The New Labour project was not conjured up out of thin air — it only looks that way because of the party's amnesia about the intellectual roots and political traditions which have guided it. This book provides extracts from fifteen thinkers and politicians located within the revisionist tradition as an antidote to that amnesia. It is an 'all star cast' from R.H. Tawney, Hugh Gaitskell and Anthony Crosland to Roy Hattersley, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. The collection demonstrates that Labour's revisionism is not a rigid body of doctrine but a 'cast of mind' that distinguishes between core values (ends) and policy instruments (means) — revisionist thinkers are engaged in the continuous pursuit of policy innovation, never shrinking from abandoning policies that fail to achieve the desired ends. All successful Labour governments have been determined to avoid the confusion of means and ends. These essays show a determination throughout the party's history to debate and discuss political ideas in the cause of a fairer, more equal society. Fully updated and revised edition.

This study is concerned with the ‘Old’ Labour right at a critical juncture of social democratic and Labour politics. It attempts to understand the complex transition from so-called ‘Old Right’ to ‘New Right’ or ‘New Labour’, and locates at least some of the roots of the latter in the complexity, tensions and fragmentation of the former during the ‘lean’ years of social democracy in the 1970s. The analysis addresses both the short and long-term implications of the emerging ideological, organisational and political complexity and divisions of the parliamentary Labour right and Labour revisionism, previously concealed within the loosely adhesive post-war framework of Keynesian reformist social democracy. It establishes the extent to which ‘New’ Labour is a legatee of at least some elements of the disparate and discordant Labour right and tensions of social democratic revisionism in the 1970s. In so doing, it advances our understanding of a key moment in the development of social democracy and the making of the contemporary British Labour Party.

Britain’s first Labour government took office on 22 January 1924. Its centenary provides an opportunity to reassess the party's performance over the last 100 years, and with an election pending, the character and purpose of the modern party. Labour defined the dominant political settlement of much of the Twentieth Century: the welfare state. It has achieved much in pursuit of material change, social reform and equality. It has challenged patriarchy, racism and the legacy of imperialism, promoted human rights and delivered democratic and constitutional renewal. Yet any honest assessment must acknowledge a century littered with failures and missed opportunities. In this compelling book, Jon Cruddas, one of the country's foremost experts on Labour politics, details the vivid personalities and epic factional battles, the immense achievements and profound disappointments that define a century of Labour. Uniquely framed around competing visions of socialist justice within the Party, he provides a way to rethink Labour history, the divisions and factions on the left and to reassess key figures at the helm of the movement from Keir Hardie through to Keir Starmer.

This book traces the economic ideology of the UK Labour Party from its origins to the current day. Through its analysis, the book emphasises key crises, including the 1926 General Strike, the 1931 Great Depression, the 1979 Winter of Discontent and the 2007/2008 economic crisis. In analysing this history, the ideology of the Labour Party is examined through four core themes: • the party’s definition of socialism; • the role of the state in economic decision making; • the party’s understanding of inequalities; and • its relationship with the trade union movement. The result is a systematic exploration of the drivers and key ideas behind the Labour Party’s economic ideology. In demonstrating how crises have affected the party’s economic policy, the book presents a historical analysis of the party’s evolution since its formation and offers insights into how future changes may occur.

Higher education provision is an essential component (socially as well as economically) of modern social structures. British Labour and Higher Education focuses on the development of Labour policy on higher education from 1945 to 2000. It analyses the rapid expansion and series of fundamental transformations in higher education and Labour's part in both shaping and reacting to them. The authors explore the historical evolution and Labour's varying policy initiatives in the period, and question the place higher education has occupied in the various strands of Labour ideology. As always with 'Labourism', perspectives are contentious and contested, spanning the centralist 'Fabians', the liberal moralists, and the socialist left. How far, if at all, have Labour's policy stances in this area confronted the elite social reproduction functions of universities or the instrumentalist needs of corporate capitalism? Has this policy evolution given concrete evidence to support Ralph Miliband's pessimistic assessment of 'Labourism' as a political formation structurally unable to confront capitalist social structures, or to see a viable 'Third Way', as advocated by New Labour?

The death of Philip Gould, former Labour Party Communications Director, in 2011 deprived Britain of one of its most acute and well-respected political minds. In this book his friends and colleagues including David Miliband and Lord Mandelson discuss his life from his early years in the Labour Party to his ultimately doomed fight against cancer.

The transformation of the Labour Party by 1997 is among the most consequential political developments in modern British history. Futures of Socialism overhauls the story of Labour's modernisation and provides an innovative new history. Diving into the tumultuous world of the British left after 1973, rocked by crushing defeats, bitter schisms, and ideological disorientation, Colm Murphy uncovers competing intellectual agendas for modern socialism. Responding to deindustrialisation, neoliberalism, and constitutional agitation, these visions of 'modernisation' ranged across domestic and European policy and the politics of class, gender, race, and democracy. By reconstructing the sites and networks of political debate, the book explains their changing influence inside Labour. It also throws new light on New Labour, highlighting its roots in this social-democratic intellectual maelstrom. Futures of Socialism provides an essential analysis of social democracy in an era of market liberalism, and of the ideas behind a historic political reconstruction that remains deeply controversial today.