British Labour Party Research Articles

Elites and Education: Caroline Benn and the Policy Intellectuals of the British Labour Party, Circa 1950–1990

ABSTRACT This paper revisits and reassesses the intellectual and practical contribution of Caroline Benn (née DeCamp, 1926–2000) to politics, policymaking and practice at a crucial turning point in English education, which I call the ‘long comprehensive moment’ between 1950 and 1990. It articulates a strong sense that her involvement in significant public events warrants close investigation before it disappears from professional memory. The American wife of Tony Benn, one of the most influential post-war socialists in Europe, Caroline Benn stands out for her commitment to an educational system in which all young people could develop their talents to the full. Based on her newly available archive, containing thousands of documents, historically informed network ethnography is used to map her on-going effort and provide a detailed descriptive account of the ideological power and pervasiveness of the idea that a school system designed for an elite is not about social engineering, whereas comprehensive education which values all children, all parents, all neighbourhoods, equally is.

State, capital and nation in Green New Deal Politics: lessons from the British Labour Party’s 2019 programme

ABSTRACT The Green New Deal (GND) has emerged as a crucial progressive agenda for sustainability transition, but there have been few attempts to develop it into a concrete programme for government. This paper considers one such attempt – the GND proposals put forth by the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn – and how it tackled three key challenges faced by the broader GND agenda: its reliance on the state, its relationship with capital, and its Western centrism. The paper argues that these challenges gave rise to tensions within Labour’s proposals: treating the state both as an instrument and as an object of change, ambivalence towards capitalism as an economic system and struggling to reconcile the competing forces of nationalism and internationalism. By examining these challenges and Labour's efforts to overcome them, this study provides valuable insights into the messy politics of enacting Green New Deal visions.

Britain in the Pacific: Staying the Course?

The British Labour Party, after 14 years out of office, is grappling with a dynamic global strategic environment that has been transformed during that period. It has committed to a ‘NATO-first’ defence and security policy and presided over the United Kingdom’s military pullback ‘east of Suez’ in the 1960s and 1970s, raising questions about the fate of the ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ unveiled by the Conservative government three years ago. With its Strategic Defence Review and its first full budget, the new government has the opportunity to take ownership of the tilt. There may be synergies among capabilities that can add value in both the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific regions, in particular with respect to aircraft carriers, submarines and new fighter aircraft. The UK’s paramount challenge is to achieve the right balance between integrated and sovereign capabilities so as to add value without overstretching limited resources or descending to mere tokenism.

Keir Starmer’s Britain: Can the Centre Hold?

The British Labour Party turned itself into a plausible party of government with astonishing speed, a mere five years having passed between former party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s epic defeat by Boris Johnson in 2019 to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s landslide victory in 2024. The Conservative Party’s Brexit obsession and twenty-first-century populism damaged Britain immensely by raising barriers with its nearest and largest economic partners, and by ripping apart an organic, semi-constitutional relationship that also encompassed foreign and security policy. In summer 2024, however, the centre seemed to be holding in the United Kingdom, as well as in France. Whether such a salutary result could be reached in the United States, roiled by an assassination attempt on Donald Trump and a Supreme Court decision that seemed to largely exonerate him for the 6 January 2021 insurrection and facilitate his dictatorial designs, remained to be seen.

Patriotic Internationalists and Free Immigration: The British Labour Party’s Internationalism in Debates on Immigration Restriction, 1918–1931

As highlighted in the recent controversies over European immigrants and the refugee ‘crisis’ that culminated in Brexit, Labour’s struggle in balancing its internationalist principles with policy administration has been a constant theme in the party’s immigration and refugee policy. This article situates the Labour Party’s discussion on the 1919 Aliens Act in the context of post-war internationalism, and contends that the change in focus from pre-war advocacy of the British liberal tradition to internationalist concerns reflected both the socialist proclamation of the Labour Party and the liberal internationalism of the time. The 1919 Aliens Act was deemed an example of selfish nationalism likely to undermine international peace and workers’ solidarity. At the same time, however, Labour also sought to shake off the suspicion that advocacy of free immigration could pose – that the party prioritized foreigners over Britons – by reconciling internationalism with patriotism. Insisting that true internationalism be built upon love of one’s home country, Labour politicians did not give up their patriotic and national claims, and accepted that a state could restrict the inflow of foreigners in times of national difficulty.

Participatory Democracy and the British Utopian Tradition: Leonard Woolf's Co-operative Commonwealth in Historical Perspective

Abstract This article examines an understudied chapter in the history of British socialist thought: the consumer-based socialism theorized by the Fabian and Labour Party advisor Leonard Woolf between 1913 and 1920. Exemplifying what used to be referred to in negative terms as “interwar idealism,” Woolf is now widely considered one of the chief architects of imperial and foreign policy for the British Labour Party between 1914 and 1945. Throughout this period, he was also a patient and committed advocate for a cooperative model of participatory, rank-and-file democracy founded on the organization and practices of the Co-operative Movement, whose socialist, transformative aspirations Woolf found most fully realized in the Women's Co-operative Guild under the leadership of Margaret Llewelyn Davies. Woolf's interest in radical democratic templates places him in a line of British utopian thought that looks to small-scale models of popular self-government as test cases for overall social transformation—ranging from Robert Owen's communes, through William Morris's medieval craft guilds, to the guild socialism advocated by G. D. H. Cole and R. H. Tawney. At the same time, in identifying the consumer rather than the producer as the means and ends of social change, Woolf's proposals for a socialist commonwealth emerge as an alternative to most socialist thought, a rarely examined case in a British politics of consumption which, as Matthew Hilton has shown, has traditionally offered itself as a “middle” or “third way” solution to a party political system dominated by the interests of capitalists and workers.

‘A different species’: the British Labour Party and the Militant ‘other’, 1979-1983

ABSTRACT This article assesses the efforts that were made within the British Labour Party to isolate and exclude the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyite entryist group, during the period 1979 to 1983. It argues that the battle over whether or not Militant should be expelled from Labour was, primarily, a battle of metaphor and semantics. More specifically, it suggests that these years witnessed the successful construction of Militant as Labour’s unwanted and malignant ‘other’. Five central discursive motifs (medical, subhumanal, emotional, ideological, and historical) for ‘othering’ are identified. These motifs were operationalised in a systematic and sustained manner by individuals and groups who were hostile to Militant, such as the Labour Solidarity Campaign. Over time, Labour leader Michael Foot, who had, initially, been reluctant to take action against Militant, also adopted the language of this active and purposive rhetorical strategy. In response, Militant’s main counter-discursive strategy, the ‘witch hunt’ narrative, failed to shape party opinion decisively and prevent the initiation of exclusionary processes. By 1983, the pattern of interrelated discursive motifs for ‘othering’ that would be applied to Militant throughout the decade had been established: a hegemonic narrative, concerning the tendency’s imminent ‘threat’ to Labour, had permeated all levels of the party.

Revisiting the road to Cypriot independence

ABSTRACT In September 1958 Archbishop Makarios, the Greek Cypriot leader, told Barbara Castle, the then Chair of the British Labour Party, that, after three and a half years of violence from EOKA (Εθνική Οργάνωσις Κυπρίων Αγωνιστών/National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) to achieve the union of Cyprus with Greece (enosis), he now supported a brief period of self-government, followed by the independence of Cyprus. He agreed to set aside enosis unless it was supported in the United Nations in the future. This led to independence, with Makarios considered ‘the father’ of Cypriot independence. But little has been said about the idea of independence before that point, about the opposition to it from EOKA, or about others who proposed independence from 1954. This article focuses on the role and proposals of Jason Loukianou, a prominent Cypriot in London, which have not been previously discussed. It proposes a revision to the idea that Makarios was ‘the father’ of Cypriot independence.

Commissioned Book Review: Patrick Diamond, The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power, 1979–2019: Forward March Halted?

Commissioned Book Review: Patrick Diamond, <i>The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power, 1979–2019: Forward March Halted?</i>

Deradicalization and the Experience of Governing: Evidence from the Transformation of Socialist Parties in Western Europe, 1945–2021

AbstractThe question of deradicalization looms large in the historiography of western European socialism. But in this contested field, the contributions of the New Left historian, Ralph Miliband, have been curiously neglected. Through his work on the British Labour Party, Miliband developed a distinctive account of deradicalization that foregrounds the fact that when parties enter government, party elites find themselves transplanted into new, alien institutions. Over time, he argued, they then come to internalize the worldviews of those institutions and reshape their parties accordingly. This essay presents the first quantitative and cross-national test of this “experience of governing hypothesis,” using Comparative Manifesto Project data from western European socialist parties between 1945 and 2021 and a novel matching technique for panel data. Miliband’s theory is strongly supported by this analysis, which also demonstrates the value of taking a multi-dimensional approach to deradicalization.

A New Dilemma of Social Democracy? The British Labour Party, the White Working Class and Ethnic Minority Representation

Abstract Like much of the European centre-left, Britain's Labour Party has struggled to appeal to its former core working class support base in recent years. However, this is largely a failure to connect with the ‘white working class’ (WWC) specifically, whereas support among ethnic minorities remains robust. We hypothesise that Labour could be experiencing a ‘trade-off’, whereby efforts to cater to minorities harm its perceived ability to represent WWC interests. We test this thesis by examining whether WWC voters are more likely to view minority and working class representation in zero-sum terms and shun Labour when they associate the party with minority interests. We show that the WWC are somewhat less likely to view working class and ethnic minority representation as strongly correlated, and Labour's perceived ability to represent minorities is negatively associated with WWC support. This is not (primarily) about ethnocentrism. Instead, we suggest that ‘relative political deprivation’ is crucial.

Conspiracy Theories Left, Right and...Centre: Political Disinformation and Liberal Media Discourse

We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occupy the centre ground of politics. Liberal critics and journalists accuse conspiracy theorists to their left and right of paranoia, irresponsibly excessive rhetoric, and fallacies such as strawtargeting, 'anomaly hunting' and 'determined flexibility'. At the same time, major liberal institutions from the BBC to CNN emphasise the risks that such conspiracy theories pose to public order, safety and trust – and to the very future of what they call 'our democracy'. However, we argue that many of the same threats, flaws and fallacies have characterised hegemonic liberal analyses of contentious recent political events in the West from Trumpgate to the British Labour Party's anti-Semitism 'crisis'. With a proclivity for ad hominems, deliberate misrepresentations of evidence and other dubious methods, liberal conspiracy theories have had harmful societal impacts such as discrediting progressive political movements and fanning the flames of war. These are arguably consequences of greater magnitude than those resulting from right-wing conspiracism. Moreover, we show that centrist conspiracy theories often involve the implementation of genuine conspiracies against anti-establishment figures such as Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. Despite the empirical existence of such conspiracies, we conclude by suggesting that the historical materialist critique of social reality has considerably more explanatory power than the conspiracist analytic. To demonstrate this we point to an epistemological weakness at the heart of liberal thought dating back at least to Thomas Carlyle's 'Great Man Theory of History' that, much like the marginal conspiracy theories liberals condemn, involves a vast exaggeration of the role of individual agency and intentionality – and covert interpersonal relationships particularly – in determining social, economic and political affairs.

Problems of the initial stage of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) on the pages of the British press

The subject of the study is the reflection of the problems of the initial stage (1945-1947) of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949 in the publications of the British media on the example of the central British publications: the Daily Herald (a newspaper that supported the Labour Party), The Times and The Daily Mirror (a supporter of the British Labour Party) and the Yorkshire Observer (a British publication of liberal views). The questions raised are considered in a problem-chronological plan. The article analyzes the topics of articles and problems on Greece raised by these publications, their attitude to the events in this country and the conflicting parties, the depth of coverage of the topic. The main conclusions of the research conducted for the first time in Russian science are that in the British press, in the face of selected publications, when covering issues of the Greek internal political conflict, objectivity and impartiality were not present in all cases. Sometimes the ascertaining side prevailed over the analytical one. In some cases, publications ignored the most important issues for Greece at that time. The reflection of the international aspects of the Greek war in the context of the "cold war" ("promotion" of anti-communist, anti-Soviet motives) was traced. The research materials can be used for further study of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1946, the propaganda aspect of the Cold War and regional conflicts of the postwar period.

The Forgotten Rival of Marxism Today: The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the Business of Political Culture in the Late Twentieth Century

Abstract In recent years, historians of modern Britain have focused on reconstructing its ‘political culture’, drawing extensively upon print sources. This work routinely highlights the commercial pressures that shape some types of print media—especially popular newspapers—but is less attentive to others. This article argues for closer attention to the business and financial contexts of a broader spectrum of Britain’s political culture in the late twentieth century. Drawing on histories of publishing, it illustrates the importance of business through a case-study of party-political intellectual journals for the 1980s British left. No history of the 1980s is complete without reference to the Communist Party’s glamorous Marxism Today. However, scholars have overlooked one of its significant market competitors. In 1981, the Labour Party founded its own intellectual magazine, the New Socialist. Initially, it was highly successful, recording healthy circulation figures and attracting iconoclastic pieces by leading socialists. Its early commercial success shows that it has been unjustly neglected since. Yet unfavourable political winds and internal editorial divisions fatally overlapped with ruinous business decisions in a worsening financial environment. This precipitated the collapse of New Socialist in the later 1980s—just as its Eurocommunist rival declared the arrival of the ‘New Times’ and wrote itself into history books. Closer attention to business contexts thus returns New Socialist to histories of the left and provides a better map of its ideological debates during a transformative decade. It also situates the travails of the 1980s left within social and cultural trends over the twentieth century.

Parliamentarians versus party members? Leadership selection systems in the British Conservative and Labour parties

British parties have pioneered the use of ‘one-member, one-vote’ ballots to select their leaders. However, the elections of Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) and Liz Truss (Conservative) prompted calls to return leadership selection to parliamentarians. Critics claim that party members are non-centrist and liable to impose unsuitable leaders on MPs. This weakens the cohesion of parliamentary parties, undermining the functioning of Britain’s majoritarian democracy. This article assesses the major parties’ leader-selection systems. It goes beyond existing research by identifying and applying four evaluative criteria for selection institutions: legitimacy, parliamentary acceptability, leader-eviction and timeliness. It shows that most criticisms of one-member, one-vote are overstated because the latter is heavily mediated by ex-ante and/or ex-post parliamentary controls, for example, nomination thresholds and confidence votes. One-member, one-vote generally produces leaders acceptable to MPs; ‘unsuitable’ ones typically arise when the parliamentary controls fail. However, key institutional weaknesses are identified: legitimacy in the Conservatives’ system and leader-eviction in Labour’s.

Eurooptimism and Euroscepticism on the Example of the British Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party

In this article, the three British parties in terms of their attitudes towards the EU are analysed. British parties are not homogenous with no single position on Europe being dominant. Nevertheless, there has been a rise of Euroscepticism across all political parties regardless of their affiliation in the recent years. Brexit referendum has become a ‘point of no return’ since no political force in Britain has questioned British exit from the EU and its results. The debate has switched to the conditions on which the post-Brexit UK collaborates with the EU but there is no discussion whether Britain needs to return to the EU. It is a question of whether British interests have been taken into account and how close the relationship with the Europeans should be. The research reflects gradual evolution of the three British parties (Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party) and their attitudes towards European integration. It is shown that the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats had a U-turn on key policies such as free movement of people or joining the Eurozone whereas the Scottish National Party reinvented itself and became a proponent of the European integration (with some reservations). The author tries to answer the question of whether the above parties could have prevented Brexit.

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

‘Thin labourism’: Ideological and policy comparisons between the Australian, British, and New Zealand labour parties

Centre–left political parties are undergoing an identity crisis. This article is a comparative analysis of how the three sister labour parties in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are refurbishing their agendas. We integrate Barrientos and Powell’s framework, with Freeden’s concept of ideological morphology, to systematically map the three parties across three main domains: their discourse and values, their political economy, and their social policy agendas. We then apply four different analytical frames to better understand the ideological and policy trajectories of our cases. These frames comprise ‘values, not ideology’, ‘quietism’, ‘third way’, and ‘thin labourism’. We argue that the frame of ‘thin labourism’ best captures the recent developments of these modern labour parties. In sum, the parties are still rooted in a recognisable centre–left tradition, but they operating from a narrower base of core values.

Activism in Isolation: The Tudeh party of Iran in British Left Discourse during the Long 1980s

In 1983, the arrest of Noureddin Kianouri, the first secretary of the Tudeh Party of Iran came as a shock to the international community. In a letter of condemnation, communist parties from Indonesia to Jamaica pledged solidarity with their Iranian comrades. The optimism initially brought by the 1979 revolution was severely reversed and the suppression of the Iranian Left by the Islamic government was regarded as an attack on the international Left. A significant voice of opposition came from Britain, with the Communist party of Great Britain (CPGB), the British Labor party, the trade unions and solidarity groups coming out in full support of the Tudeh and to take on the cause of Iran as their own. Although interest had existed since the 1940s, it was the 1979 revolution that firmly placed the Tudeh within the discourse of the British Left, energizing the movement and solidifying its internationalist credentials. Similarly, for the Tudeh, which had become side-lined in Iranian politics and had lost members to more radical strands of the Iranian Left, the attention it received helped renew its activism and sense of purpose.

Contemporary class composition analysis: The politics of production and the autonomy of the political

The political and organisational routes opened up on the contemporary left following the financial crisis have seen a revival of class composition analysis as a means of comprehending a broad array of social and economic phenomena both within and beyond the workplace. Contextualising contemporary class composition analysis as a long-standing component of autonomist Marxism, this article argues that its application amid the left’s electoral turn exposes to scrutiny deeper-running weaknesses. The article first presents a history of class composition analysis through operaismo into postoperaismo. The second part of the article discusses four interconnected new directions in class composition analysis: Hardt and Negri’s Assembly; the analysis of social composition offered by the Notes from Below collective; Keir Milburn’s analysis of ‘generation left’; and, finally, the uptake of some of these ideas among commentators on the left of the British Labour Party like Paul Mason. The article then discusses the theoretical and strategic implications of these contributions through the prism of critiques of class composition analysis put forward by other theorists in the autonomist Marxist tradition. Noting the possible limitations confronting the application of class composition analysis to contemporary challenges faced by the post-crisis left, the penultimate section considers Labour Process Theory as a theoretical alternative implicit in recent critiques of contemporary class composition analysis, arguing that while Labour Process Theory’s analysis of the ‘politics of production’ captures the contingency of the connection between the workplace and formal politics, it leaves unresolved the lack of a distinctive theory of the latter on the contemporary left. The final section reconnects the discussion to the legacy of operaismo by exploring Mario Tronti’s recently translated work on the ‘autonomy of the political’ as a more substantial articulation of the specificity of politics against the backdrop of class conflict at the point of production. The conclusion relates this back to recent strategic issues in the Labour Party and broader labour movement.