Labour Party (UK)

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Template:Infobox British Political Party The Labour Party has since its formation in the early 20th century been the principal left wing political party in the United Kingdom (see British politics). It is currently the party of government in the UK as a whole, and also in regional parliaments or assemblies in Scotland, Wales and London. It won by a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, and formed its first government since 1979. It retained its position with another large victory in the 2001 general election, and a smaller one (taking only 35.3% of the popular vote) in 2005.

Labour grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century. The party describes itself as a democratic socialist party, but there has been argument over the years as to whether social democratic or radical centrist are more appropriate descriptions. Under Tony Blair's leadership, the party has adopted a number of neo-liberal policies in the wake of the electoral success of Margaret Thatcher and her ideology.

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Structure

Image:BlairL.jpg The Labour Party is a membership organisation consisting of Constituency Labour Parties, affiliated trade unions, socialist societies, and the Co-operative Party, with which it has an electoral agreement. Members who are elected to parliamentary positions take part in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP). The party's decision-making bodies, on a national level, formally include the National Executive Committee (NEC), Labour Party Conference, and National Policy Forum (NPF) - although in practice the Parliamentary leadership has the final say. Questions of internal party democracy have frequently provoked disputes in the party. For many years Labour has had a policy of Irish unity by consent, and did not allow residents of Northern Ireland to apply for membership, instead supporting the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The 2003 Labour Party Conference accepted legal advice that the party could not continue to prohibit residents of the province joining, but the National Executive has decided not to organise or contest elections there. The party had 201,374 members on 31 December, 2004 according to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission. In that year it had an income of about £29,000,000 (of which £3,500,000 from membership fees) and expenditure of about £32,000,000. [1]

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Early years

The Labour Party's origins lie in the late 19th century, when it became apparent that there was an increasing need for a third party in Britain to represent the interests and needs of the large working-class population (for instance, the 1899 Lyons vs. Wilkins judgement that limited certain types of picketing). Some members of the trade union movement were interested in moving into the political field and after the extension of the franchise to working class men in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party had endorsed some trade union-sponsored candidates. In addition several small socialist groups had been formed which wanted to link to the movement and give it a wider policy. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society (an intellectual group whose members were mainly middle-class), the Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party.

British politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was divided between the perceived 'establishment', represented by the Conservative Party (nicknamed the Tories), and a more radical 'non-conformist' tradition, based around for example Welsh and North Midlands Methodism. The non-conformist tradition was embodied by the Liberal Party under leaders like William Ewart Gladstone and David Lloyd George. After the Representation of The People Act, 1884, most adult men had the vote but about 40% were still unenfranchised, mainly among the working class who would be more likely to support parties of the left.

Image:Jameskeirhardie.jpgIn 1899 a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all the left-wing organisations and form them into a single body which would sponsor Parliamentary candidates. The motion was passed at all stages including by the TUC and this special conference was held at the International Hall, Farringdon Street, London on February 27-28, 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations; trade unions representing about one-third of the membership of the TUC sent delegates.

The Conference created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, and it was to have acted as a body coordinating attempts to elect to Parliament members who had been sponsored by trade unions as representing the working-class population. It had no single leader. In default of any other candidate, the Independent Labour Party's nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united. The October 1900 'Khaki election' came too soon for the new party to effectively campaign. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored, but two were successful: Keir Hardie in Merthyr Tydfil and Richard Bell in Derby.

Two candidates from the Social Democratic Federation were endorsed but the SDF was unhappy with the essentially compromising agenda of the Labour Representation Committee. At the SDF's 1901 conference it voted to withdraw. However support for the LRC among the trade unions was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike. The judgement effectively made strikes illegal (since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions). The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared uninterested in the problems of working people. In the 1902-03 period the LRC won two by-elections.

Image:LabourPartyPlaque.jpg The LRC won 29 seats in the 1906 election, helped by the secret 1903 pact between Ramsay Macdonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone which aimed at avoiding Labour/Liberal contests in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office. In their first meeting after the election, the group's Members of Parliament decided to take the name "The Labour Party" (February 15, 1906). James Keir Hardie, who had taken a leading role in getting the party established, was elected as Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (in effect, the Leader), although only by one vote over David Shackleton after several ballots. In the party's early years, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) provided much of its activist base as the party did not have an individual membership until 1918 and operated as a conglomerate of affiliated bodies until that date. The Fabian Society provided much of the intellectual stimulus for the party. One of the first acts of the new Liberal government was to reverse the Taff Vale judgement.

In 1909 the Osbourne judgement ruled that Trade Unions could not raise funds for political purposes, a move which threatened one of Labour's main funding sources. This was especially detrimental to the Labour party as it supporters were generally poorer than other political parties. The two elections in 1910 saw Labour gain 40 seats and 42 seats respectively. In 1911 David Lloyd George gave MPs a wage of £400 per annum, which partly helped to alleviate the financial problems and the Osbourne judgement was overturned in 1913.

Support grew for Labour during the 1910-1914 period as a result of an unprecedented scale of strike action. Seamen, rail workers, cotton workers, coal miners, dockers and many other groups all organised strikes, with many sympathy strikes also occurring. This increase in action can partly be explained by the recession of 1908-09 and subsequent rise in unemployment, as well as the growing support for radical change among the working-class (such as support for syndicalism). This was no doubt helped by the sometimes heavy-handed measures of the Liberal government; Winston Churchill sent in troops to the Rhondda valley in 1910 to deal with coal miners, resulting in some fatalities.

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The First World War and Aftermath

During the First World War the Labour Party split between supporters and opponents of the conflict. Ramsay MacDonald, a notable anti-war campaigner, resigned as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Arthur Henderson became the main figure of authority within the Party and was soon accepted into H. H. Asquith's War Cabinet. Despite the mainstream Labour Party's support for the Coalition, the Independent Labour Party is instrumental in opposing mobilisation through organisations such as the Non-Conscription Fellowship.

The unease within the Party grew as the First World War went on, and this was reflected in a number of wildcat unofficial strikes organised by Labour Party affiliate, the British Socialist Party. Arthur Henderson resigned from the Cabinet in 1917, reflecting a desire for peace which united the Party. The growth in Labour's local activist base and organisation was reflected in the elections following the War, with the co-operative movement now providing its own resources to the Co-operative Party following the end of hostilities. The Co-operative Party was to later reach an electoral agreement with the Labour Party.

The Liberal Party split between factions supporting leader David Lloyd George and former leader H. H. Asquith. At the end of the war universal adult male suffrage was enacted, together with votes for women over the age of 30. The Liberal split, accompanied by this fundamental change in the system, allowed the Labour Party to co-opt some of the Liberals' support, and by the 1922 general election Labour had supplanted the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives.

Labour's main electoral bases were in the industrial areas of Northern England, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales. Because of the concentrated geographical nature of Labour's support, industrial downturns tended to hit Labour voters directly. Anecdotal evidence suggests that party membership was often working-class, but also included many middle-class radicals, former liberals and socialists. Accordingly, branches in London and the South of England displayed a general tendency to be more left-wing or radical than those in the primary industrial areas. Image:Ramsaymacdonald03.jpg The Liberals remained in turmoil, and there was huge working-class disillusionment with conditions in the post-war UK. Labour formed its first minority government with Liberal support in January 1924, with Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister; the government collapsed after nine months when the Liberals voted for a Select Committee inquiry which MacDonald had declared an issue of confidence but the Liberal electoral base had vanished. The ensuing general election saw the publication four days before polling day of the Zinoviev Letter implicating Labour in a plot for a Communist revolution, and the Conservatives returned to power. The Zinoviev letter is now generally believed to have been a forgery.

Revolutionary tendencies within the labour movement also came under media scrutiny during the General Strike in 1926, the defeat of which caused enduring bitterness among the miners and their allies. The leadership of the Party were seen as a moderate influence during the industrial conflict, which seemed to confirm their respectability and suitability for office.

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The split under MacDonald

Image:Oldlabour2.gif The election of May 1929 saw Labour returned for the first time as the largest party in the House of Commons, and Ramsay MacDonald formed a second Liberal-backed government, though Labour's lack of a parliamentary majority again prevented it from carrying out its desired legislative programme. At this stage the party still lacked a distinctive macroeconomic policy and, with other industrialised countries, the British economy was paralysed by the growing financial chaos caused by the Wall Street Crash in 1929.

The financial crisis of 1931 caused a disastrous split in the party. Proposed cuts to unemployment benefits caused a Cabinet split, with much of the party opposed to the deflationary policies being pursued by MacDonald and finance minister Philip Snowden. Rather than resigning, MacDonald and a few senior ministers entered into alliance with the Conservatives and Liberals as the "National Government" (August 24, 1931). Most of the party rank-and-file went into opposition under the leadership of George Lansbury. In the election which followed, the National government focused on raising fears of left extremism. Labour's seats were reduced from 289 to 46 - a catastrophic result, leaving only three ex-Cabinet Ministers - George Lansbury, Clement Attlee and Stafford Cripps. The ILP under James Maxton disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 1932, removing a substantial proportion of the left of the party from membership.

As the majority Conservatives increasingly gained dominance within the "National Coalition," Labour slowly rebuilt itself, Clement Attlee becoming leader in 1935. While MacDonald's "National Labour" following dwindled to a small parliamentary appendage to the Conservatives, opposition Labour regained most of the party's former electoral support. The hugely influential trade union leader Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee played a large role in moving the party away from its residual pacifism. Labour entered the wartime coalition government of Winston Churchill (May 1940) on terms of near equality with the Conservative majority. Labour's refusal to join any coalition led by Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister played a crucial role in choosing Britain's wartime leadership.

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Post-War victory to the 1960s

Image:Catlee.jpg Image:Haroldwilson.jpg With the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Labour resolved not to repeat the Liberals' error of 1918, and withdrew from the government to contest the subsequent general election (July 5) in opposition to Churchill's Conservatives. Surprisingly to many (especially overseas) observers, Labour won a landslide majority, reflecting voters' perception of it as the party to carry through wartime promises of reform. The results were announced on July 26; Labour won 48% of the vote and a landslide Parliamentary majority of 146 seats.

Clement Attlee's government was one of the most radical British governments of the 20th century. It presided over a policy of selective nationalisation (the Bank of England, coal, electricity, gas, the railways and iron & steel). It developed a "cradle to grave" welfare state under health minister Aneurin Bevan. The party still considers the creation in 1948 of Britain's tax funded National Health Service its proudest achievement.

The deepening divisions which led to the Cold War prompted Attlee's government to make a secret decision to proceed with Britain's nuclear deterrent. Defence became one of the divisive issues for Labour itself, especially the amount of money Britain was spending on defence (which reached 10% of GDP in 1950 due to the Korean War). Aneurin Bevan eventually quit the government over this issue. The government also faced a fuel crisis and a balance of payments crisis in 1947. Labour narrowly lost power to the Conservatives in October 1951, despite winning more votes.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the party became split between moderate modernisers led by Hugh Gaitskell, which were associated with the main trade unions, and more traditional socialist elements within the party. This split, and the fact that the public was broadly content with the Conservative governments of the period, which had preserved most of the changes made by the Attlee government, kept the party out of power for thirteen years.

By the end of the 1950s, the New Left, including such figures as E.P. Thompson, were becoming increasingly influential and this was reflected at a grassroots level, particularly within Labour Party branches in London. Pressure grew on Labour's Atlanticist defence policy with repeated attempts to move the party towards unilateral nuclear disarmament in line with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's agenda. Eventually, in 1960 Conference rejected Britain's nuclear deterrent, despite the vigorous opposition of the leadership. Whilst this was overturned the following year, it indicates the fractured nature of the party at the time.

However, in the early 1960s, a series of scandals such as the Profumo affair engulfed the Conservative government, which damaged its popularity. The Conservative party was also seen as being out of touch with the changing country and the economy began to turn down. Due largely to this, the Labour party returned to government under Harold Wilson in 1964 and remained in power until 1970.

The 1960s Labour government had a different emphasis to its 1940s predecessor. Harold Wilson famously referred to the "white heat of technology," referring to the modernisation of British industry. This was to be achieved through the swift adoption of new technology, aided by government infrastructure and the creation of large high-tech public sector corporations guided by the Ministry of Technology. The general direction of economic policy tended to support a mixed economy. There were no further large plans for further nationalisation. Economic planning through the new Ministry for Economic Affairs was to improve the trade balance whilst highly targeted taxation was aimed at "luxury" services.

Having inherited a "stop-start" economy, events de-railed much of the initial optimism, most painfully when the government suffered from a currency crisis until 1967 when it was forced into devaluation of the pound. The pressure on the pound was intensified by disagreements over US foreign policy. Harold Wilson's refusal to provide British troops for the Vietnam War infuriated President Johnson and as a result of this, the US government felt little obligation to support the British pound. For much of the remaining Parliament, the government followed strict controls in public spending, including some austerity measures which caused consternation amongst the Party membership and trades unions.

They introduced several social changes, such as the partial legalisation of homosexuality and the abolition of the death penalty. For the first time, legislation was introduced to improve race relations and reduce racial discrimination. Meanwhile, Wilson's most proud legacy was the Open University. In his defence, his supporters could also point to the ending of means testing for supplementary social benefits, the linking of pensions to earnings and the provision of benefits relating to industrial injury.

In the 1970 general election, Edward Heath's Conservatives narrowly defeated Harold Wilson's government, reflecting some disillusionment with the government amongst many who had voted Labour in 1966. Wilson's party won power again in February 1974. After possessing a minority government, they achieved a small majority in a second general election in October 1974, also under Harold Wilson.

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The 1970s

The 1970s proved to be a disastrous time to be in government. Faced with a world-wide economic downturn and a badly suffering British economy, the Government was forced to take an interventionist approach, and companies such as British Leyland were nationalised to prevent their collapse. Pressure on the pound sterling compounded these problems and by the middle of the decade one and a half million people were unemployed in the UK - a previously unthinkable figure.

The Labour Party had adopted a left-wing agenda, Labour's Programme 1973, a document which pledged to bring about a 'fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.' This programme referred to a 'far reaching Social Contract between workers and the Government.'

Wilson publicly accepted many of the left-wing implications of the Programme but the condition of the economy allowed little room for manouevre. In government, the Social Contract became an important mechanism for a voluntary pay policy whereby trades unions would moderate their pay demands in response to Government which acted in the interests of the working class. Therefore, despite the economic difficulties faced by the 1970s Labour governments, enduring social democratic reforms were successfully pursued, among them, the introduction of child benefit and redundancy pay.

The 1970s were dogged by a host of industrial problems, including widespread strikes and trade union militancy. The Labour Party's close ties to the increasingly unpopular trade unions is cited as a cause of the party's gradual loss of support throughout the decade. The membership was becoming increasingly vocal and left-wing in this period, illustrated by the rowdy nature of Party Conference.

In 1976, citing his desire to retire on his sixtieth birthday, Wilson stood down as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister, and was replaced by James Callaghan. He immediately removed many of the left-wingers and Wilson supporters such as Barbara Castle from the Cabinet. In the autumn of 1976 the Labour Government felt obliged to go to the IMF for a loan to ease them through their financial troubles. Conditions attached to the loan meant the adoption of a more liberal economic programme by the Labour Government, meaning a move away from the party's traditional policy base.

In the same year as Callaghan became leader, the party in Scotland suffered the breakaway of two MPs into the Scottish Labour Party (SLP). This breakaway was prompted by dissatisfaction with the lack of progress being made by the government on delivery of a devolved Scottish Assembly. Whilst ultimately the SLP proved no real threat to the Labour Party's strong Scottish electoral base it did show that people were beginning to think of breaking with the mainstream UK Labour Party. The issue of Scottish devolution became increasingly fraught, especially after the discovery and exploitation of North Sea Oil which signalled the turning point of the UK economy after 1978.

Ultimately, the economic problems facing the Labour Government of the 1970s, and the political difficulties of Scottish and Welsh devolution, proved too great for it to surmount despite an arrangement negotiated in 1977 with the Liberals known as the Lib-Lab Pact. In 1979, they faced the disastrous "Winter of Discontent", and in the 1979 general election they suffered electoral defeat to the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher.

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The Thatcher years

The aftermath of the election defeat in 1979 provoked a period of bitter internal rivalry in Labour. From the mid 1970s, the party had became bitterly divided between left wingers under Michael Foot and Tony Benn, whose supporters dominated the party organisation at grassroots level, and right wingers under Denis Healey. After the defeat, the left had the upper hand when it asserted that the government had become unpopular because it had alienated its base by compromising, and needed to regain it by moving to a more left-wing policy.

The Thatcher government followed an uncompromising approach, and the deflationary Budget of 1980 led to cuts in welfare spending and a massive rise in unemployment. State assistance for struggling industries was dropped, leading to recession and massive redundancies in many Labour-supporting regions of the country. However, legislation extending the right to buy council houses was attractive to many Labour voters, having previously been referred to in Labour's 1970 election manifesto.

The election of CND veteran Michael Foot to the leadership disturbed many on the Atlanticist right of the Party. Other changes increased their concern; the constituencies were given the ability to easily deselect sitting MPs and a new voting system in leadership elections was introduced. This gave party activists and affiliated trade unions a vote. It led to the decision by the Gang of Four (former Labour cabinet ministers) on January 26, 1981 to issue the 'Limehouse Declaration', and then to form the Social Democratic Party. The Gang of Four were Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers. The departure of even more right-wingers further swung the party to the left, but not quite enough to allow Tony Benn to be elected as Deputy Leader when he challenged for the job at the September 1981 party conference. In response to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the party committed itself to "campaign actively" for a United Ireland.

The system for electing the leader changed from a ballot of Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) members, to an electoral college-style system, where affiliated organisations took a 40% weighting, whilst constituency Labour Parties and the PLP took a weighting of 30% each.

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1983

Image:Labour83.GIF Led by Michael Foot, who was increasingly unpopular with the public, the party went into the 1983 general election with a manifesto dominated by the politics of the party's left-wing, but considered by some socialists to be too watered down by Foot's indecisiveness and pressure from the party's right-wing to be truly convincing. The manifesto contained pledges to unilaterally disarm Britain's nuclear deterrent, withdraw from the European Community (EC), and pledged a programme of mass nationalisation of industry. A symptom of the divisions in the party was that the leading members of the right-wing had not resisted the manifesto, because they hoped that what they saw as an impending inevitable landslide defeat would discredit the policies. The 1983 manifesto was famously described by the senior Labour politician Gerald Kaufman as being 'the longest suicide note in history'.

The right-wing press wasted no time in attacking the party's manifesto and the style of campaigning which the Party adopted, which tended to rely upon public meetings and canvassing rather than media. By contrast, the Conservatives ran a slick campaign which played on fears of a repeat of the Winter of Discontent. Labour's chances of electoral success were further damaged by the fact that the Thatcher government's popularity was on the rise after successfully guiding the country to victory in the Falklands War. This bolstered Thatcher who had been low in the polls due to a severe economic downturn.

After suffering a landslide defeat at the 1983 election, Michael Foot immediately resigned. He was replaced by Neil Kinnock, who though initially a firebrand left-winger, had generally supported Foot and was seen as a more pragmatic leader. Through his leadership Kinnock progressively moved the party to the centre. With the defeat of the miners in 1984 and the Conservative Government carrying out a raft of privatisations, the political environment was becoming increasingly hostile to organised labour, reflected in trades union legislation which gave members an opt-out clause from the political levy. Neil Kinnock vastly intensified moves to expel left groups such as the Militant Tendency which represented left-wing views no longer supported by the party leadership, and further changed party policy to support EC membership. From 1985, Peter Mandelson as Director of Communications modernised the party's image.

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1987

At the 1987 general election, the party was again defeated in a landslide, but had established itself as the clear challengers to the Conservatives and had fought an effective campaign. Kinnock easily retained the party leadership when challenged from the left in 1988 and continued his reform of the party. The resulting Policy Review was offered as a single document for approval or disapproval. By accepting the conclusions, The Labour Party ceased to be unilateralist in early 1989, which contradicted individual Conference decisions.

During this time the Labour party abandoned its links to high taxation and old style nationalisation, which aimed to show that the party was moving away from the left wing of the political spectrum and moving towards the centre. It also became actively pro-European, supporting further moves to European integration.

Re-organisation of the Party organisation resulted in the dissolution of the Labour Party Young Socialists, which was thought to be harbouring entryist Militant groups. It also resulted in a more centralised communication structure, enabling a greater degree of flexibility for the leadership to determine policy, react to events and direct resources.

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1992

By the time of the 1992 general election, the party had reformed to such an extent that it was perceived as a credible candidate for government. Most opinion polls during the campaign showed the party with a slight lead over the Conservatives although rarely with a lead sufficient to give a majority. However, the party ended up 8% behind the Conservatives in the popular vote, a result which was considered one of the biggest surprises in British electoral history. In the party's post mortem on why it had lost, it was considered that the 'Shadow Budget' announced by John Smith had opened the way for Conservatives to attack the party for wanting to raise taxes. In addition Neil Kinnock's seeming triumphalism at a party rally in Sheffield eight days before polling day gave the impression that victory had already been achieved.

Kinnock resigned after the defeat, blaming the overwhelming preponderance of Conservative-supporting newspapers for Labour's failure. John Smith, despite his involvement with the Shadow Budget, was easily elected to succeed him over Bryan Gould who was identified with the soft left. Smith's leadership saw a degree of tension between those who preferred progressive change and others who identified as 'modernisers' and advocated a further wholesale revision of the party's stance. At the 1993 conference, Smith successfully changed the party rules so that trade unions had less say in the selection of candidates to stand for Parliament, by introducing a one member, one vote system but only just carried the day after a barnstorming speech by John Prescott and compromising on other matters in individual negotiations. However in May 1994, Smith died suddenly from a heart attack.

The new electoral system, introduced in time for the election caused by Smith's death, removed the 'block voting' previously in use whereby trade unions cast all their votes one way or another. Instead, members of the unions, and individual members were polled directly, making up two thirds of the weight given in the electoral college, whilst the PLP took the other third.

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New Labour

Image:BBC Education - AS Guru - Blair devil eyes.jpg "New Labour" is an alternative branding for the Labour Party which originated in 1994. The name is primarily used by the party itself in its literature but is also sometimes used by political commentators and the wider media; it was also the basis of a Conservative Party poster campaign of 1997, headlined "New Labour, New Danger". The rise of the name coincided with a rightwards shift of the British political spectrum; for Labour, this was a continuation of the trend that had begun under the leadership of Neil Kinnock. "Old Labour" is sometimes used by commentators to describe the older, more left-wing members of the party, or those with strong Trade Union connections.

The name "New Labour" originates from a conference slogan first used by the Labour Party in 1994, which was later seen in a draft manifesto published by the party in 1996, called New Labour, New Life For Britain. However the term was intended to incorporate a wider rebranding of the party in the eyes of the electorate. The new name coincided with the re-writing of Clause IV of the party's constitution in 1995. Peter Mandelson was a senior figure in this process, and exercised a great deal of authority in the party following the death of John Smith and the subsequent election of Tony Blair as party leader.

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell are most commonly cited as the creators and architects of New Labour. They were among the most prominent advocates of the right-wing shift in European social democracy during the 1990s, known as the "Third Way". The use of "New" echoes slogans in American politics, particularly those of the Democratic Party, such as Roosevelt's New Deal, Kennedy's New Frontier and Clinton's New Covenant.

New Labour (as a series of values) is often characterised as a belief in 'no rights without responsibilities', i.e. that a citizen should recognise that s/he possesses responsibilities linked with any legal rights they hold. The concept of a 'stakeholder society' is quite prominent in New Labour thinking. As noted above, New Labour thought also embraces the notion of the "Third Way", although critics pointed to the lack of any concise statement of its meaning, and the term later fell from use.

Labour's economic policy sought to balance the laissez-faire capitalism of the Thatcherite era with measures that would lessen or reverse their negative impact on society. One of the most popular policies introduced was Britain's first National Minimum Wage Act, a policy negotiated by Labour's affiliated trade unions in return for accepting the change to Clause IV of the party constitution. Labour's social policy has been affected by the fact that the first New Labour administration had more women MPs than any previous UK government. This is now reflected, somewhat ironically, in the apportionment of ministerial jobs on gender-specific lines, with functions to do with traditional feminine attributes such as family, social services, health, food, education, etc. generally going to women ministers, and those to do with traditionally more masculine things like defence, transport, industry, foreign policy and finance, etc. generally going to men [2].

Tony Blair secured the revision of Clause IV of the party constitution, which had been adopted in 1918, and which committed the party to 'the common ownership of the means of production'. This was widely interpreted in the past as a policy of nationalisation:

"To secure for all the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry of service."

A special conference of the party approved the change in March 1995. The key phrase of the new clause IV is:

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each one of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."

An earlier attempt to modify clause IV, by Hugh Gaitskell, had failed, after which most Labour leaders regarded it as a distraction. Tony Blair was, however, determined to signal his mastery of the party and his complete rejection of those policies, such as nationalisation, which were seen to damage Labour. Image:Labour manifesto 97.jpg The name change coincided with a dramatic revival of the party's fortunes. The "modernisation" of Labour party policy, and the unpopularity of the Conservative government, greatly increased Labour's appeal to "middle England". The party was concerned not to put off potential voters who had previously supported the Conservatives, and pledged to keep to the spending plans of the previous government, and not to increase the basic rate of income tax. Unexpectedly defeated for a fourth consecutive time in the 1992 election, the party won the 1997 election with a majority of 179. Following a period of government and in particular after a second and third election victory in 2001 and 2005, the name has diminished in significance in British political life. The Labour Party is generally referred to in the media as 'the Government' rather than 'New Labour'. However, the name is still used in party literature.

One of the first acts of the Labour government was to give the Bank of England operational independence in setting interest rates, a move that had not been foreshadowed in the manifesto or during the election campaign. Labour held to its pledges to keep to the spending plans set by the Conservatives, causing strain with those members of the party who had hoped that the landslide would lead to more radical policies. In December 1997, 47 left-wing Labour MPs rebelled when the government carried through the previous administration's plans to cut the benefits paid to new lone parents. The government also promoted wider use of Public Private Partnerships and the Private Finance Initiative, which were opposed particularly by trade unions as a form of privatisation.

In practice, the New Labour government were far closer to large corporations and rich businessmen than any other Labour government which preceded it. New Labour attracted donations from companies and rich individuals on a large scale, and often the largest benefactors have received peerages and ministerial positions. This could have influenced the range and type of policies pursued, as many of the Policy Taskforces instigated in 1997 and 1998 found a place for large numbers of industrialists, including Lord Simon, a former chairman of BP, Lord Sainsbury of the supermarket dynasty, and Alec Reed of Reed Employment. There have been various reports regarding the effect of such close links and policies such as Public-Private Partnership schemes, deregulation of utilities, privatisation and the tendency to outsource government services. The policy role of the Labour Party itself in the New Labour government could arguably be described as fairly minor.

The party won a further landslide majority (on a 59% turnout) in 2001, the first time ever that the Labour Party won two successive full terms of office. The second term saw increases in public spending, especially on the National Health Service, which the government insisted must be linked to the reforms it was proposing. Spending on education was likewise increased, with schools encouraged to adopt "specialisms". The Prime Minister's spokesman Alastair Campbell was much criticised by education professionals and teachers' trade unions when he stated that this policy meant the end of "the bog-standard comprehensive".

Labour's foreign policy put Britain at the heart of Europe and tried to keep it close to the United States. Under the leadership of Tony Blair, the Labour Party has been more assertive than previous Labour governments. Equally, the Party has saught to put the promotion of human rights and democracy at the core of British foreign and security policy. Tony Blair managed to persuade Bill Clinton to take a more active role in Kosovo in 1999, and UK forces assisted in the international coalition which attacked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK was one of the allies of the United States that actually participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The decision to engage in the conflict was met with much public disapproval, and many called Tony Blair's credibility into question when doubts emerged as to whether intelligence concerning Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction was at all reliable. This loss of support contributed to the substantial reduction of Labour's majority in the 2005 general election.

The name "New Labour" has been widely satirised. Critics associate the new name with an unprecedented use of 'spin doctoring' in the party's relationship with media. The Conservative Party attempted to tarnish the new Labour tag during the 1997 election campaign using the slogan 'New Labour, New Danger'. After Gordon Brown's budgets became more and more Keynesian, Private Eye began to call the party 'New' Labour. Oddly, it continues to do so even in articles relating an example of privatisation or free-market initiatives by Labour (a frequent theme, especially in Doing the Rounds, the medical column, and In the Back, the investigative section), or other right-wing or neoliberal policies, in which context the ironic inverted commas would be more appropriate around "Labour" than around "New".

In left-wing circles, the name "New Labour" or Neo Labour is used pejoratively to refer to the perceived domination of the Labour Party by its right-wing. Indeed, some socialists argue that Labour has become so fond of neo-liberal policies it is Thatcherite rather than Democratic Socialist.

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The Labour Party today

Image:LabourCampaignPoster20050115 CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg

The party's popularity has declined since 2001 with a sharp drop in membership reported. Nevertheless, Labour won the 2005 general election with a reduced majority of 66 (now 64 following a by-election loss to the Liberal Democrats), despite only taking 35.3% of the popular vote. Tony Blair has said he will serve a full third term, which implies that he will retire in 2010 at the very latest. However, he has recently faced defeat in the House of Commons over controversial policies, and his authority is increasingly coming under question in the media and on the Labour back-benches.

It is likely that Blair will retire earlier than that to allow time for his successor to settle in before another election campaign. If the pattern of recent elections is followed, the next election will be held on June 11, 2009 to coincide with elections to the European Parliament. This would suggest the announcement of Blair's resignation by Summer 2008 to allow for the leadership election and a "coronation" at the party conference in the autumn. Following the alleged Granita agreement, Gordon Brown, the long serving Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been widely expected to succeed Blair and become Labour Leader and Prime Minister.

Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has said recently he expects there to be a leadership contest when Tony Blair steps down. Potential competitors to Gordon Brown could be current Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, or Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt. Also many tip Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, David Miliband, to be Blair's real preference to succeed him.

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Leaders of the Labour Party since 1906

From 1906 until 1922 the leader was formally "Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party".

From 1922 until 1970, the leader was formally "Leader of the Labour Party" and "Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party". However these two posts were occasionally split, usually when the party was in government or when the leader of the party did not sit in the House of Commons.

Arthur Henderson lost his seat in the Commons a couple of months after becoming leader. For the remainder of his leadership, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party was George Lansbury.

In 1970, the posts of "Leader of the Labour Party" and "Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party" were split with the latter having no policy role.

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Deputy leaders of the Labour Party since 1922

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See also

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Further reading

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External links

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