Labour Party, UK

Labour Party, UK The main progressive party in Britain since 1918. On 27 February 1900, the Labour Representation Committee was formed in a conference at Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London. It was a federation of socialist societies, such as the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society, and trade unions. Initially it had only two MPs, but in 1906, partly as the result of an electoral pact with the Liberal Party, it gained 30 seats, and became the Labour Party. Its first leader was Keir Hardie, who was succeeded by Arthur Henderson (1908–10) and George Barnes (1910–11). The prewar high point of support for the Labour Party at a general election was 7.6 per cent in January 1910, and it was concerned to shore up its support in seats won. The party split in 1914, when its leader (since 1911), MacDonald, resigned in opposition to World War I, whilst some of its prominent members, such as Henderson (leader again in 1914–17), supported the war effort.

Nevertheless, the party emerged from the war less badly damaged than its progressive rival, the Liberal Party, and won 63 seats in the 1918 Coupon Election. It became the official opposition, under William Adamson (leader, 1917–21), Clynes (1921–2), and again MacDonald (1922–31). This growth in support, to 22.2 per cent, was mainly the result of the influx of working-class voters into the electorate, newly enfranchised by the 1918 Representation of the People Act. Labour also benefited from the collapse of the Liberal vote. During the interwar years, Labour adopted a distinctive political position, through endorsing Sidney Webb's 1918 Constitution, and developing a range of policy commitments. These included a national minimum wage, democratic control of industry, and reform of national finance. The party was also internationalist.

By 1920 its membership had grown to over four million (largely thanks to its affiliation to the trade union movement). It was a major force in municipal politics, and formed its first governments under MacDonald in 1924 and 1929–31. On both of these occasions, however, its efforts at reform were hampered by not having a majority in Parliament, which prevented the implementation of a distinctly socialist programme. The financial crisis of August 1931 split the party. In defiance of his party, MacDonald and some of his supporters formed a National Government with the help of Liberals and the Conservative Party.

Labour's representation in Parliament dwindled in the 1931 elections, when it was briefly led by Arthur Henderson. Subsequently, the party advocated increasingly doctrinaire socialist policies under George Lansbury (1932–5) in the early 1930s. However, in 1940 the party joined Churchill's wartime coalition, when Attlee (leader 1935–55), Bevin, and Morrison were all central to government decision-making. Towards the late 1930s, the party's fortunes had begun to recover at the grass roots, while its support of the Beveridge Report convinced a majority that, while the Conservatives were winning the war, Labour would win the peace.

Buttressed by a landslide victory in the 1945 election, Attlee and his ministers implemented a substantial programme of nationalization, whilst developing the many welfare reforms begun during the war. The party's main achievement was Bevan's establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. Exhausted by its reforms, it lost office in 1951. It was led by the reformist Hugh Gaitskell (1955–63), who tried in vain to alter Clause IV of the party's constitution, which committed it to nationalization. The party did not return to power until 1964, when under Harold Wilson it enacted a wide range of social and educational policies.

Labour lost office in 1970 owing to its inability to cope with the economy, but regained office 1974–9, first under Wilson, and then under Callaghan. This time it faced even worse economic problems, which were compounded by the oil price shock of 1973. Despite significant policy shifts, whereby the party moved away from the Keynesian policies which had been the hallmark of post-1945 economic management, it was unable to control inflation, largely because of its failure to impose restraint upon the trade unions. Strikes by the latter during the 1978–9 ‘Winter of Discontent’, and failed referendums on the devolution of Scotland and Wales, left the party in disarray, and it was routed in the 1979 elections.

In response, under the leadership of Foot, left-wing activists gained control of the party. It came to adopt policies which made it unelectable in the eyes of the public, such as withdrawal from the EEC, increased nationalization, and unilateral nuclear disarmament (CND). This led to a split in 1981, when some senior members on the right of the party left to form the Social Democratic Party. The latter was never strong enough to gain a large parliamentary presence, but its split of the progressive vote was probably Labour's single biggest electoral handicap during the 1980s.

After a further disastrous election defeat in 1983, Foot was replaced by Neil Kinnock, who from 1983 to 1992 moved the party back into the centre ground of politics, abandoning the commitments of the early 1980s, and developing the party's commitment to market forces. Labour still lost the 1987 and 1992 elections, largely because Kinnock's earlier support of the party's pre-1983 policies gave credence to the Conservative warning that Labour had changed in rhetoric but not in substance. To remedy this defect, the pace of reform accelerated under the brief leadership of John Smith (1992–4), and came to a rapid climax under his successor, Tony Blair (1994– ).

Within a year, Blair had succeeded where Gaitskell had failed, by changing Clause IV of the party's Constitution. Calling itself ‘New Labour’ to distinguish this new departure, the party came to express the aspirations of the middle ground, for the first time since the 1970s, not so much through blunt instruments of redistribution as by portraying the party as a more effective guardian of the economy and of middle-class values than the divided Conservatives.

Labour was elected with two landslide majorities, in 1997 and 2001. It benefited from of the continued weakness of the opposition and its ability to keep the political middle ground. This came at a price, as traditional core voters, disappointed by the relative lack of investment in public services, turned their backs on the party in local elections. Also, the over-reliance of the party leadership on focus groups, and its top-down approach to policy formulation, tarnished a party that had thrived on its image of probity and morality in the early years of Blair's leadership. In the first elections to the Scottish Parliament, Labour won, though the use of proportional representation instead of the first-past-the-post system denied it an absolute majority. The central party machine tried to interfere in the elections to the Welsh National Assembly, but it was ultimately forced to accept the Welsh choice for the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan (b. 1939). In both Parliaments, Labour entered a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

http://www.labour.org.uk