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Crosscurrents
After decades of hawkish neoliberalism, the British Labour Party has become the stage for an unprecedented experiment. To what extent has Corbyn’s leadership been able to transform Blair’s party into a vehicle for egalitarian renewal? Can his project survive the maelstrom of the UK’s Brexit crisis?
Luso-Anomalies
How and why has Portugal differed from Spain since the downfall of their respective dictatorships in the mid 70s? The course of political and economic development since the Revolution of 1974 was contained, and its current discrepant outcome: a conventional social-democratic government obliged to break with Euro-austerity under the pressure of a pact with the radical left.
The Portuguese Experiment
The coordinator of Portugal’s Left Bloc traces her trajectory from theatre to the political stage. The prominence of women in the party’s leadership, the social achievements wrested so far from the grip of the Portuguese establishment, and the prospects for extending those gains or seeing them reversed by Brussels and Berlin.
Oppositions
After years of economic crisis and social protest, the cartel parties of the extreme centre now face a challenge to their dominance from outside-left forces in a number of Western countries. Contours of the emergent left oppositions, their platforms and figureheads, from Tsipras to Corbyn, Sanders to Mélenchon, Grillo to Iglesias.
Who Is Delhi’s Common Man?
The Aam Aadmi Party emerged from mass anti-corruption protests to sweep the board in regional elections for India’s capital city. Can its rule in Delhi open up space for popular mobilization on the national stage, challenging the rise of communalism, or will the party be sucked into humdrum parliamentary routines?
Treading Water?
McKibbin argues that New Labour's constitutional tensions are inherited from the Thatcherite project of centralizing power in order to promote a neoliberal political economy; and Labour's previous commitments to devolution. Tocqueville's view of constitutional inheritance and evolution is cited in opposition to Mair's model of a coherent Blairite strategy.
Corporate Populism and Partyless Democracy
Are there more tensions in New Labour’s constitutional reforms than Peter Mair’s model of a ‘partyless democracy’ allows? Anthony Barnett argues that the style of Blair’s government is actually closer to that of a large media corporation—bound to come to grief on the variegated realities of modern Ukania.
Partyless Democracy
New Labour’s rule in the UK is often held to offer a paradox: devolution of power to regions and cities, concentration of power in the central executive and support structures. Peter Mair suggests there is no contradiction—Blair’s project is a ‘consensual’ system above politics, gutted of traditional parties.
New Labour and its Discontents
The week before the European Union summit in Amsterdam, Tony Blair delivered a Thatcher-style lecture at the Malmö gathering of European socialist parties. ‘As I said to the Labour Party a few years ago, we must modernize or die,’ he declared; there was no choice for the European . . . read more
Reflections on Blair’s Velvet Revolution
The comprehensive defeat of the Conservatives in the General Election must be a source of satisfaction, indeed jubilation, to the Left everywhere since the administrations of Thatcher and Major were global pioneers of the free market blight and particular foes of social progress in Europe. In the politics . . . read more
Labour Governments: Old Constraints and New Parameters
It is good to be able to explore again the pattern of constraints likely to beset a Labour Government. For a long time now, such concerns have been definitely off our collective agendas because of the string of heavy electoral defeats for Labour. The bulk of the read more
Supply Side Socialism: The Political Economy of New Labour
Over-arching concepts, like the stakeholder economy, have their value both in determining the ground upon which political debate takes place and broadening the basis of support for the party which successfully employs them. There is considerable electoral virtue in a concept open to disparate interpretations and satisfying a . . . read more
The Disintegration of a Labour Tradition: New Zealand Politics in the 1980s
On 27 October 1990, New Zealand’s Labour government suffered one of the heaviest defeats in the country’s electoral history. Labour lost twenty-seven of its fifty-six seats, and its share of the vote was the lowest since 1931. It was a humiliating but not inappropriate end for a government . . . read more
Trade Unionism in the USA
These are difficult days for the labour movement in the United States, and the situation is even worse for the radical labour movement. Trade-union membership in the non-farm labour force has declined from over 30 per cent in the early 1950s to about 17 per cent today. The . . . read more
The Limits of Labourism: 1987 and Beyond
Labour’s campaign for the next election started on 12 June 1987, the day after the Party’s third successive defeat at the polls. Neil Kinnock said as much, and although many politicians make declarations of this sort Kinnock was for once not indulging in rhetoric. He made a similar . . . read more
A Strategy for Labour: Four Documents
The papers reproduced in this issue of nlr were all submitted to, and rejected by, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. The arguments contained in them reflect some of the concerns and views of a very substantial body of opinion, not accepted by the leadership . . . read more
Proportional Representation: A Socialist Concept
I submit that proportional representation is a fundamental socialist concept. I argue, furthermore, that no socialist seriously committed to democratic, accountable representation can advocate any other electoral system. My argument, however, is completely different from that put by the sdp/Liberal Alliance. When we look back across the . . . read more
Labour’s Future and the Coalition Debate
Slightly adapting Dr. Johnson, we can say that the prospect of political execution concentrates the collective mind wonderfully—on the elementary need to survive. This has been the preoccupation of the Labour Party, especially its leadership, in the wake of its catastrophically poor performance in the 1983 general election. . . . read more
The New Revisionism in Britain
Since the late seventies, and particularly since the arrival in office of the Thatcher government in May 1979, a vast amount of writing has been produced on the left to account for the troubles which have beset the Labour Party and the labour movement as a whole. The . . . read more
The Miners' Strike in Easington
In the summer of 1983 the newspapers were filled with the rumour that the new Chairman of the National Coal Board would be Mr Ian MacGregor. MacGregor had been head of the US mining company Amax which, after its strike-breaking activities at the Belle Ayr open cast mine . . . read more
Canvassing for Socialism
Immediately after June 9th I went round in a daze, feeling like an alien, not a citizen of this country at all. I half expected everybody to have turned bright blue, or to hear military music blasting out of unseen amplifiers. Now, oddly enough, after this initial period . . . read more
Why Labour Lost
Before discussing the post-electoral situation in Britain and its possible consequences for the Labour Party, I would like to ask you just one ‘personal’ question. Soon after you were elected Leader of the Greater London Council (glc) you spoke at a left-wing rally where you shared . . . read more
Socialists and the Labour Party
Labour’s defeat in the General Election offers a profound challenge to the Party. It clearly calls for a period of sober reflection in which a serious analysis of the results can be made. We must forge new links with those too often thought of as natural Labour supporters. . . . read more
The AFL-CIO’s Second Century
The American Federation of Labor celebrated its centenary last year. It is one of the world’s great conservative institutions, with a stability of internal rule and ideology that might make even the Bank of England gasp. Although the United States has had nineteen presidents since the founding of . . . read more
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
An Economic Policy for Labour
This article is written on certain assumptions. Explicitly these are that Labour comes to power in the latter half of 1964, and that it does not before the election add significantly to the sketch of its economic programme in Signposts for the Sixties and in recent speeches by . . . read more
Workers' Control
Whenever the Labour movement is able to abandon the defensive postures which have regrettably come to seem ‘normal’ during long stretches of its history, and whenever, then, it begins to step over the borders of its allotted prerogatives, one begins to hear again the noise of argument about . . . read more
The Labour Commonwealth
In his speech to the Labour Party Conference in 1962 Hugh Gaitskell put the party’s case for supporting the Commonwealth in preference to the European Economic Community in these terms: “It means something to us and to the world. Where would our influence be in the world without . . . read more
Wolfenden in the Wilderness
at the beginning of last year I wrote to a friend, a magistrate and fellow councillor with whom I had for some years worked closely on Ward Committee business and in the local elections. I indicated that, since the next meeting of the Ward Committee was invited . . . read more