The Party Connection: Divergence and Convergence in the British Labour Movement

Abstract

The consultations which led to the Social Contract of 1973 are understood to have been initiated as a result of a proposal by Jack Jones made to a Fabian Society meeting held at the 1971 Labour Party Conference. At that meeting Jones told the story of a man who having completed fifty years of marriage was asked if he had ever contemplated divorce. He replied, ‘Divorce—never. Murder—often’.In the past two decades the relationship between the unions and the labour party — the central feature of labour politics in Britain — has undergone some remarkable changes. It has passed through severe crisis: reinforcing tensions which built up in the 1960s became so great at the end of the decade that the alliance appeared ‘threatened as never before’. One scholar of labour movement politics suggested at the time that there might be a life-span to ‘Labour’ parties. To the Left of the Labour Party some revolutionary critics looked to a militant union break with ‘the immense contradiction’. To the Right of the Labour Party some social democratic critics looked to a realignment which would facilitate the emergence of a new radical centre party.