also A. Morgan, Harold Wilson (London: Pluto Press, 1992), p. 331, and J. Medhurst, That Option No Longer Exists (London: Zero Books, 2014), p. 93.
43. Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma, p. 159.
44. For more see H. Wainwright and L. Elliott, Lucas Plan: New Trade Unionism in the Making? (London: Allison and Busby, 1982).
45. J. Jones, Union Man (London: Collins, 1986), pp. 315–16; see also K. Hickson (ed.), New Labour, Old Labour: The Wilson and Callaghan Governments 1974–1979 (London: Routledge, 1994), p.81.
46. Benn, The Benn Diaries, p. 361.
47. He was replaced by Reg Varley, an ex-miner. Years later Ken Coates mocked the lack of principles of these supposedly radical-minded trade unionists as they wound their way into a Labour Cabinet: ‘as a mine-worker [Varley] had been an effective partisan of workers’ control ... when he became a member of Parliament he favoured parliamentary control, and once he was a Minister he was immediately converted to ministerial control’. Coates, What Went Wrong, pp. 129–30.
48. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p. 53.
49. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left p. 87.
50. Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party, pp. 172–6.
51. D. Panitch and C. Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 136–8.
52. Edmund Burke argued that elected representatives in the House of Commons should be free to make their own decisions and vote in accordance their own views, unimpeded by having to follow the wishes of their electorate. Put simply, elect a politician to act as they see fit, assuming it will be for the general good.
53. J. Callaghan (ed.), Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches to Labour Politics and History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 161.
54. H. Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties (London: Hogarth Press, 1987), p. 17.
55. Freeman, The Benn Heresy, p. 112.
56. Medhurst, That Option No Longer Exists, p. 121.
57. Tom Sawyer from NUPE is quoted by Wainwright as saying that ‘the Social Contract was a deal struck between leaders; the radical side of it did not have any roots among the people. For instance the argument for planning agreements had not really been put over to the people who worked in industries.’ Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties, p. 226.
58. Coates, Labour in Power?, pp. 39–40.
59. Meacher in Coates, What Went Wrong, p. 182.
60. Benn, The Benn Diaries, p. 380.
61. Interview with Tony Benn, ‘On the True Power of Democracy’, Morning Star, 24 October 2003.
62. Coates, What Went Wrong, pp. 10–12.
63. Cited in Medhurst, That Option No Longer Exists, p. 132.
64. V. Bogdanor, ‘The IMF Crisis, 1976’, from www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-imf-crisis-1976.
Chapter Six
1. T. Benn, Arguments for Socialism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 213.
2. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left, p. 116.
3. See J. Curran, J. Petley and I. Gaber, Culture Wars: The Media and the British Left (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005) for many hundreds of examples; for the historical context described see chapter 2.
4. Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 193–4.
5. Cited in Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties, p. 229.
6. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/defeat-in-bermondsey-defeat-for-left
7. ‘Bermondsey By-election 1983: Homophobia, Hatred, Smears and Xenophobia’, Independent, 24 February 2013.
8. K. Bean, The New Politics of Sinn Féin (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 76.
9. Ken Livingstone provocatively argued that ‘I was struck by the similarity of what you might call the new radical left in the Labour Party and the radical left in Sinn Fein.’ Cited in Bean, The New Politics of Sinn Féin, p. 77.
10. Bean, The New Politics of Sinn Féin, pp. 76–7.
11. Panitch in Coates, Paving the Third Way, pp. 207–8.
12. Freeman, The Benn Heresy, p. 116.
13. Benn, The Benn Diaries, p. 513.
14. Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 49–65.
15. Benn, The Benn Diaries, p. 529.
16. Benn, The Benn Diaries, p. 529.
17. Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties, p. 97.
18. Cited in P. Hain, Back to the Future of Socialism (Bristol: Policy Press, 2015), p. 148.
19. Thompson, Political Economy and the Labour Party, p. 227.
20. In and Against the State by Pluto Press, published in 1980, outlines these theories.
21. The Tories were on 27% throughout 1981 and saw only a slight increase in 1982 before the ‘Falklands Factor’. A. Nunns, The Candidate (London: OR, 2016), p. 277.
22. J. Adams, Tony Benn: A Biography (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011), pp. 412-13.
23. Labour Weekly 18 February 1983.
24. R. Heffernan and M. Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory (London: Verso, 1992), p. 28.
25. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 27.
26. Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties.
27. J. Winterton and R. Winterton, Coal, Crisis and Conflict: The 1984–5 Miners’ Strike in Yorkshire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 113.
28. Kinnock’s tub-thumping, Daily Mail pleasing diatribe included: ‘I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.’
29. E. Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2002), p. 259.
30. Cited in Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p.172.
31. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, pp. 125–6.
32. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, pp. 66–9.
33. Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 40.
34. Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 222.
35. Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties, p. 184.
36. Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties, p. 186.
37. M. Wadsworth, ‘Celebrating Black Sections’, Guardian, 6 October 2008.
38. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 77.
39. Wadsworth, ‘Celebrating Black Sections’.
40. D. Howe, Black Sections in the Labour Party (Race Today Collective, 1985), p. 15.
41. J. Golding, Hammer of the Left: The Battle for the Soul of the Labour Party (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016), p. 361.
42. Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 364.
43. P. Taffee and T. Mulhearn, Liverpool – The City That Dared to Fight (Liverpool: Fortress Books, 1988), pp. 368–9.
44. P. Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), p. 158.
Chapter Seven
1. From his leadership statement 1994, published in T. Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 3.
2. P. Mandelson, The Third Man (London: Harper Press, 2011), p. 63.
3. Cited in A. Seldon, Blair’s Britain, 1997–2007 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 26.
4. A. Campbell, The Blair Years (London: Hutchinson, 2007), p. 78, cited in M. Pugh, Speak for Britain (London: Vintage, 2011), p. 394.
5. D. Tanner and P. Thane (eds), Labour’s First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 368.
6. Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 395.
7. A term coined by French intellectuals – the ‘single thought’.
8. T. Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century (London: Fabian Society, 1998), p. 1.
9. G.R. Taylor, Labour’s Renewal? The Policy Review and Beyond (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 176.
10. Beech and Hickson, The Struggle for Labour’s Soul, p. 17.
11. T. Blair, Let Us Face the Future (London: Fabian Society, 1995), p. 7.
12. Cited in ‘Blair’s War on Enemies of Ambition’, Guardian, 29 September 1999.
13. For more see Tom Mills’ article in New Socialist: ‘It Was a Fantasy: Centrist Political Commentators in the Age of Corbynism’ (June 2017), at https://newsocialist.org.uk/it-was-a-fantasy.
14. Alan Simpson, ‘Inside New Labour’s Rolling Coup: The Blair Supremacy’, Red Pepper, 1 December 2014, www.redpepper.org.uk/inside-new-labours-rolling-coup-the-blair-supremacy.
15. R. McKibbon, ‘Defeatism, Defeatism, Defeatism’, London Review of Books, 22 March 2007.
16. L. Minkin, The Blair Supremacy: A Study in the Politics of the Labour’s Party Management (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), p. 128.
17. Minkin, The Blair Supremacy, pp. 82–3.
18. The Road to the Manifesto, Labour Party, 1996.
19. Tony Blair knighted him in 1999.
20. M. Marqusee, ‘New Labour and its Discontents’, New Left Review, July–August 1997, p. 133.
21. Marqusee, ‘New Labour and its Discontents’, p. 130.
22. For a full blow by blow account see Davies, Through the Looking Glass.
23. ‘Labour List, Cuts, Class War and a Left-wing Superstar’, LRC Conference Review, 17 January 2011.
24. N. Lawson, ‘Without the Soft Left, Labour is Doomed to Splinter’, Guardian, 24 July 2015.
25. Davies, Through the Looking Glass, pp. 131–45, and Ken Livingstone’s memoir You Can’t Say That! (London: Faber and Faber, 2011).
26. N. Dempsey, ‘Two Classes, Two Responses to the Crisis’, 1 June 2012, http://www.socialistaction.net/Economics/Two-classes-two-responses-to-the-crisis.html.
27. ‘Unions Force Defeat on Hospitals’, Guardian, 2 October 2003.
28. Cited in Minkin, The Blair Supremacy, p. 346.
29. ‘Labour Party Membership Falls to Lowest Level Since it Was Founded in 1900’, Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2008.
30. T. Benn, More Time for Politics (London: Hutchinson, 2008), p.305.
31. Tom Nairn, writing about Labour in the early 1970s, said that the difference between Labour and the Tories was only half an inch, ‘but it is in that half inch we survive’.
Chapter Eight
1. O. Reyes, Interview with Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, Red Pepper, 11 May 2007.
2. Martin Wicks, Labour Representation Committee conference, 21 November 2007, https://martinwicks.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/labour-representation-committee-conference.
3. J. McDonnell, ‘Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity’, Guardian, 13 October 2008.
4. R. Seymour, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (London: Verso, 2016), p. 174.
5. One Nation Labour, edited by J. Cruddas (2013), at http://labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/One-Nation-Labour-debating-the-future.pdf.
6. O. Jones, ‘Ed Balls’ Surrender is a Political Disaster’, New Statesman, 15 January 2012.
7. N. Watt and R. Syal, ‘Ed Miliband to Review Labour’s Link with Trade Unions’, Guardian, 5 July 2013.
8. Nunns, The Candidate, pp. 59–60.
9. ‘In Labour’s Leadership Race, Yvette Cooper is the One to Beat’, Guardian, 23 June 2015.
10. ‘Jeremy Corbyn and his Acolytes are Simply in Denial’, The Telegraph, 5 June 2015.
11. Nunns, The Candidate, p. 15.
12. Nunns, The Candidate, p. 15.
13. Nunns, The Candidate, p. 10.
14. A phrase from David Hare’s The Absence of War, a play that also deals with a beleaguered Labour leader.
15. P. Wintour and N. Watts, ‘Corbyn: The Long Read’, Guardian, 25 September 2015.
16. C. Lewis, ‘Meet Momentum: The Next Step in the Transformation of our Politics, New Statesman, 8 October 2015.
17. D. Hodges, ‘The Age of Jeremy Corbyn is Here. Now the Civil War’, Telegraph, 30 September 2015.
18. This tactic had been tried by the Brownites against Blair in 2006.
19. Nunns, The Candidate, p. 314.
20. Nunns, The Candidate, p. 316.
21. R. Mason and J. Elgot, ‘Peter Mandelson: I Try to Undermine Jeremy Corbyn “every single day”’, Guardian, 21 February 2017.
22. ‘Furness MP Apologises for Doubting Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn After “Incredible Achievement” in General Election’, Westmorland Gazette, 17 June 2017.
23. A. Chakelian, ‘Winners and Losers of the General Election 2017’, New Statesman, 9 June 2017.
24. Tony Blair, Speech to Progress, 22 July 2015.
Conclusion
1. Foot, ‘Credo of the Labour Left’, p. 27.
2. M. Fisher, Capitalist Realism (London: Zero Books, 2009), pp.80–1.