Labour Party Members Research Articles

Sceptics, Enthusiasts, or Architects? The British Labour Group, the European Parliament and Workers’ Rights, 1979–1989

The European Parliament influenced policy, and was a forum for the airing and sharing of a wide array of views and approaches to forms of European integration. Often conflicted and divided, members of the British Labour Group, comprising of the elected Labour Party representatives to the European Parliament, viewed the European Economic Community as a key platform and means through which workers’ rights could be supported. And many Labour Party Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including sceptics, enthusiasts and those whose views changed, played a part in shaping the European Economic Community. This was particularly so with workers’ rights, an area which was central to the Labour Party, the European Parliament and the European Economic Community in the 1980s. The European Parliament was an instrumental institution in terms of building ties across borders and shaping and changing perspectives on key policy areas.

CELTIC FRINGES AND CENTRAL POWER IN GREAT BRITAIN:
 HISTORY AND MODERNITY

The article deals with history of interrelations between political centre and Celtic fringes of Great Britain in modern and contemporary times. As soon as nationalist movements in Celtic fringes became more active from the mid 1960s, the need appeared to analyze the history of interrelations between central
 power and Celtic regions in order to understand causes of Celtic people’s striving for obtaining more rights and even state independence. The article ascertains that attitude of central power to Celtic fringes was complicated by ethno-cultural differences between Englishmen and Celtic people, which resulted in discrimination of Scotland, Wales and Ireland by London's policy towards Celtic regions. Since British industrialization evolved the central power in Great Britain, it created conditions for balanced comprehensive
 development of industrial economy only in English counties, whereas Celtic regions were permitted to develop only branches of economic activity which were non-competitive to English business. The level of people’s income in Celtic fringes was always lower than in English parts of Great Britain. There was an
 established practice that English business dominated in Celtic regions and determined the economic development of Celtic regions. The English as distinct from Celts had prior opportunities to be engaged on more prestigious and highly paid positions. Celtic population’s devotion to preservation of their culture
 and ethno-cultural identity found expression in religious sphere so that Nonconformity and Presbyterianism accordingly dominated among Welshmen and Scotsmen. Political movements in Celtic fringes put forward ethno-cultural demands
 rather than social class ones in their activities.
 During the first half of the XX century the opposition between Celtic fringes and central power in Great Britain showed that in parliamentary elections Celtic population gave their votes mainly for the members of Labour Party. From the mid-1960s nationalist movements in Celtic fringes became more active. They began to make slogans of political independence. The author of the
 article comes to conclusion that interrelations of central power in Great Britain towards Celtic fringes can be adequately described by notions of I. Wallerstein’s world-system analysis and M. Hechter's model of internal colonialism.

"I have no qualms about ... having shown Soviet Russia just like it is": Aleksandr Lozovskii's 1920 Reports About Travels with Foreign Delegates

Department of HistoryUniversity of ZurichSwitzerland Between May and July 1920, two delegates of foreign labour movement took a trip on a steamboat down the Volga River: A delegation of British Labour Party members, and another one comprised of participants of the Second World Congress of the Communist International. Both delegations were supervised and accompanied by Bolshevik and trade union functionary Aleksandr Lozovskii. His reports, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, are published here for the first time in English translation and with extensive commentary. They shed light on the early Soviet ‘management’ of foreign delegations and the degrees of spontaneity and control in handling them.

Public Opinion and the Depth of Labour's Crisis

AbstractLabour's current problems are the culmination of long‐term trends flowing from the rising cost of tax‐funded services and welfare and voters’ mounting resistance to higher taxes to pay for them. As a result of this, there is now a big gulf between the attitudes of Labour party members, and in particular the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour voters—and an even wider gulf with the extra voters Labour needs to win a future election. This gulf is also wide in relation to a range of other issues, including immigration, education and economic ideology. For Labour to return to government, it needs not just to narrow the gulf in policy, but to persuade voters of its ‘valence’ virtues of trust and competence—qualities in relation to which Labour currently lags the Conservatives by large margins.

The legislative consequences of internal conflict and inter-party divisions

Governments must respond quickly to pressing economic and societal problems. However, institutional rules, public opinion and unanticipated world events often delay the legislative process. Building on theories of legislative decision-making and intra-party politics, this paper shows that the speed at which bills pass is also driven by the governing party’s internal cohesiveness and its ideological distance to the opposition. Governing parties that are internally divided have greater difficulty in forming the legislative majorities necessary to pass laws quickly, especially if their preferences are further away from the opposition. I test these hypotheses using a novel collection of laws passed in the UK Parliament and conference speeches given by Labour and Conservative party members over a 10-year period. I use automated text classification techniques to determine the relative location of actors’ preferences and the level of intra-party disagreement. I then predict the duration of lawmaking based on the...

Rhetorical agency in ideological dispute

This article explores how non-elitist discourse of members of a political party can be considered as rhetorically well-equipped and ideologically powerful in legitimising a party’s controversial political narrative. By drawing on a well-known contentious political project – the New Labour ‘project’ of the UK’s Labour Party – the article proposes a way for party members’ discourse to be considered for this mode relatively autonomous rhetorical agency. Incorporating conceptualisations and methodologies of rhetorical and discursive psychology, the analysis of Labour Party members’ reflections on New Labour reveals how rhetorical power operates beyond the level of people consistently drawing on particular linguistic or grammatical repertoires. The article concludes that that rhetorical agency is not confined to those with sophisticated access to and knowledge of language’s workings and postulates that discourses of legitimisation may be as characteristic for their contradictions and inconsistencies as they are for their universal principles and grammar-like organisation.

Crocodile Hunt

Crocodile Hunt

Harold Wilson, the British Labour Party, and the War in Vietnam

When British Prime Minister Harold Wilson urged Lyndon Johnson not to escalate hostilities in Vietnam in 1965, he did so not because he was morally opposed to the war or thought the war was intractable but because he was concerned about the likely impact of U.S. actions on his own domestic power base. Wilson's stance of providing moral but not military support for U.S. policy in Vietnam caused anger and disillusionment among leftwing Labour Party activists and members of Parliament, spurring them to active opposition against Wilson's government. Even so, Wilson managed to prevent a major schism within his government and party over the Vietnam War. His attempts to broker a peace deal between the combatants were largely designed to placate Labour Party activists while raising Wilson's profile as a world statesman. Although the initiatives did not generate any progress toward a ceasefire, they were relatively successful on the domestic front.

Pragmatists, Ideologues and the General Law of Curvilinear Disparity: The Case of the Irish Labour Party

In this article we examine the opinion structure of Irish Labour party members and supporters. Our purpose is to test May's law of curvilinear disparity by dividing party members into two groups as outlined by Kitschelt. By focusing on ideological differences within political parties Kitschelt identifies two types of members: ideologues and pragmatists. We use two individual-level data sets: the Labour Leadership Election Study (LLES) and the Irish National Election Study (INES), to test May's law. We find some limited support for May's law and Kitschelt's extensions to this model.

Fighting over the Fight in Spain: The Pro-Franco Campaign of Bishop Peter Amigo of Southwark

Fighting over the Fight in Spain:The Pro-Franco Campaign of Bishop Peter Amigo of Southwark Frederick Hale (bio) For several decades historians, literary scholars, and others have investigated a relatively wide spectrum of British responses to and involvement in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. A cross-section of their production illustrates the breadth of that topic. Valentine Cunningham, among others, has examined how numerous English littérateurs treated the war.1 P. M. Heaton has chronicled Welsh efforts to break blockades of wartime shipping to Spain.2 Bill Alexander has told the story of British military volunteers in that country.3 Anthony Aldgate has probed the shaping of the visual image of the Spanish Civil War in British newsreels.4 Tom Buchanan has treated meticulously the contours of Labour's responses to the war.5 Jill Edwards has analyzed the British policy of non-intervention.6 Frederick Hale has explored the efforts of the eminent Jesuit editor Joseph Keating to rally British Catholics for the support of Francisco Franco7 and how the erstwhile pacifist Michael de la Bédoyère, editor of The Catholic Herald, underwent a fundamental change of mind from neutrality to enthusiastic advocacy of the Nationalist insurrection.8 Many of the findings of their [End Page 462] research have been synthesized in Buchanan's highly useful Britain and the Spanish Civil War.9 To be sure, the pertinent scholarship has progressed on an uneven front, as one must expect which considering a broad phenomenon which entailed many kinds of responses. While certain aspects have thus been brightly illuminated, others remain tenebrous. Among the latter, Buchanan has identified those dealing with religion as "the least-researched aspect of the British response to the Civil War."10 Largely overlooked in published scholarship is the crucial campaign of one of England's best-known Catholics during the 1930's, Bishop Peter Amigo of the Diocese of Southwark, to sway popular and denominational opinion in favor of the Nationalist cause and the conflicts which his endeavors in this regard engendered. It is my purpose in the present article to examine in its historical context this eminent churchman's response to the war and how it stimulated both public conflicts and private hostility involving fellow Catholics and Britons of other faiths. Part of the significance of such an investigation obviously lies in the light it sheds on ecclesiastical and popular attitudes toward the war, which at the time was widely perceived in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe as a kairotic moment, the crux of an international crisis for Christianity and Western civilization generally. It also further illuminates such matters as popular anti-Catholic sentiments, the relationship between members of the Labour Party and Catholicism in England (where a considerable number of Labour Party members, especially those of Irish descent, were Catholics), fear of the bugbear of international communism, and related matters. To be sure, any attempt to gauge the magnitude of the Amigo controversy and the impact he made on his co-religionists must be impressionistic. The British Institute of Public Opinion did not begin to measure attitudes toward the Spanish Civil War until 1938, and its findings did not distinguish Catholics from other people in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, when viewed in historical context, the controversial efforts of this prominent bishop to align his denominational fellows behind the Nationalist cause make manifest the centrality of the factors just listed in the debate of the late 1930's over the perceived crisis in which Catholicism found itself as its future seemed to hang in the balance and Europe slid toward the bloodiest war in the history of the world. [End Page 463] A consideration of Amigo's strident position on the Spanish Civil War, especially in 1936, also directly addresses a pivotal historiographical issue which lies at the juncture of religious, political, and military history. Professor Paul Preston's magisterial 1993 biography of Francisco Franco represents a major contribution to the historiography of modern Spain and a minor addition to scholarly enquiry into Anglo-Spanish relations. With this hefty tome resting on decades of research, he placed the profession squarely in his debt. It is indeed...

The members of Labour: Backgrounds, political views and attitudes towards coalition government and the party system

This study of the Labour Party contributes to a growing literature on members of political parties. We rely on a postal survey of Labour Party members that was conducted in early 2003. In this paper we examine Labour Party members in terms of their backgrounds and compare them with those who voted for the Labour Party in the 2002 general election. There is evidence of regeneration in party membership but that people are joining the party later in the lifecycle than previous generations. Labour Party members are active within their party and they feel they have a voice in how the party is run. Party members themselves are divided in terms of a trade‐off between achieving office and policy goals. However, Labour Party members have a clear picture about which of the other Irish parties and politicians they prefer.

Ambassadors in the Community? Labour Party Members in Society

A political party's members are its ambassadors in the wider community. Based on a survey of Labour party members in Nuneaton, this article investigates the extent to which party members qua party members are visible amongst their friends and colleagues. It finds that there are few closet Labour party members. Most are known to friends and (slightly less commonly) colleagues. Party members also articulate a political message, discussing politics with friends and work colleagues. Around half of party members believe that they influence others as a result of their discussions; of those who are asked their opinions by friends, almost three-quarters believe that they influence others. Labour party members in Nuneaton are thus a visible and articulate manifestation of the party. The article ends by considering whether this is likely to be true in other constituencies, for other parties, and at other times

Modelling the Decision to Donate by Individual Party Members

Models of political participation frequently treat financial donations in the same way as other forms of political activity. This article argues that they should be examined in a different way since they may be regarded for some as the antithesis of conventional participation. Using data from the studies of Labour and Conservative party members, it tests the hypothesis that donations are a means of contracting out of other forms of participation. The model works well in the case of Labour party members and partially in the case of the Conservatives.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The True Law of Kingship. Concepts of Monarchy in Early Modern Scotland. By J. H. Burns. Law‐Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England. The Parliament of England, 1584–1601. By David Dean. The Right to be King. The Succession to the Crown of England, 2603–1714. By Howard Nenner. A Taste for Empire and Glory. Studies in British Overseas Expansion, 1660–1800. By Philip Lawson. Officials of the Royal Household, 1660–1837. Part 1: Department of the Lord Chamberlain and Associated Offices. Compiled by J. C. Sainty and R. O. Bucholz. From Patriots to Unionists. Dublin Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism, 1660–1840. By Jacqueline Hill. Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870. By David Eastwood. ‘Scotland's Ruine’. Lockhart of Camwath's Memoirs of the Union. Edited by Daniel Szechi. Parties, Patriots and Undertakers. Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland. By Patrick McNally. Illusory Consensus. Bolingbroke and the Polemical Response to Walpole 1730–1737. By Alexander Pettit. Edmund Burke. A Life in Caricature. By Nicholas K. Robinson. The Younger Pitt. The Consuming Stmale. By John Ehrman. Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury. By John Hostettler. Party, State and Society. Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820. Edited by Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor. Education Act Forster. A Political Biography of W. E. Forster (1818–1886). By Patrick Jackson. The Transformation of British Politics, 1860–1995. By Brian Hamson. The Rise of Socialism in Britain, c.1881–1951. By Keith Laybourn. A History of the British Labour Party. By Andrew Thorpe. Generating Socialism. Recollections of L in the Labour Party. By Daniel Weinbren. The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain. Edited by S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting. Jennie Lee. A Life. By Patricia Hollis. Remaking the Labour Party From Gaitskell to Blair. By Tudor Jones. The Labour Party. ‘Socialism’ and Society Since 1951. By Steven Fielding. ideas and Policies under Labour 1945–1951. By Martin Francis. Labour and conservative Party Members, 1990–92. Social Charactetistics, Political Attitudes and Activities. By Patrick Seyd, Paul Whiteley and Jon Parry. How Scotland Votes. Scottish Parties and Elections. By Lynn Bennie, Jack Brand and James Mitchell.

Brotherhood and the brothers: Responses to ‘coloured’ immigration in the British Labour Party c. 1951–1965

This article attempts to explain the variegated response of British Labour Party members to post‐war ‘coloured’ Commonwealth immigration. Most accounts consider that, by the early 1960s, Labour had abandoned its ‘principled’ support for unrestricted entry for electoral reasons, something which betrayed an inherent ‘racism’. This view has some merit, but it oversimplifies a matter which exposed a deep‐set uncertainty about Labour's ultimate purpose, one shared by other parties of the European Left. Was Labour—as its revisionist leaders and left‐wing activists believed—the bearer of progressive, universal values? Or was it simply the agent for the material improvement of manual workers, a majority of whom viewed coloured immigrants as a threat to their own well‐being? Thus, this article contends, Labour members’ reaction to coloured immigration can only be fully understood with reference to the contested nature of ‘Labourism’.

The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain: A Spiral of Demobilization?

Changes in activism among grassroots members of the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain are modelled using panel surveys in this article, with party members being surveyed before and after the 1992 general election. The evidence suggests that a decline in activism over time has occurred in both parties, but this decline is greater in the Labour party than in the Conservative party. This is attributed to a number of political, cultural and sociological changes in society over time, but in the short run the main factor is the outcome of the general election in 1992. These trends are modelled by means of a ‘general incentives’ theory of activism, which explains the decline in activism in terms of changing incentives for political action. Reductions in incentives for activism were, with one exception, greater for Labour party members than for Conservatives, which explains the differences between the two parties. This may produce a ‘spiral of demobilization’ in which electoral losses produce a decline in activism and campaigning at the local level, which in turn leads to further electoral losses.

Labour and conservative party members, 1990-92: social characteristics, political attitudes and activities

Partisanship social class market research grading subjective class completion of education annual income employment sector economic sector trade union membership gender, age, religion, tenure.

Rhetoric and the Spread of the Discourse of Thatcherism

This paper puts forward a model of processes of discourse and rhetoric as a way of understanding the attempt of Thatcherism to create a new common sense in British society. The theoretical model is first presented. This includes a notion of the role of a special type of rhetoric (consisting of key words and formulaic phrases) in discursive processes and a notion of the active part played by language users in reproducing and transforming discourses. The aim is to draw a link between macro-processes of social and cultural change and micro-processes of everyday language use. The roots of the rhetoric in the genre of the everyday world facilitate take-up by the mass media and the public and thus the penetration of the discourse of Thatcherism into the language of individual language users. The empirical study which is then presented focuses on the role of one key word, choice, in reproducing and restructuring the discourse of Thatcherism in different sociopolitical domains: official Conservative Party texts and official Labour Party texts (speeches by Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members to the Annual Party Conferences in 1991), print and broadcast news media (news coverage of the Conferences), the arguments of grass-roots Labour Party members (1991) and grass-roots Conservative Party members (1991 and 1992). It was found that in all the domains studied, the discourse of Thatcherism was reproduced and transformed through the selective use by language users of choice in collocation with other rhetorical terms. A degree of resistance to the discourse was also found. The paper concludes with a short account of the fate of Thatcherist discourse in the UK since the time of the study.

Rationality and party activism: Encompassing tests of alternative models of political participation

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to test a rational actor model of political participation against rival models to see which provides the best theoretical account of participation. This is done using data from the first panel survey of Labour party members in Britain. The tests use encompassing methodology, an approach to model building which arises out of recent developments in applied econometrics. The rational choice model is tested against a social‐psychological model, and a ‘general incentives’ model which has been utilized in earlier research to explain party activism. The results show that while the rational choice model has important explanatory power, it provides an incomplete account of participation. A ‘reduced form’ model is developed which encompasses the other models, and provides the best explanatory account of party activism.

Labour and Conservative Party Members:Change Over Time

Labour and Conservative Party Members:Change Over Time