Labour Party history

Articles about the history of the British Labour Party

The story of Clay Cross

In 1972, the Tory government told local councils to implement the “Housing Finance Act”, designed to claw in a bit of extra money by increasing council tenants’ rents. The context was in some ways similar to that of today — an aggressively pro-profit, anti-worker Tory government seeking to make working-class people pay for economic instability created by capitalism itself. There was significant working-class resistance to the Act, with several Labour councils initially stating that they would refuse to implement it. We reproduce below articles from Workers' Fight (the paper of the forerunner...

A working-class feminist on Islington Council

In 1982, Pat successfully stood in St. George’s ward for election to Islington borough council. Socialist Organiser, the predecessor of Workers’ Liberty, was active in the Labour Party at the time. The following extract is taken from an interview with Pat from Socialist Organiser No. 83, May 6 1982. As workers again face a Tory government seeking to make savage cuts, our class will need councillors like Pat who will argue for councils to refuse to pass on the cuts that Tory central government wants them to make. We need Labour councillors prepared to stand up to [the Tories] — to refuse to...

The Labour Party now! By Jim Connell, author of "The Red Flag" (Verse)

The turncoats and renegades, like "the poor", are always with us, shadows the Socialist Movement leaves behind as it goes on its way, as Jim Connell noted over a hundred years ago. Jim Connell, who wrote "The Red Flag", was an Irish Fenian, member of the first Marxist organisation in Britain, the Social Democratic Federation, of the Independent Labour Party and of the Labour Party. He died in 1928. He may have had in mind here John Burns, the Marxist 1889 London docks strike leader and later, after 1906, Liberal Government Minister. THE CANDIDATE We knew him once when his soul was young, And...

THE BLUE ROSE OF FORGETFULNESS

THE BLUE ROSE OF FORGETFULNESS The Kinnock Rose is blooming now In Thatcher's shadow trained to grow: It signifies apostacy, --------------------------- An anonymous "young Labour MP" told Radio 4's"Today" programme that the Red Flag should be rewritten as "The Red Rose" "The historical memory of the bourgeoisie is in the traditions of its rule, in the country's institutions and laws, in the cumulative art of government. The memory of the working class is in its party: the reform party is the party of poor memory." — Leon Trotsky. Tune: The Red Flag The Kinnock Rose is blooming now In Thatcher...

Breaking the mould: revolutionary Chartism part four

Means versus ends George Harney had posed the question: the “Charter was a means to an end, but what was the end?” Gregory Claeys asserts the end was not socialism and that utopian socialists of the time, led by Robert Owen had a monopoly on this emancipatory ideal: “No Chartist revolutionary had ever explained at length why violence alone could terminate the existing system... These doctrines were anathema not only to the Owenites but equally to most social Chartists”. Claeys argues that the “idea of socialism-as-revolution was therefore new to Britain”, and the origin of the transformation...

Marxists and mass workers’ parties

Evolving out of the trade unions, adopting a formal commitment to socialism only in 1918, two decades after its formation, the Labour Party puzzled and perplexed European Marxists. It was accepted into membership of the Socialist International in 1908 on the grounds that it fought the class struggle even though it did not “recognise” it and was independent. Karl Kautsky, the leading Marxist of the time, wrote a resolution to that effect. Lenin, while agreeing with Kautsky on the main point, criticised his resolution: Labour was not fully independent of bourgeois parties — electoral pacts with...

Left unity in the 1890s

From the mid-1890s, British socialists tried to unite under one umbrella. Tom Mann, as Secretary of the Independent Labour Party, was at the centre of the negotiations and debates that took place between the ILP and the Social Democratic Federation. These moves, popular with the members, were scuppered by the leaderships, mainly that of the ILP. Left unity was an inevitable question thrown up by the formation of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. Why were there separate organisations of socialists, asked the members. Shouldn’t the groups merge, fuse or federate? Both organisations were...

Discussing the first two Labour governments

When introducing a discussion at our AWL branch meeting on the first and second Labour governments, I found it useful to tell the story, then ask people to discuss some questions. The 'timeline' and discussion questions are listed below, and are attached as Word documents for use as handouts. ===== THE FIRST AND SECOND LABOUR GOVERNMENTS – TIMELINE 1918: Representation of the Peoples Act 14 December 1918: General Election – coalition government led by Lloyd George wins a landslide; Labour gains 21.5% of the votes but only 57 seats. 1919: Labour makes big gains in local government elections...

Tom Mann: Independent labour gets organised

Continuing the series on the life and times of Tom Mann In 1887 Keir Hardie called the leaders of the trade union movement “holders of a fat, snug office, concerned only with maintaining the respectability of the cause.” He might have been talking about the trade union leaders of today. Unfair? Why else, except a burning desire for respectability, have they acquiesced in the hollowing out of the democratic and political life of the Labour Party, the party, which Hardie helped to establish? The trade union leaders’ relationship to the Labour Party is like that of the trade union leaders of the...

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