The Local Organization of the British Labour Party

Bibliographic Data

ID3433045
AuthorsH J Hanham (University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year1956
Volume9
Issue2
Pages376-388
Publication date1956-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Western Political Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-4078 • E-ISSN: 2325-8675
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/106591295600900209
OpenAlexW2017172624
LanguageEN
Citations received8

INCE ITS DEFEAT in last year's general election, the Labour party has been going through a period of self-criticism, comparable in many ways with that which went on in the Conservative party after 1945. The party leaders have suddenly wakened to the fact that their party has been steadily declining for years, that its organization has very nearly broken down, and that its ideas are outmoded. The reason for this awakening is clear enough: the substantial Labour majority of total votes which was so consoling to the vanquished in 1951 has been wiped out and replaced by a Conservative majority of some 900,000 votes. Labour, as the phrase goes, is against it, and is realizing that Mr. Micawber, with his belief that something will turn up of its own accord, must cease to be the prophet of the party. The result of Labour's self-examination may well be that 1955 will become, like 1945, a major turning-point in the party's history. Nineteen forty-five was a triumph for parliamentarianism. It established the dominance of the parliamentary Labour party over the party as a whole. Slowly and almost imperceptibly the party conference, the National Executive Committee, and the Trades Union Congress gave their pretensions to dictate the policy of the party. The old forms remained, the old shibboleths were still mouthed, but the change was made. Now there is a new phase. The shibboleths themselves are being challenged, not because they are wrong, but because they no longer seem relevant. A union leader wrote recently in a message to his union: For my part, I am convinced that much of the propaganda and public relations work of the trade unions, as well as the Labour party, misses its mark because it appears almost irrelevant to the millions of young people who knew not the terrors of the inter-war years. There is too much woe-woeing about the past, and there are too many attempts to undo the facts of life in the fifties with the propaganda incantations of earlier times.'

Business · Communism · Criticism · Dominance (genetics) · Period (music) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Realigning election · Socialism · Sociology · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub