Labour Party (Britain)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Labour Party currently led by Tony Blair (b. 1953) has formed the governments of Britain since 1997 through its successes at three consecutive general elections in 1997, 2001, and 2005. It is now a party committed to the “New Labour” ideas of its leader, who maintains a “third-way approach” that accepts that both the state and public enterprise should jointly contribute to Britain’s economic recovery. Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle in their book The Blair Revolution (1996) state that “New Labour believes that it is possible to combine a free-market economy with social justice: liberty of the individual with wider opportunities for all; One Nation security with efficiency and competitiveness” (p. 1).

As part of this strategy Blair forced the party to drop its traditional Clause 4 when he became leader in 1994, replacing it with an amorphous alternative and thus abandoning a commitment to public ownership, playing down the importance of traditional trade-union and working-class demands, and opening up the possibility of the party capturing more white-collar and middle-class support, the middle ground in British politics. He was able to do so largely because of the way in which both Neil Kinnock (b. 1942), leader between 1983 and 1992, and John Smith, leader from 1992 to 1994, had transformed the party after Labour’s disastrous general election of 1983. Gerald Kaufmann, a Labour MP, had described Labour’s manifesto of 1983 “as the longest suicide note in history,” tied as it was to nationalization in the hands of an increasingly left-wing party that was becoming unpopular in the country and that was ultimately out of power from 1979 until 1997.

In the early 1980s the Labour Party was organized into local constituency Labour parties, which were usually dominated by the bloc-vote influence of the trade unions and often could be operated by a small minority of activist members. The trade unions and left-wing activists usually dominated the local parties, and therefore their representatives often held sway in the annual national conference of the party, which often elected a predominantly left-wing National Executive Committee. Fearful that a small extreme minority could easily dominate the party, Kinnock pressed for a number of reforms, including instigating four policy reviews between 1988 and 1991, one of which, Meet the Challenge and Make the Change (1989), challenged Labour’s shibboleth of nationalization. His policy reviews also ended Labour’s commitment to full employment and universal provision within Britain’s welfare state. Kinnock set up committees to be responsible for Labour’s manifesto commitments and policies, the centralizing authority around the Labour leader. Trade union power at the annual party conference was also reduced to 40 percent of the vote, considerably less than the 1987 bloc vote, and the rest of the vote was based upon an individual ballot of rank-and-file members. The method of electing the party leader was changed, and by the late 1980s the voting in leadership and deputy-leadership elections was established on the basis of One Member One Vote (OMOV). Effectively, then, Kinnock centralized power around the Labour Party leader, neutralized left-wing policies, and reduced the power of the trade unions within their local constituencies and at party conference. It was out of these changes that Blair was able to press forward with his more moderate to right-wing agenda of “New Labour.”

The present Labour Party is thus a far cry from the organization formed as the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, which became the Labour Party in 1906. This had been an alliance of trade unions and socialist groups committed to operating as an independent working-class organization within a parliamentary system. Led at various times by James Keir Hardie (1856–1915), Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), and Arthur Henderson (1863–1935), it had emerged quickly, was drawn into the wartime coalition of World War I (then referred to as the “Great War,”) and was able to form its first, albeit minority, Labour government in 1924. By that time the party had become officially socialist as a result of accepting Clause 4 (clause 3d) in its 1918 constitution, which committed it to the public ownership of the means of production. MacDonald’s first government was short-lived, but its essential moderation helped to allay the fears of newspapers that announced the first Labour government’s formation in January 1924 with the headlines “Lenin dead, MacDonald in power.” This government was defeated in the 1924 general election, which was dominated by the Zinoviev, or “Red Letter,” scare, in which what was almost certainly a forged letter was published as evidence that the Soviet Union wished to use the Labour Party to extend the influence of communism in Britain.

MacDonald formed another, minority, Labour government in 1929, but it too was defeated after a brief existence as a result of the mounting economic crisis of 1931, when the Labour cabinet was divided on cutting unemployment benefits by 10 percent. The government resigned but MacDonald continued as prime minister of a national government, and Labour was decimated, cut down from 289 to 52 seats, in the general election of October 1931.

Labour remained in the political wilderness until May 1940, when Clement Attlee (1883–1967), elected leader in 1935, became a member of Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet. Out of office, the party rethought its policies, and partly because of this, and partly because of the leftward shift during World War II, it won the general election of July 1945 with 393 seats and a thumping majority of 146 seats in the House of Commons. As a result, Attlee led his first administration from 1945 to 1950, and narrowly won a second term from 1950 to 1951. These two Attlee governments were immensely talented, with members such as Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), a foreign secretary who pushed for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, and Aneurin (Nye) Bevan (1897–1960), who inspired the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948.

Nevertheless, in the early 1950s the Labour government was divided, and it collapsed after Bevan left in 1951 over his opposition to the threatened prescription charges on medicines. The Labour Party was defeated at the 1951 general election and remained out of office for thirteen years, during which it was divided between its left-wing public-ownership groups and its right wing, led by Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell, who wanted to drop public ownership from his policies. Gaitskell died in 1963, but Labour returned to power under the then moderate, but once left-wing, Harold Wilson (1916–1995) in 1964, and won again in the 1966 general election. However, the Wilson administrations faced serious economic problems, had to devalue the pound, and fell out with the trade unions over how to deal with strikes. Defeated in the 1970 general election, the party brokered a deal with the trade unions in the early 1970s that saw it win two general elections in 1974. Nevertheless, the Wilson and James Callaghan governments of 1976 to 1979 were unable to introduce policies of redistributing income in return for the small wage increases that trade unions were going to accept under the so-called “social contract,” and as a result the Labour Party lost the generalelection of 1979 following the strike-prone “winter of discontent.”

The Labour Party came under the influence of left-wing trade unionists in the early 1980s when led by Michael Foot (b. 1913). However, the disastrous general election of 1983 augured the change of leadership and a move to the right that occurred under Neil Kinnock, John Smith (1938–1994), and Tony Blair. It is now epitomized by the “New Labour” party of Tony Blair.

SEE ALSO Multiparty Systems

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Laybourn, Keith. 1988. The Rise of the Labour Party, 1890–1979. London: Edward Arnold.

Laybourn, Keith. 2000. A Century of Labour. London: Sutton.

Mandelson, Peter, and Roger Liddle. 1996. The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? London: Faber and Faber. McKibbin, Ross. 1974. The Evolution of the Labour Party. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morgan, Kenneth O. 1987. Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keith Laybourn

Labour party British political party, one of the two dominant parties in Great Britain since World War I.

Origins

The Labour party was founded in 1900 after several generations of preparatory trade union politics made possible by the Reform Bills of 1867 and 1884, which enfranchised urban workers. Although the Labour Representation League, organized in 1869, elected parliamentary representatives, they were absorbed into the Liberal party . A Marxist organization, the Social Democratic Federation, was founded by H. M. Hyndman in 1881; but more important for the history of the Labour party was the founding of the Fabian Society (1883) and the Independent Labour party (ILP; 1893). With the help of the Fabian Society and the Trades Union Congress, the ILP in 1900 set up the Labour Representation Committee, renamed the Labour party in 1906. The new party elected 29 members to Parliament in 1906; in the two elections of 1910 it elected 40 and 42. Its strength lay in the industrial North and in Welsh mining areas; the evolutionary socialism espoused by the Fabians was the dominant ideology.

1914 to 1945

At the outbreak of World War I, Ramsay MacDonald led a pacifist wing of the party, but the majority of the party supported the war effort, and the party's leader, Arthur Henderson , served in the wartime coalition governments. Until 1918 the party was distinctly a federation of trade unions and socialist groups and had no individual members. After the war economic depression, the growing political consciousness of the working classes, and the split in the Liberal party gave Labour a national following. In 1918, Labour withdrew completely from the coalition, and in 1922 it became the second largest party in the House of Commons and thus the official opposition.

In 1924 the party formed its first ministry, with MacDonald as prime minister. As Labour was a minority in Parliament and depended on Liberal support, the enactment of legislation proved difficult, and the government's domestic program of unemployment relief and housing differed little from that of its Conservative predecessor. Effective primarily in foreign affairs, the ministry recognized the USSR. The party was turned out of office in Oct., 1924, in an election marked by Conservative exploitation of the Zinoviev letter (see under Zinoviev, Grigori ).

In 1929, Labour formed another minority ministry. MacDonald and Philip Snowden reacted to the severe depression with conservative economic policies that involved reducing unemployment relief. When the majority of the cabinet refused to accede, MacDonald formed (1931) a coalition government, but he and the Labour leaders who joined him were expelled from the party. Heavily defeated in the election of 1931, the Labour party moved slightly to the left, advocating nationalization of major industries and more progressive taxation. In the next few years Labour found new leaders in Clement Attlee (later Earl Attlee ), Herbert Morrison, and Ernest Bevin .

In the early 1930s the party passed antiwar resolutions and advocated collective security through the League of Nations, but it favored aid to the republican government in the Spanish civil war and eventually came to accept rearmament against the threat from Nazi Germany. After the fall of France to German forces in World War II, Labour agreed to join Winston Churchill's coalition government; Bevin as minister of labor and Attlee as deputy prime minister, together with other Labour ministers, took charge of domestic affairs during the war years.

The Postwar Years

In 1945 the party won an overwhelming electoral victory, and Attlee became prime minister in Labour's first majority government. The new government nationalized the Bank of England, the fuel and power industries (coal, electricity, gas, and atomic energy), transportation, and most of the iron and steel industry. It also enacted a comprehensive social security system, which included a national health service. In the areas of colonial and foreign policy, it granted independence to India and Pakistan, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and allied itself with the United States in a strong anti-Communist posture.

Faced with postwar shortages and the problems of reconstruction, Attlee's government encountered severe financial difficulties, despite American assistance. Rationing continued to be a necessity, economic recovery was slow, and the cost of rearmament increased the strains on the economy. The government barely maintained its majority in the general elections of 1950, and the following year it was defeated by the Conservatives.

During the long period of opposition that followed (the Conservatives were returned to power in 1955 and in 1959), the Labour party argued and almost split on questions of disarmament, aid to developing countries, and furtherance of socialism at home. When Attlee and other elder leaders retired and Hugh Gaitskell became party leader, Aneurin Bevan , leading the left wing of the party, unsuccessfully contested Gaitskell's position. Although Bevan was soon reconciled with the party leadership, his supporters continued to urge a policy of diplomatic neutralism and unilateral disarmament, in addition to a strong socialist program. The party's right-wing, on the other hand, argued that prosperity had diminished the appeal of socialism to the average worker and that the party should adopt a broader, more pragmatic program. Gaitskell consolidated his position as leader in the early 1960s, and the party achieved a new solidarity.

The 1960s to the Present

Harold Wilson , who became leader on Gaitskell's death in 1963, was able to lead the party to victory in 1964. He was prime minister until the Conservative party returned to power in 1970. Wilson's administration was marked by a continued decline in Britain's international political and economic position, which gave little opportunity for social innovation.

After 1970, the Labour party, in opposition, again found it difficult to present a united front. The reversal of the party's position on Britain's entry into the European Community (now the European Union ), after having earlier supported it, and a renewed call for further nationalization of industry were indications of a greater left-wing militancy within the party. The party returned to power as a result of the elections of Feb., 1974, but as a minority government. Wilson's second administration began renegotiation of the terms of Britain's membership in the European Community and announced plans for large-scale nationalization. Despite continuing economic difficulties he called new elections in Oct., 1974, and Labour won a small majority. James Callaghan took over as prime minister following Wilson's resignation in 1976.

The party lost power to the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in the 1979 elections and remained in the opposition until the late 1990s. Michael Foot became party leader in 1980 but was succeeded by Neil Kinnock in 1983. Kinnock led the party to abandon some of its traditional left-wing positions but proved unable to achieve victory at the polls. He resigned in 1992 after the Conservative victory in the general elections and was succeeded by John Smith . After Smith's untimely death in 1994, moderate Tony Blair was chosen to lead the party. Under Blair's leadership, the party formally abandoned traditional socialism in 1995 and subsequently won (1997, 2001) consecutive resounding victories at the polls. The party's narrower victory in 2005 marked the first time Labour had won three consecutive national elections. Blair stepped down as party leader and prime minister in 2007, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown . In the 2010 elections Brown and Labour lost to the Conservatives, who won a plurality. Brown resigned the party leadership, and Ed Miliband was elected party leader.

Bibliography

See H. Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–1970 (1971); B. Jones and M. Keating, Labour and the British State (1985); K. Laybourn, The Rise of Labour (1988).

Labour Party. Labour has been the principal progressive alternative to the Conservative Party since the 1920s, forming governments in 1924, 1929–31, 1945–51, 1964–70, 1974–9, and from 1997. The Labour Representation Committee was established in 1900 by a conference of trade unionists and socialists orchestrated by Keir Hardie. Although it won only two seats in the 1900 ‘khaki’ election, the secret electoral pact with the Liberal Party negotiated by Ramsay MacDonald in 1903 helped the rechristened Labour Party enjoy a tally of 30 MPs after the 1906 election.

The First World War (despite the divisions it caused) proved to be Labour's turning-point. Arthur Henderson (parliamentary chairman after MacDonald's resignation on the outbreak of war) entered the cabinet on the formation of the wartime coalition in 1915 and from August 1917 worked with Sidney Webb in devising a new constitution. In 1918 Labour became formally committed to the socialist objective of ‘public ownership of the means of production’ (clause 4); although this served to underline Labour's independence from the Liberals, it strengthened the trade union domination of the party's organization.

Under conditions of manhood suffrage, the 1918 ‘Coupon’ election awarded Labour 63 seats for 2.4 million votes. In 1922 Labour gained 4.2 million votes and 142 seats to become the official opposition. Following the inconclusive 1923 election, Labour briefly formed the government with 191 MPs between January and October 1924, which demonstrated Labour's competence. However the second MacDonald government exposed the financial orthodoxy of ministers in the face of mounting unemployment and the financial crisis of 1931. The resignation of the Labour cabinet in August and the subsequent formation of the National (coalition) Government by MacDonald (with the support of only a handful of Labour figures such as Snowden and Thomas) caused lasting bitterness within the Labour Party. After the disastrous 1931 election (which reduced Labour from 288 to 52 seats) and the disaffiliation of the ILP the following year, Labour began a gradual recovery and won 154 seats in 1935 on 38 per cent of the vote. The unassuming Clement Attlee was elected leader before this election. The participation of Labour in Churchill's coalition government from May 1940 rebuilt its image with voters and Bevin, Morrison, and Cripps played highly visible and constructive roles on the ‘home front’, while Attlee's administrative talents found expression as deputy prime minister. The year 1945 heralded an unexpected landslide victory for Labour, which won 393 seats with 48 per cent of the vote. This strong administration, with Bevin at the Foreign Office, Dalton and then Cripps as chancellor, and ‘Nye’ Bevan at Health, was Labour's ‘finest hour’. Despite economic headaches, notably the 1949 devaluation of sterling, by 1950 the ‘Attlee consensus’ of a mixed economy with a welfare state was firmly established.

Despite achieving its highest ever poll (fractionally under 14 million votes) in 1951, Labour began thirteen years of opposition. The period witnessed faction fighting between left-wing ‘Bevanites’ and right-wing followers of Hugh Gaitskell, elected leader in 1955. In response to three successive (and widening) election defeats, Gaitskell unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the conference to abandon ‘clause 4’ in 1959. The following year, Labour's anti-war tradition resurfaced in conference support for unilateral nuclear disarmament (reversed in 1961).

However, a tottering economy together with Harold Wilson's invigorating leadership allowed Labour to squeeze back into office in October 1964 by a four-seat majority. An easy victory in the 1966 ‘follow-up’ election gave Labour a majority of 97. Despite positive achievements in the field of education and liberalizing social legislation in particular, Wilson's government struggled to cope with the legacy of Britain's relative economic decline and was humbled by the 1967 devaluation of sterling and consequent policy U-turns. Relations with the wider Labour movement deteriorated as a result of Barbara Castle's bold attempt at industrial relations reform, ‘In Place of Strife’.

In opposition again after 1970, Labour divided over Britain's entry into the EEC and the left's call for more extensive public ownership. Wilson's two further narrow election victories in 1974 obscured a weakening of Labour's appeal since the 1960s. Left-wing alienation from the government's (under Callaghan from 1976) deflationary response to mounting unemployment and inflation came to a head after Labour began a further lengthy spell in opposition after 1979.

In 1980 and 1981 Tony Benn's supporters won constitutional changes which precipitated the defection of right-wingers to form the Social Democratic Party. Subsequently, Michael Foot led Labour to heavy defeat in the 1983 election. Under Neil Kinnock (1983–92) and John Smith (1992–4) a slow revival of Labour's fortunes occurred as the party shifted back towards the ‘centre’ and purged itself of militant infiltration. Tony Blair's ‘New Labour’ strategy from 1994 accelerated this trend, and, with John Major's Conservative government in disarray, secured a massive win at the 1997 general election. A second triumph at the general election of 2001, when the Conservatives were unable to make any inroads on the huge Labour majority, and a third victory in 2005, though with a reduced majority, had Labour enthusiasts declaring that, at last, their party had become ‘the natural party of government’.

Stuart Carter

Bibliography

Hinton, J. , Labour and Socialism (1983);
Morgan, K. O. , Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants (1987);
Pelling, H. , Short History of the Labour Party (10th edn. 1993).

Labour Party Labour has been the principal progressive alternative to the Conservative Party since the 1920s, forming governments in 1924, 1929–31, 1945–51, 1964–70, 1974–9, and 1997. The Labour Representation Committee was established in 1900 by a conference of trade unionists and socialists orchestrated by Keir Hardie. Although it won only two seats in the 1900 ‘khaki’ election, the secret electoral pact with the Liberal Party negotiated by Ramsay MacDonald in 1903 helped the rechristened Labour Party enjoy a tally of 30 MPs after the 1906 election.

The First World War proved to be Labour's turning‐point. Arthur Henderson (parliamentary chairman after MacDonald's resignation on the outbreak of war) entered the cabinet on the formation of the wartime coalition in 1915 and from August 1917 worked with Sidney Webb in devising a new constitution. In 1918 Labour became formally committed to the socialist objective of ‘public ownership of the means of production’ (clause 4).

Under conditions of manhood suffrage, the 1918 ‘coupon’ election awarded Labour 63 seats. In 1922 Labour gained 142 seats to become the official opposition. Following the inconclusive 1923 election, it briefly formed the government with 191 MPs between January and October 1924, which demonstrated Labour's competence. However the second MacDonald government exposed the financial orthodoxy of ministers in the face of mounting unemployment and the financial crisis of 1931. The resignation of the Labour cabinet in August and the subsequent formation of the National (coalition) Government by MacDonald (with the support of only a handful of Labour figures such as Snowden and J. H. Thomas) caused lasting bitterness within the Labour Party. After the disastrous 1931 election (which reduced Labour from 288 to 52 seats), Labour began a gradual recovery and won 154 seats in 1935 on 38 per cent of the vote. The unassuming Clement Attlee was elected leader before this election. The participation of Labour in Churchill's coalition government from May 1940 rebuilt its image with voters and Bevin, Morrison, and Cripps played highly visible roles on the ‘home front’. The year 1945 heralded an unexpected landslide victory for Labour, which won 393 seats with 48 per cent of the vote. This strong administration, with Bevin at the Foreign Office, Dalton and then Cripps as chancellor, and ‘Nye’ Bevan at Health, was Labour's ‘finest hour’. Despite economic headaches, by 1950 the ‘Attlee consensus’ of a mixed economy with a welfare state was firmly established.

Despite achieving its highest ever poll in 1951, Labour began thirteen years of opposition. The period witnessed faction fighting between left‐wing ‘Bevanites’ and right‐wing followers of Hugh Gaitskell, elected leader in 1955. In response to three successive (and widening) election defeats, Gaitskell unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the conference to abandon ‘clause 4’ in 1959. The following year, Labour's anti‐war tradition resurfaced in conference support for unilateral nuclear disarmament (reversed in 1961).

However, a tottering economy together with Harold Wilson's invigorating leadership allowed Labour to squeeze back into office in October 1964 by a four‐seat majority. An easy victory in the 1966 ‘follow‐up’ election gave Labour a majority of 97. Despite positive achievements in the field of education and liberalizing social legislation, Wilson's government struggled to cope with the legacy of Britain's relative economic decline and was humbled by the 1967 devaluation of sterling and consequent policy U‐turns.

In opposition again after 1970, Labour divided over Britain's entry into the EEC and the left's call for more extensive public ownership. Wilson's two further narrow election victories in 1974 obscured a weakening of Labour's appeal since the 1960s. Left‐wing alienation from the government's (under Callaghan from 1976) deflationary response to mounting unemployment and inflation came to a head after Labour began a further lengthy spell in opposition after 1979.

In 1980 and 1981 Tony Benn's supporters won constitutional changes which precipitated the defection of right‐wingers to form the Social Democratic Party. Subsequently, Michael Foot led Labour to heavy defeat in the 1983 election. Under Neil Kinnock (1983–92) and John Smith (1992–4) a slow revival of Labour's fortunes occurred as the party shifted back towards the ‘centre’ and purged itself of militant infiltration. Tony Blair's ‘New Labour’ strategy from 1994 accelerated this trend, and, with Major's Conservative government in disarray, secured a massive win at the 1997 general election.

Labour Party. ‘Labour’ candidates had contested local elections since 1899, and the Irish Trade Union Congress (see irish congress of trade unions) had voted in 1912 to form a Labour Party. Two years later the congress changed its name to ‘Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party’, but no party organization was established and the movement stood aside at the general elections of 1918 and 1921. The party enjoyed a dramatic success at the general election of 1922, when it won 21.3 per cent of the vote and all but one of its eighteen candidates were elected (see pact election). The party was never able to match this performance subsequently, and has normally won in the region of 10 per cent of the vote at general elections (though dropping as low as 5.7 per cent in 1933 and reaching a record 19.3 per cent in 1992). The formal organizational unity of the party and the trade union movement lasted until 1930, when the party and congress separated.

The weakness of the Labour Party has been remarkable from a comparative perspective. One explanation, that 20th‐century Irish society long remained agrarian and lacked a sizeable industrial working class, is unconvincing; powerful socialist movements developed elsewhere (for example, in Scandinavia) in similar conditions, based substantially on a rural proletariat. The prevalence of conservative, Catholic values can offer little more than a partial explanation; this has not been incompatible with a powerful strand of political radicalism in Ireland, and has coexisted with socialism in other predominantly Catholic societies. The fundamental explanation appears to lie in the dominance of the national question, on which the party had difficulty in taking an unambiguous and distinctive stance; this issue was a central one at elections for many years after 1918. Strangely, industrial workers have consistently been more attracted to Fianna Fáil than to the Labour Party.

In addition to being much weaker than its west European counterparts, the Irish Labour Party has been rather less radical. Party policy has normally been reformist, though it has occasionally been reformist, though it has occasionally made more explicit use of socialist rhetoric, as in the mid‐1930s and from the late 1960s. It has included a range of opinions on the national question, and in the domain of foreign policy has been attached to the policy of military neutrality.

The party's early leaders, Thomas Johnson (1918–77), T. J. O'Connell (1927–32), and William Norton (1932–60), were well known for their trade union involvement, and in many ways saw the party as the political arm of the organized labour movement. Their successors, Brendan Corish (1960–77), Frank Cluskey (1977–81), and Michael O'Leary (1981–2), though coming from similar backgrounds, tended to have a more ambitious vision of the party's electoral potential, and to be less cautious on policy matters. Dick Spring, who took over as leader in 1982, brought with him the image of a professional politician rather than a trade unionist, but he was only a little more successful than his predecessors in shaking off the image of his party as a sectional one with a strong regional base in Munster and Leinster. It is, however, of some significance that in recent elections the party has managed to increase its representation significantly in cities (including Dublin) outside its traditional area of core support.

Bibliography

Gallagher, Michael , The Irish Labour Party in Transition 1957–82 (1982)

John Coakley

Labour Party (Britain) A major political party in Britain. Following the third REFORM ACT (1884), a movement developed for direct representation of labour interests in Parliament. In 1889 a Scottish Labour Party was formed, winning three seats in 1892, including one by Keir HARDIE, who in 1893 helped to form the INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY, advocating pacifism and SOCIALISM. In 1900 a Labour Representative Committee was formed which in 1906 succeeded in winning 29 seats and changed its name to the Labour Party. In 1918 the Party adopted a constitution drawn up by the Fabian Sidney WEBB. Its main aims were a national minimum wage, democratic control of industry, a revolution in national finance, and surplus wealth for the common good. By 1920 Party membership was over four million. The Party now became a major force in British municipal politics, as well as gaining office with the Liberals in national elections in 1923 and 1929. The Party strongly supported war in 1939 and through such leaders as ATTLEE, BEVIN, and MORRISON played a major role in Winston CHURCHILL's government (1940–45). In 1945 it gained office with an overall majority and continued the programme of WELFARE STATE legislation begun during the war. It was in power 1964–70, when much social legislation was enacted, and 1974–79, when it faced grave financial and economic problems. During the 1970s and early 1980s left-wing activists pressed for a number of procedural changes, for example in the election of Party leader. From the right wing a group of senior party members split from the party in the 1980s to form the Social Democratic Party (see LIBERAL DEMOCRATS). After its defeat in 1987 it embarked, under its leader Neil KINNOCK (1983–92), on a major policy review which recommended more democratic processes and a less ideological approach to foreign affairs and economic problems. However, the party received only 34% of the vote in the general election of 1992. Tony BLAIR, who became leader in 1994, supported private enterprise and promoted many reforms in the party, finally abandoning the ideological union-led principles of ‘Old Labour’ under a more popular and pragmatic manifesto, which gave Labour a landslide victory in the 1997 election. Once in power ‘New Labour’, with an overwhelming majority, set about renewing the country's failing educational system and providing a more positive approach to the country's participation in the European Union.

Labour Party (New Zealand) A major political party in New Zealand. It was formed in 1910 out of the trade union movement but was rivalled by the militant ‘RED FEDS’. Re-formed in 1916, the Party supported compulsory industrial arbitration and constitutional change. Its policies favoured nationalization of much industry and state leasehold of land, and these were further modified before it won office in 1935 under Michael SAVAGE. The first Labour government (1935–49) effected radical change, stimulating economic recovery through public works, state support for primary produce marketing, and minimum wages. It introduced social security, including free medical care. In World War II the Labour government declared war on Germany, introduced conscription for military service, and entered strongly into collective security arrangements. The Labour Party held office again (1957–60, 1972–75, 1984–90). Under its Prime Minister David Lange (1984–90) it carried its non-nuclear policy to the point of banning all nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships. The party was decisively defeated in the general election of October 1990, at a time of severe economic difficulty.

La·bour Par·ty • n. a major left-of-center British party that arose from the trade union movement at the end of the 19th century.