This volume of essays constitutes the first history of Labour and left-wing politics in the decade when Margaret Thatcher reshaped modern Britain. Leading scholars explore aspects of left-wing culture, activities and ideas at a time when social democracy was in crisis. There are articles about political leadership, economic alternatives, gay rights, the miners’ strike, the Militant Tendency and the politics of race. The book also situates the crisis of the left in international terms as the socialist world began to collapse. Tony Blair's New Labour disavowed the 1980s left, associating it with failure, but this volume argues for a more complex approach. Many of the causes it championed are now mainstream, suggesting that the time has come to reassess 1980s progressive politics, despite its undeniable electoral failures. With this in mind, the contributors offer ground-breaking research and penetrating arguments about the strange death of Labour Britain.

First published in 1980. This book covers areas of policy interest viewed from a social democratic perspective and each chapter takes a specific issue which would have been of concern to Labour in the 1980s, including some of the more controversial areas. The study reviews various problem areas and suggests policies which are realistic and applicable in the conditions of the 1980s. This title will be of interests to scholars and students of history and politics.

This book tells the story of how the moderate right in the Labour Party, trumped by the left for a decade and weakened by defections to the SDP in 1981, fought back organisationally to regain control of the party by 1985, producing an NEC supportive of Neil Kinnock and ready to expel Militant, introduce One-Member-One-Vote and return the party to electability. It describes the Manifesto Group of Labour MPs, Labour Solidarity, Forward Labour and the all-important but secret St Ermins Group of senior trade unionists, each of which strove to ensure that the party represented Labour voters and trade union members. Written by an insider, it draws on extensive interviews with all the key players and unique access to private papers and closed archives to explain how the moderates triumphed over the hard left.

"We went into the general election with an unelectable leader, in a state of chaos with a manifesto that might have swept us to victory in cloud cuckoo land, but which was held in contempt in the Britain of 1983." It is said that those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them, and though Golding was describing the Labour Party of the early 1980s, he could just as easily have been talking about its situation today. A lurch to the left and a party in turmoil — the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader will, for many, trigger only unhappy memories of the dark days of the 1970s and '80s, when the party was plagued by a civil war that threatened to end all hopes of re-election. In that battle, moderate elements fought the illiberal hard left for the soul of Labour; that they won, paving the way for later electoral successes, was down to men and women like John Golding. In this visceral, no-holds-barred account, Golding describes how he took on and helped defeat the Militant Tendency and the rest of the hard left, providing not only a vivid portrait of political intrigue and warfare, but a timely reminder for the party of today of the dangers of disunity and of drifting too far from electoral reality.