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The Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019: Forward March Halted? Dr Patrick Diamond

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The Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019: Forward March Halted? Dr Patrick Diamond Mile End Institute The Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019: Forward March Halted? Dr Patrick Diamond mei.qmul.ac.uk Forward March Halted? ContentsContents Introduction: forward march halted? 3 The cycle of defeat to power 4 The 2010s: Labour’s wasted decade? 6 Long-term problems 8 The lessons for Labour under Keir Starmer 10 Conclusion 12 2 mei.qmul.ac.uk Forward March Halted? Title 01 IntrodTitle uction 01 Title 01 forwardTitle march halted? 01 Title 01 Title 01 Since the Labour party’s birth at the dawn of the 20th century, In both cases, however, the claim of inevitable advance the party was bewitchedTitle by the image of its inevitable march proved delusional. In government after 1945,01 Labour’s to power. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it spoke strategy allowed it to entrench the British welfare state the language of the ‘forward march of Labour’. Following while achieving a more equitable distribution of economic the party’s landslide victory in 1997, New Labour adopted resources. Yet the party lacked the capacity to affect a the narrative and rhetoric of the ‘progressive century’. It was fundamental alteration in the structure of power in the British believed that over the next hundred years, Labour could state, reshaping the political landscape while transforming dominate British politics as the natural party of government, British liberal democracy into a fertile social democracy. My ending historic divisions on the centre-left. As such, the recent monograph, The British Labour Party in Opposition and Conservatives who achieved political hegemony in the 20th Power 1979-2019, examines the party’s fraught and turbulent century would be routed. history over the last forty years.1 This pamphlet offers a short precis and overview of the main themes and arguments of the book. 1 Diamond, P., 2021. The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019: Forward March Halted?. Routledge. Forward March Halted? mei.qmul.ac.uk 3 The cycle of defeat to power The cycle of defeat and recovery begins in 1979 with Labour’s symbolised the dissipation of Labour’s forward march, ejection from office following the economic and political a process that the historian Eric Hobsbawm had already crises of the 1970s.2 The party’s defeat was traumatic, if not detected in his 1978 Marx Memorial Lecture.3 The events unexpected. The Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan admitted: seemingly presaged the realignment of the UK electoral ‘There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there system in the face of major shifts in the class structure, is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you accompanied by the rise of new constituencies of ‘affluent’ say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants workers made apparently wealthier by council house sales and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea- and income tax cuts. change and it is for Mrs. Thatcher’. The loss of office was as At the 1987 general election, Labour fought an energetic nothing compared with the harrowing events of the decade campaign having modernised its image, symbolised by the that followed. Labour suffered a further three consecutive adoption of the red rose. Yet the party was overwhelmingly defeats. In 1981, the party was almost obliterated by the defeated. In 1992, Labour was widely expected by political breakaway Social Democratic Party (SDP), threatening to commentators to prevail given the depths of unpopularity end Labour’s grip on the centre-left vote. Only the First- to which the Tories under John Major Past-the-Post electoral system saved had sunk. Yet Labour was routed once Labour as the dominant force on the again. Pundits blamed Neil Kinnock’s Left of British politics. Even so, the unpopularity with English ‘swing party remained bitterly divided. The voters’, and John Smith’s ‘Shadow leadership spent years embroiled in Budget’ which threatened to inflict a internal factional disputes, such was ‘tax bombshell’ on the middle-classes. its determination to destroy the hard The defeat of the miners A more plausible explanation, however, Left entryist Militant Tendency. Since is that Labour was not yet perceived the 1950s, Labour was weakened in 1985, among the to be a credible party of government. by recurrent intra-party conflict. most cohesive and It discarded self-evidently unpopular Most notable were its divisions over well organised groups policies on nuclear disarmament and Europe, fundamental ideological unilateral withdrawal from NATO and disagreements about the role of in the British working- the European Economic Community the state in the economy, and the class, symbolised the (EEC). Yet Labour struggled in vain primacy that should be accorded to dissipation of Labour’s to portray the economy as safe in nationalisation and public ownership its hands. Moreover, a surprising in the party’s programme. forward march. number of voters in 1992 thought the Even more shocking, however, was Conservatives were more likely to the manner in which Labour was improve the quality of public services apparently ‘losing the 1980s’. Thatcherism proved not to be including the NHS, promoting choice and efficiency. Labour an aberration. There was no easy resumption of the post-war did make gains in the Southern and Midlands’ ‘marginal’ Attlee settlement in the wake of the 1979 defeat. Thatcher’s seats. Yet Britain was a nation scarred by a prolonged project of ‘a free economy and a strong state’ continued to recession having suffered widespread mortgage defaults, structure domestic politics. Meanwhile, Labour’s natural rising personal debt and soaring unemployment. Voters were electoral constituency, the industrial workers of Northern simply not prepared to take a risk on Kinnock’s party. As a England, South Wales and the central belt of Scotland, was consequence, from 1970 until 1997, Labour won only two out eroding in the face of rapid deindustrialisation. of seven general elections. The defeat of the miners in 1985, among the most cohesive In the wake of the 1992 defeat, the political scientist John and well organised groups in the British working-class, Curtice and colleagues posed the question of whether the 2Anderson, P., 1964. Origins of the present crisis. New left review, 23(1), pp.26-53. 3A copy of Hobsbawm’s lecture is available here: http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/78_09_hobsbawm.pdf Accessed 12 June 2020. 4 mei.qmul.ac.uk Forward March Halted? party could ever again win power in Britain: the decline of Labour’s decade-long post-2010 implosion was not entirely the working-class, Labour’s inability to overhaul its policies, unexpected. Parties frequently experience division and alongside the influence of the tabloid media presaged turmoil in the wake of defeat, as the Conservatives did after recurrent defeats.4 Some feared Britain was becoming a one- 1997 under William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael party state, rather like Japan. Such adverse circumstances Howard. Yet Labour finished the decade demonstrably make the Labour party’s recovery under John Smith and further way from power than it began in the wake of Gordon Tony Blair all the more astonishing. By 1997, Labour secured Brown’s defeat. The party was unable to acknowledge, let the largest parliamentary majority in its history, a landslide alone confront, the scale and seriousness of the defeats eclipsing even Attlee’s triumph in 1945. Under the leadership inflicted in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Addressing why that is of Blair and Gordon Brown, the party secured record-breaking so requires an analytical framework that combines the majorities in 2001 and 2005. Never before had Labour won comprehension of structural factors in British politics with two, let alone three consecutive periods of office. The party the acknowledgement of contingency, leadership and the was breaking the spell cast by the Conservatives over British role of external forces. The rhetoric of Labour’s forward politics since World War One. In march implies causal determinism, office, New Labour’s reforms of the an account of history where the constitution and polity threatened economic and social structure drives to permanently disrupt the Tory political change. There are numerous hegemony, dispersing power analyses of Labour’s development outside Westminster while breaking that give primacy to structural forces: the grip of the ‘elective dictatorship’. from class in the post-1945 era to New centres of political authority identity politics and polarisation in the By 1997, Labour secured 5 emerged in Cardiff, Edinburgh, contemporary era. The leadership Belfast and the English cities, the largest parliamentary effect and the ongoing influence of notably London and eventually, majority in its history, a contingent events are consequently Manchester. underplayed. Even so in an age landslide eclipsing even where celebrity politics encourages By 2010, the party was defeated, Attlee’s triumph in 1945. a relentless focus on individuals and bringing to an end its unparalleled personalities, the wider impact of thirteen years in office. That loss in structural alterations in society and the wake of the 2008 financial crisis the economy are in grave danger was less severe than many in Labour of being overlooked. Advancing anticipated. Yet in the cycle of opposition and power, the party our understanding of the Labour party necessitates had come full circle. It spent the next decade embroiled in addressing how structure and agency uniquely combine sectarian dispute, as the Conservatives once again surpassed to shape political outcomes. The party’s defeat in 1983, for Labour as the dominant force in British politics. Ed Miliband example, was clearly the culmination of long-term structural and Jeremy Corbyn battled to reshape the party as a viable dynamics that eroded the Labour vote, provoking class political competitor.
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