Labour's Lost Youth

Abstract

The failure of the Labour party to organize a successful youth movement has been a long-standing source of concern and embarrassment to the National Executive Committee. The party which has lowered the voting age to 18 and gains more of the votes of the youngest electors than any other party2 is manifestly less successful than either the Conservative or the Liberal party in attracting its young supporters into the party organization and providing them with a meaningful role. The history of Labour youth is one of conflict, suppression and constant reorganization. These continual clashes between the youth movement and the NEC have their origins in the attitude of the Labour leadership towards the role young people should play in the party. Most members of Labour's youth movements have rejected the constitutional arrangements and functions imposed on them by the NEC and have fought to create for themselves a substantially different role in the party. In the course of these struggles, the fears and prejudices of both sides have been amply reinforced, resulting in a small, restricted youth movement, isolated from the rest of the party and under constant threat of extinction. It might be supposed that a new left-wing party struggling to achieve a socialist society would have had particular appeal for the young and would have made early strenuous efforts to harness their energies to its cause. After the First'World War, enthusiasm was certainly burgeoning, with the spontaneous growth of youth sections linked to local Labour parties. Some of these joined together to form an independent body called the Young Labour League, formed in'Clapham in 1920 with the encouragement of the constituency party chairman, Dr MacGregor Reid, and having some 30 youth sections, chiefly in the London area, affiliated to it by 1924. It might be thought that such