Labour Party history

Articles about the history of the British Labour Party

The delusion of 100 years?

Blair's "speech" to the trade union leadership during TUC conference - the written version of it circulated to the press - laid it hard on the line. That Blair's administration should act like a left-wing government is, he told them, simply ruled out. Return to a Labour Party seriously influenced by the unions was, he insisted, fantasy. "The idea of a left wing Labour Government as the alternative to a moderate and progressive one is the abiding delusion of 100 years of our party. We aren't going to fall for it again". By "moderate and progressive" he means the sort of profit-serving...

Tony Benn's Diaries 1991-2001

Rosalind Robson reviews Tony Benn’s Diaries 1991-2001, Free at Last, Hutchinson Now is a good time to read the latest volume of Tony Benn’s diaries, beginning as they do with accounts of the 1991 Gulf war and a highly-charged political struggle: at that time over the closure of Britain’s remaining pits. But the 1990s were not great years for socialists. Good to remember it all through Benn’s humane, funny, gossipy, sad (Caroline Benn died in November 2000) and sometimes abrasive late night reflections. The complete set of Benn’s diaries (starting in 1940) is a very interesting historical...

A different sort of Labour council

from Workers' Liberty no.66 In Hackney, east London, the Labour/Tory coalition administration - the first in Britain since World War Two - is making drastic cuts to local services in one of Britain's poorest districts after an unelected council official used Tory legislation to put a halt to any expenditure not mandated by law or required by legal contracts. The Labour councillors' response? To continue the coalition and promise that they're getting the council budget in order at last! The story of the very different Labour council in Poplar - also in east London - in 1919-21 shows an...

The death of social democracy

There is an extensive Marxist literature on what I would call “betrayal”. This began in the lifetime of Marx and Engels; it continued in the 1890s when Kautsky accused Eduard Bernstein of betraying Marxism with his call for revisionism; later Lenin attacked the “renegade Kautsky” for his parliamentarianism and failure to endorse the Bolshevik revolution of 1917; subsequently it was Trotsky who, from the 1920s on, as one of the key figures in the Left Opposition, attacked and vilified Stalin for betraying the Russian Revolution. This literature in the Left Opposition tradition reached its...

We need a workers' government (1980)

In the wake of the 1980 Labour Party conference, which saw an unprecedented rank-and-file surge to democratise the party, Socialist Organiser (forerunner of AWL) called for a fight for a workers' government. From Socialist Organiser no.28, 25 October 1980 Tony Benn drew an enormous amount of fire from the press with his speech on behalf of the [Labour Party] National Executive Committee at the opening of the Blackpool Labour Party conference. To read the hacks, and listen to the baying of the Press Lords, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Benn had delivered a paraphrase of the Communist...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.