Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party, originally a party of social democracy formed from several groups which first fought a general election in 1895, formally abandoned that ideology under the leadership of Tony Blair in 1994. Essentially a social democratic party, its policies became more market-oriented after the landslide election victory of 1997. Tony Blair won two more elections in 2001 and 2005, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown in 2007. After thirteen years in power, the party lost the general election of May 2010. Since September 2010 the party leader has been Ed Miliband.

Overview

The Labour party has made a stepwise transition from an initial conviction that social justice could be achieved only if the state took control of the economic system, to a belief that it could better be achieved if state control were confined to the effective provision of those services that could not otherwise be provided; and if the state were used as a means of helping the individual to "overcome limitations unfairly imposed by poverty, poor education, poor health, housing and welfare". The party's initial success in establishing parliamentary representation depended upon the support that it obtained from the trades unions, and its relation with them has since made a stepwise transition from near total dependence to near total independence. The transition of the British electoral system from restricted suffrage to universal suffrage, was a factor in the early growth of the party's parliamentary representation, and subsequent variations in its numbers have been influenced by non-idealogical factors including its leaders' personal conduct and performance, the influence of the media, the vagaries of the voting system, and a variety of unrelated episodes. The party is currently engaged in a review of its policies following its electoral defeat in March 2010.

Political philosophy

The founders of the Labour party were a small group of well-to-do thinkers who were driven by humanitarian concern to question the system that was responsible for the sufferings of the Victorian middle class. The class barriers of the time might have concealed those sufferings from them but for the fictional writings of Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy, and the meticulous reporting of Frederick Engels. They decided that the system must change, but were convinced that the necessary change could be brought from within the political system, rather than by the revolutionary methods favoured by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx. Like them, however, the intellectuals of the Fabian Society concluded that social justice required the public control and management of industry and business - although their policy proposals, (as reflected in the original Clause IV of the Labour party's constitution) were less prescriptive than Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto policies.

A century later, the architects of New Labour were representing its proposed "top to bottom reorientation" of the party's policies as the adoption of a modern way of pursuing the same objectives as the party's founders, arising from a need to "separate conceptually, a commitment to our values (timeless) from their application (time-bound)". During the intervening years there had been swings of opinion towards and away from central management of industry. No move in either direction was made by minority Labour governments of the 1930s, but the economic breakdown of the depression of the 1930s had convinced even the Conservative Harold Macmillan of the need for national economic planning - a widely-held belief that was reinforced by wartime planning achievements. After the extensive programme of nationalisation by the Attlee administration (and its subsequent defeat), opinion began to swing in the opposite direction, however. The new party leader, Hugh Gaitskell made an unsuccessful first attempt to remove the party's "Clause IV" commitment to nationalisation, and the former Cabinet Minister Anthony Crosland published a seminal book that questioned the case for nationalisation and argued that "Socialism ... will not be brought much nearer by nationalising the aircraft industry. A higher working-class standard of living, more effective joint consultation, better labour relations, a proper use of economic resources, a wider diffusion of power, a greater degree of co-operation, or more social and economic equality ..." . The party's final attempt to intervene in industrial management was a brief, and totally unsuccessful attempt in 1964 to obtain voluntary private sector participation in a "National Plan".

History

New Labour

Tony Blair was elected as the Leader of the Labour Party in July 1994 after the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. In 1995, he persuaded the party to amend its constitution; the annual Conference voted to replace the controversial Clause IV (see box), which had been drafted by Sidney Webb and had been party policy since 1918. The redrafting marked a radical break with traditional policies, and marked the emergence of what Blair called "New Labour". The commitment to nationalisation, even though it was widely regarded as rhetoric without practical intent, was widely seen as a major factor in the electoral unpopularity of the Labour Party. The Conservative Party had won four successive general elections (in 1979, 1983 and 1987 under Margaret Thatcher and in 1992 under John Major), and Labour was seen by some as unelectable as long as it retained close links with the Trade Union movement and espoused the rhetoric of pre-war socialism.

Re-assessment

Clause IV of the constitution of the Labour Party declared that one of the aims of the party was: To secure for 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 or service. The new version reads: 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 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.