Labour Party history

Articles about the history of the British Labour Party

The story of Votes for Women

The first leaflet in Britain to “insist” on woman’s suffrage was written in 1847 by a prominent woman Chartist, Anne Knight. Seventy years later women over 30, with certain property qualifications, were granted the right to vote as part of the Representation of the Peoples Act in February 1918. The fight for women’s suffrage is best known for the militant campaign waged by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and conducted for almost a decade from 1905 to 1914. However, the history of the fight for women’s suffrage goes way beyond those militant nine years and the activities of the...

Learning the lessons of the Labour left

A Party with Socialists in it: a History of the Labour Left (Pluto Press 2018) by Simon Hannah. Clarion editor Simon Hannah has produced a well written and concise history of the Labour left from the party’s inception through to the present day. In 270 pages the book deals with over 120 years of history in quick-fire fashion. It is a useful resource for people on Labour’s Marxist and reformist left. It the first book to try to describe the contradictions and struggles of the Labour left as it enters a phase where a lifelong backbench rebel and obscure Labour left activist could become Prime...

Illusions of Power: The lessons of last time round

In the early 1980s, many Labour councils were committed to defy Tory cuts. Sadly, every single one of these councils backed down in the end. There are many lessons to be learned from that defeat. Today business rates are set by, and channelled through, central government. In the 1980s, councils set and collected rates levied on local businesses. They had more scope to offset central government cuts through these tax-raising powers. In that context many argued that this tax-raising was progressive and redistributive. Socialist Organiser ( Solidarity 's predeccessor newspaper) argued against...

The Russian revolution and the British left

It is February 1917. A large crowd are gathered to hear socialists and pacifists denounce the war. As the speeches start the snow begins fall... The hundreds who assembled that snowy night, looking like a scene out of Dr Zhivago, were not in Petrograd 1917 but in Waterfoot, Rossendale. The rally held that snowy evening was to support the candidature of Albert Taylor, a local anti-war trade union leader and member of the British Socialist Party (BSP) in a parliamentary by-election; the campaign on his behalf (he had been imprisoned at the request of the Liberal party agent) was a coalition of...

How to fight the Labour right

The Labour Party has 600,000 members and Momentum has 20,000. That should be good news for the activist left in the party. Certainly, if the left organises on the scale it did for the two leadership elections that delivered majorities for Corbyn, then it should be capable of making real progress in other Labour internal elections, in getting through positive rule changes which would strengthen and democratise the Party. However it would be foolish to discount the organisational strength of the Labour right and its ability mobilise. That’s particularly a problem because the fall-out and...

A debate about Momentum: Martin Thomas answers Jon Lansman

This explanation by Jon Lansman of recent events in Momentum was circulated in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. Since it contains nothing confidential, and is the only political explanation available from the Momentum leadership other than the article by Christine Shawcroft in Labour Briefing (Feb 2017), which we replied to last week, we reprint it here. Maintaining the centre-left coalition I wanted also to counter the lies and misinformation which are widely repeated by sectarian elements on the Left who wish to turn Momentum from a broad alliance it was intended to be, seeking to...

The history of the Progressive Alliance

The result of the Richmond Park by-election has encouraged more calls for Labour to enter a “Progressive Alliance” to oppose “hard Brexit” and the resurgent populist right. Memories must be short, as only last year the Lib Dems were an integral part of a government attacking migrants, the disabled and the poor. It’s not just an alliance with the Lib Dems that should be opposed. The idea of a “progressive alliance” per se should be also opposed. Labour for all its faults is a mass working-class party. A party that is both structurally and organically part of the broader labour movement. The...

Clement Attlee — the compromising committee man

Aware that the life of the post-1945 Labour leader and prime minister has been done before, Bew’s biography attempts to give new angles on Attlee’s life. He isn’t successful and the search for new perspectives ends up recounting endless Cabinet intrigues, Attlee’s relationship with Churchill, and countless opinions on Attlee from everybody and their uncle. There is so much trivia in these pages that an alternative title might be Everything you never needed to know about Clement Attlee but couldn’t be arsed to ask. For example he spends some time, looking at what Attlee read and how that might...

Changing attitudes, changing the world

The 1967 Sexual Offences Act (which partially decriminalised sex between men in private) was a very partial limited reform but nevertheless progress all the same. However, many Labour MPs opposed that legislation and as far as I know no trade unions supported it. Many other social groups did support law reform in 1967, but no trade union, and even the Society of Socialist Lawyers took a hostile view. Socialist lawyers did begrudgingly accept that there should be some sort of decriminalisation but they also advocated increased policing and repression of the LGBT community to ensure that this...

Trident renewal and the future of the Labour Party

At Workers’ Liberty’s Ideas for Freedom event (7-10 July) Luke Akehurst of Labour First debated Labour left activist Laura Rogers on whether the Labour Party should be in favour of renewing Trident. Luke Akehurst: I’m in favour of the renewal of the Trident system, of buying a new set of submarines to enable the UK’s nuclear deterrent. What is the nature of the British deterrent? It’s a minimum, independent, strategic deterrent. The most important concept here is deterrent. The whole point of having this system is not because you want nuclear war. Anyone who wants that is insane; humanity...

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