Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Let Us Face the Future: concepts & values Labourism in office 1945-51
much the most successful exponent of the British variant of democratic socialism (KO Morgan)
a rejection of inevitabilism (or its concomitant permeation) for a clearer articulation of principle?
But Labour confirmed as only electable alternative to Baldwins conservatism needinga strategy & programme for effective use of power A riot of research, policy-making and propaganda (Thorpe)
XYZ Club est. early1932 Labour supporters in City & academia; concerns w. financial policy
New Fabian Research Bureau est. March 1931 explicit rescusitation of Fabian tradition key figures G.D.H. and Margaret Cole; Gaitskell (in charge of `Economic Section')
1939 merges with Fabian Soc. w. B. Webb as president `the NFRB would not aim at a large membership but bring together bright young men and sympathetic experts to conduct serious, high-powered, up-to-date research work on the problems confronting the present or any future Labour Government M. Cole, Story of Fabian Socialism
The Socialist League was intellectuals and nothing else, all leaders and no followers its programme of ideas was all that mattered. It claimed to be thinking for the Labour party AJP Taylor, English History 1914-1945
The characteristic vice of the programmes of the Party is that too often they are not programmes. They sweep together great things and small and, by touching on everything, commit ministers to nothing. the Party possesses in its own mind nothing analogous to a Scheme of Priorities it has no stable standard of political values, such as would teach it to discriminate between the relative urgencies of different objectives. Tawney, Choice Before the Labour Party
Tawney, Choice Before the Labour Party Compare with Labours preference for the forward march metaphor
Economics lecturer (LSE) Key figure Lab Pty Policy Committee, XYZ Club, NFRB
1932: visits USSR and Italy 1935: Practical Socialism for Britain Chancellor of Exchequer 1945-7 Mentor to revisionists like Gaitskell
2. 3. 4.
2. 3.
Wages Leisure
Better wage standards; no details holidays with pay shorter working week
4. Security
school-leaving age to 15, then 16; maintenance allowances better pensions health services extended
Each industry must have applied to it the test of national service. If it serves the nation, well and good; if it is inefficient and falls down on its job, the nation must see that things are put right.
A commitment (*) or implied commitment (**) in Labour's Immediate Programme, 1937, indicated by asterisks.
a pragmatic, quasi-technical device to correct the failings of industry, rather than an ideological objective linked to control over industry (Tomlinson, 1997, 17) This is not Socialism; it is State capitalism. There is not too much participation by the mineworkers in the affairs of the industry; there is far too little . (H. Macmillan, cited N. Fishman in Fyrth, ed., Labour's High Noon)