Advanced search

On the Political Economy of the Socialist Transformation

“There are many questions which refuse a reassuring answer. This is no less true within socialist theory. The issue of whether socialists and Marxists should work within the Labour Party has preoccupied the British Left throughout this century. The Social Democratic Federation decided to disaffiliate in the early . . .” read more

Socialists and the Crisis of Labourism

“British politics today no longer lags behind economics. Hitherto, the hundred-year decline of British capitalism’s relative strength in the world economy, so often analysed, so rarely even temporarily checked, has been accompanied by a relative stability of the country’s political system. Of the major imperialist powers, only two . . .” read more

The Choices Before Labour

“Eric Hobsbawm is a distinguished scholar and an original thinker, a historian of the first rank and a Marxist of great eminence. The collection of essays provoked by the Marx Memorial Lecture he gave in 1978 on the state of the labour movement in Britain contains some interesting . . .” read more

Labourism and the Transition to Socialism

“In New Left Review 126 Michael Rustin analysed the constitutional changes currently taking place in the Labour Party and suggested that they contained at least the potential for the transformation of that party into a serious vehicle for socialist advance. Though he was very critical of the narrowness . . .” read more

Solihull: Death of a Car Factory

“Nationally and internationally the motor industry has been catastrophically affected by the present recession. There have been massive layoffs, plant closures and redundancies with little resistance by the workforce. In Britain in the late sixties and early seventies, the workers at British Leyland were considered very militant and . . .” read more

The British Crisis--Can the Left Win?

“We are all learning from the crisis of the British economy, not only about how the economy itself works but also about the links between this and the politics of our society. We certainly need to learn if we are to make an effective political response. For the . . .” read more

Different Conceptions of Party: Labour’s Constitutional Debates

“The Constitution of the Labour Party has for some years been the chosen terrain for an intensifying battle between left and right, over the issues of mandatory reselection of mp’s by their constituency parties, the determination of the party’s election manifesto, and the method of electing the . . .” read more

The New Left and the Present Crisis

“This paper is a reflection on the present condition of the Left, and on its recent history. It is meant to address our current situation, and indeed to suggest action, but I have not found it possible to do this without thinking about previous initiatives of the earlier . . .” read more

The Winter '79 Strikes in Camden

“Revolutionary socialists have traditionally assumed that it is among the strongly organised industrial workers that the first stirrings of a revolutionary consciousness would emerge and have identified this group as the backbone of the revolutionary process. This approach has often made them unable to appreciate the significance of . . .” read more

Reply to Willard Wolfe

“Edward Thompson replies: I did not ‘attack’ Willard Wolfe’s book, but cited it in passing as an example of the facility and confusion to be found in references to William Morris’s political thought in ‘reputable’ academic circles. I could no doubt have found elsewhere a dozen examples equally . . .” read more

On William Morris

“Willard Wolfe writes: May I make use of your pages to protest against the tissue of misrepresentations and outright fabrications that forms the substance of E. P. Thompson’s attack on my book, From Radicalism to Socialism, in nlr 99 (September—October 1976), p. 85? Of course, I have . . .” read more

Notes on British Marxism since 1945

“‘The neo-Marxist Left which now dominates the Labour Party’, said a speaker at this year’s Conservative Party conference. Or it may have been ‘near-Marxist Left’, given the difficulty of ruling-class English with the consonant ‘r’. In other speeches either qualification was dropped: the ‘Marxist Left’ now ‘dominates the . . .” read more

Romanticism, Utopianism and Moralism: The Case of William Morris

“Over the past two decades, my study of William Morris has come to be recognized as a ‘quarry’ of information, although in one or two instances it appears that it was a suspect quarry, to be worked surreptitiously for doctoral advancement. One ought not to object to this: . . .” read more

Workers' Control and the Historians: A New Economism

“Recently a number of labour historians have looked back into the industrial histories of Great Britain and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and have discovered what to them appears to have been the ability of certain categories of skilled workers to ‘control’ . . .” read more

The General Strike: The 1931 Backlash

“The year 1926 and the National Strike brought traumatic experiences for many people and it was then that I became deeply involved in politics as an individual. But when I reflect precisely how this came about I realize that it was strangely connected with some apparently purely domestic . . .” read more

Rejoinder to Jean Monds

“Jean Monds draws a valuable distinction between the workerist belief that ‘the struggle for power at the point of production leads to advances in class consciousness in and of itself and without the intervention of political organization in the working class’ and the correct assumption that ‘the key . . .” read more

The New Unionism

“First, could you tell us how you became a militant trade unionist?” read more

Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution

“John Foster’s Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution is a remarkable contribution to English historiography. It represents both a continuation of, and a stark contrast to, the impressive tradition of social history which has grown up in Britain in the last two decades. If the best work of . . .” read more

Introduction to Motor Stewards Interview

“The following interview explores the perspective of four trade-union militants on the development of the British class struggle in the factory and in society as a whole. In nlr 77 Anthony Barnett surveyed and analysed the upsurge of industrial militancy which culminated in the miners’ strike . . .” read more

Politics and the Shopfloor

“I would like to begin by asking you about this Sports and Social club we are in. It is very well equipped and pleasant but also rather dead. Could it be used more fully?” read more

Labour and the Economy

“Britain’s fifth Labour government came to power in October 1964 at a time of rapidly maturing economic crisis for the capitalist system. The political existence of the Labour Party, as of all reformist, social democratic parties, rests on its ability to gain reforms for the working class within . . .” read more

The Fateful Meridian

“‘The history of a party’, wrote Antonio Gramsci, ‘cannot fail to be the history of a given social class . . . writing the history of a party really means nothing but writing the history of a country from a particular, monographic point of view, throwing one aspect . . .” read more

Memorandum on the British Labour Party and the MLF

“Prepared by Richard E. Neustadt July 6, 1964” read more

Industrial Democracy in Britain

“‘To develop a strategy of advance’ say the authors of this book ‘is the crucial task of the left today.’ (page 407). It is in the search for such a strategy that a new interest in industrial democracy and workers’ control has arisen. This was evident at the . . .” read more

Credo of the Labour Left

“What was your original political formation? What special influences were at work?” read more

The Role of Militancy

“Interview with Hugh Scanlon” read more

The Motor Industry

“Turner, Clack and Roberts have written an excellent book. They show that two distinct general demands have arisen among carworkers: for ‘fair wages’ based on principles of comparability, and for ‘job rights’ based upon a conception of property in the job. Both of these challenge the traditional prerogatives . . .” read more

India and the Labour Party

“Many questions suggest themselves about the influence that India may have had on the Labour Party, a good deal stronger in all probability than the party’s influence on India; about India as one of the taproots of the peculiar British social-democratic mentality. It could be argued that the . . .” read more

The State of the AEU

“Last October the Amalgamated Engineering Union counted 1,146,865 members. This is a powerful total: even if the Transport and General Workers’ Union is bigger, it probably does not include quite so many members working in the growth sectors of the economy, and it almost certainly does not embrace . . .” read more

Witch-Hunt

“Not surprisingly, the Labour Government is trying to protect itself from the consequences of its own capitulations, by seeking to victimize the Left. Wilson’s McCarthyite intervention in the seamens’ strike was followed up by a Downing Street conference between the Prime Minister and Carron together with a coffle . . .” read more

Australian Labour

“Ian Turner’s Industrial Labour and Politics: The Labour Movement in Eastern Australia 1900–1921 is a major re-interpretation of the development of the Australian Labour movement. It is a useful model of the proper examination of labour movements in general and it is one of the few studies in . . .” read more

The Clydesiders

“The task of rescuing the ilp in the inter-war years from the obscurity which shrouds unsuccessful political movements is already well under way; but it is in several ways unfortunate that The Clydesiders should be the first book to be published on the subject. Mr Middlemas has . . .” read more

The Labour Aristocracy

“Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson, in their articles recently published in nlr, have identified the third quarter of the 19th century as the period in which ‘corporativism’ gained its fatal grip on the British working class. The socialist revival of the 1880’s was an aberration which quickly . . .” read more

Labour Imperialism

“Unique among governments of the Left, the Labour Government has done more than fail its friends: it has even disappointed its enemies. Disillusion over its foreign policy is almost universal. The liberal opponents of socialism have been criticizing its inert conservatism for some time; now even the pillars . . .” read more

London and the Revolutionaries

“In a valedictory tribute to the first International in 1874, Engels considered that it had belonged to the period of the Second Empire, ‘when the oppression throughout Europe prescribed unity and abstention from all internal controversy for the labour movement, then just awakening. It was the moment when . . .” read more

The British Left

“Any analysis of the state of the Left in Britain must begin with an analysis of the nature of the Labour Party. For here is a mass party, based on an essentially undivided trade union movement. For at least the last 20 years, it has been always a . . .” read more

The Resurgence of the Labour Party

“After 13 years, the biggest and most influential socialist party in the West has returned to power. What are the likely consequences of this event, in Britain and on the international scene? It is obvious to anyone who has followed at all closely the internal battles and evolution . . .” read more

Labouring Men

“Eric Hobsbawm’s latest book is unlikely to have the general appeal of The Age of Revolution. There are few generalizations; elaborate synthesis is not its purpose. Common themes remain implicit rather than stated. Each essay remains a discrete entity, the connections must be made by the reader. Again, . . .” read more

Draft Proposal for Socialist Centres

“Surely when it was faced with a tacitly hostile Establishment in Whitehall and an actively hostile press in Fleet Street it (the Labour Government 1945–51) should have felt the need for a politically conscious and educated rank and file, such as was beginning to emerge in the . . .” read more

Divide and Conquer

“For three years, Britain lived in the shadow of one dominant fact: the bankruptcy of Conservatism. This was more than a political fact. It was social, cultural, personal: the end of a way of life, a distinctive conception of the world, the end of the peculiar type . . .” read more

The Nature of the Labour Party (Part II)

“What is the main justification of Labourism, put forward by socialists at its birth and still advanced by its apologists? What is the cry that rings out at every Labour Party Conference, to repress all serious dissent and maintain the incredible system intact? That Labourism attains the unity . . .” read more

Workers University

“Surely when it was faced with a tacitly hostile Establishment in Whitehall and an actively hostile press in Fleet Street it (the Labour Government 1945–51) should have felt the need for a politically conscious and educated rank and file, such as was beginning to emerge in the . . .” read more

The Nature of the Labour Party (Part I)

“The British Labour Party is obviously one of the greatest political forces of the capitalist world. With its six million and more members, it is by far the largest of social-democratic parties. The twelve million votes cast in its favour at the last General Election were the votes . . .” read more

The Confed Package

“The behaviour of the National Incomes Commission is beginning to reveal a somewhat subtle intelligence, which needs marking by the Labour Movement. This distinctly backhanded compliment is not intended as a form of thanks for the very substantial increase in university salaries of whichnic has rather unexpectedly . . .” read more

Fabianism and Colonialism

“Dear Sir,” read more

Shop Stewards and Workers' Control

“The growing debate on the question of workers’ control seems to have reached an impasse for many socialists. Doctrinally, the progress made in recent years is considerable, but the problem of a strategy for the implementation of even the first and pioneer stages remains obscure.” read more

Reply to Anthony Wedgwood Benn

“It is a pity that I did not project the organizational work of the Society and its bureaus into the 1990’s and 1960’s (apart from the incorrect reference to pamphlets), thus giving the impression which, Anthony Wedgwood Benn has taken up, that my comments on page 81 covered . . .” read more

Hugh Gaitskell

“He had scarcely drawn his last breath, when the halo was stuck above his head. It was like some preposterous historical mistake. Who would have believed Hugh Gaitskell fit for such an exalted place in the national pantheon? Who, dredging through the speeches and few writings of this . . .” read more

AEU Elections

“The whole course of the next Labour Government may be very considerably affected by the outcome of two trade union elections which are to take place at the beginning of July. The million-strong engineers’ union, the aeu, is choosing its two chief officers, secretary and president.” read more

The Right to Strike

“In a manner which is typical of the way these things are done in Britain, the House of Lords has emasculated the right to strike. This outrageous statement may seem to be a wild echo of something in the Peking Review or a gem from yet another new . . .” read more