A History of the British Labour Party Followed, with Labour Forming Minority Governments in 1924 and 1929

Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 © Andrew Thorpe 1997, 2001, 2008, 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6– 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identiﬁ ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Contents Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 Creation and Early Years, 1900– 14 8 2 The Surge to Second- Party Status, 1914– 22 36 3 Progress and Collapse, 1922– 31 59 4 Remaking the Party? 1931– 39 83 5 The Impact of the Second World War, 1939– 45 103 6 The Attlee Governments, 1945– 51 119 7 Searching for a New Direction, 1951– 64 141 8 Wilson in Power, 1964– 70 162 9 Labour in Crisis? 1970– 79 185 10 Down and Out? 1979– 87 209 11 Modernization and New Labour, 1987– 97 230 12 New Labour in Power, 1997– 2007 257 13 Moving beyond Blair, 2007– 15 285 Conclusion 304 Appendix 1: Seats and Percentage of Votes Won at General Elections, 1900– 2010 319 Appendix 2: Labour Party Leaders 321 Appendix 3: Labour Cabinets 322 Notes 336 Bibliography 367 Index 391 vii Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Introduction When the Labour Party was formed (as the Labour Representation Committee, LRC) in 1900, its prospects were unclear. Yet it sur- vived, and, by the early 1920s, it had eclipsed the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives. Periods in government followed, but they were often punctuated by long periods in opposition, and even – in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s – predictions of demise. Such predictions proved unfounded, however, and 1997 marked the first of three successive general election victories. Even defeat in 2010 was met with a sense that the circumstances had been exceptional and that it had taken a Conservative– Liberal Democrat Coalition to put Labour out of office. And although Labour’s experience of government at national level was episodic for much of its first 110 years, its dominance of the British left since the early 1920s has been close to total. Rivals have come and gone, but no organization has been able to mount anything like a credible and sustained threat to Labour’s pre- eminent position on the progressive side of British politics. By studying it, we can learn a lot, not just about the party itself but also about British politics, and indeed society, more generally. Before 1945, Labour was unable to win a parliamentary majority. The LRC elected two MPs at the general election of 1900, and 29 at that of 1906, after which it changed its name. Although the party continued to develop down to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, it was still not a major party; indeed, the Irish Nationalists won about twice as many seats as Labour at the two general elections of 1910. Labour participated in wartime Coalition governments from 1915 onwards, but in 1918 adopted a new constitution which made it more independent of the Liberals and, having withdrawn from the Lloyd George Coalition, won 57 seats at that year’s post- war general election. In 1922 it became the main Opposition party, with 142 seats, and Ramsay MacDonald was elected the party’s first ‘leader’. Rapid progress 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 2 A History of the British Labour Party followed, with Labour forming minority governments in 1924 and 1929. However, the first lasted only nine months, while the second, battered by economic slump and political difficulties, collapsed in August 1931. MacDonald formed a ‘National’ government with Conservative and Liberal support, which went on to trounce Labour at the polls. During the 1930s there was limited recovery, but a further election was lost in 1935, and Labour would almost certainly have been defeated at the next election as well had not the Second World War intervened. In 1940, however, the National government fell and was replaced by a Coalition under Winston Churchill, in which Labour had more than a fair share of ministerial posts. As in 1914– 18, war suited Labour very well, and the party’s fortunes improved markedly in the next few years. At the first post- war election in 1945, Clement Attlee led Labour to a landslide victory, and his government went on to implement significant reforms. In 1951, however, Labour was defeated, and, after further defeats in 1955 and 1959, was even- tually out of office for 13 years, leading to considerable debate as to whether Labour would ever win again. However, it returned to power under Harold Wilson in 1964 and was re- elected by a very healthy margin in 1966. By 1970, though, Wilson’s government was widely perceived to have failed, and Labour was consigned once again to opposition. Rather fortuitously, perhaps, Labour returned as a minority government in February 1974, and that October was re- elected with a tiny overall majority. A difficult term in office, first under Wilson and then under James Callaghan, ended in defeat, and the victory of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in 1979 ushered in a long period of opposition. The general election of 1979 was to prove the first in a sequence of four successive general election defeats for Labour. In opposition, it tried various strategies, but Michael Foot’s efforts ended in heavy defeat in 1983, while Neil Kinnock was defeated conclusively in 1987 and more narrowly in 1992. By the latter year, which saw Kinnock’s retirement, a major programme of party reform was under way; under John Smith (1992– 94) reform continued, and the Conservative government floundered. When Tony Blair succeeded Smith in 1994, he accelerated the pace of reform, rebranded the party ‘New Labour’, and went on to win a Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Introduction 3 sweeping victory in 1997. Labour won a further landslide in 2001, and even in 2005, after eight years in office and tarnished by an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, Blair was able to lead his party to another comfortable majority. When Gordon Brown succeeded Blair in June 2007, it seemed that he could look forward to the future with confidence. However, such confidence proved misplaced, and his inability to lead Labour to victory at the 2010 general election led to the formation of a Conservative– Liberal Coalition under David Cameron. In opposition for the first time in well over a decade, Labour turned to Ed Miliband, although at the time of writing it remained unclear whether he would be able to lead it to victory in 2015. Naturally, these vicissitudes of electoral and political fortune have led to some wildly varying prognostications as to the party’s likely future. In early 1997, the party could point to only five periods in government, totalling fewer than 20 years. Ten years later, it seemed to be ensconced in power, perhaps for years to come. But, of course, there had been hubristic statements about future domi- nation earlier. In the aftermath of Labour’s 1929 victory, Herbert Morrison claimed that Labour was ‘the miracle of politics’ which was looking forward to rolling back the remaining ‘bastions of reaction’.1 In April 1946, backed by a huge Labour majority and with the Conservative opposition under Churchill in disarray, the Labour minister Sir Hartley Shawcross claimed that ‘we are the masters at the moment – and not only for the moment, but for a very long time to come’.2 And Wilson claimed, more than once, that Labour had become ‘a natural party of government’.3 On the other hand, there had been times of real gloom as to the future. Before the First World War, many had questioned the purpose and prospects of the party; in 1908 Ben Tillett had launched a fierce attack on what he saw as the timidity and failure of the parliamentary party.4 In the aftermath of 1931, there were those who doubted the party’s future prospects, and much of the pressure for collaboration with Liberals, Communists and others in the 1930s stemmed from a pessimistic reading of Labour’s electoral potential.5 The defeats of the 1950s led to academics asking the question ‘Must Labour lose?’.6 And the 1970s and 1980s were replete with doomsday- type predictions that Labour was finished, or at least had no serious chance of ever again forming a majority government.7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40982–9 4 A History of the British Labour Party The vicissitudes of Labour’s history have obviously contrib- uted to the great fluctuations in its historiography.

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