Table Of ContentThe Labour Party:
A Marxist History
Tony Cliff and
Donny Gluckstein
The Labour
Party: A Marxist
History
T Cliff and
D Gluckstein
BOOKMARKS
Lundon, Ch.cogo and .)ydney
The Labour Party: A Marxist History - T Cliff and D Gluckstein
First published October 1988
This edition July 1996
Bookmarks, 265 Seven Sisters Road, London N4 2DE, England
Bookmarks, PO Box 16085, Chicago II. 60616, USA
Bookmarks, PO Box A338, Sydney South Australia
Copyright c Bookmarks Publications Ltd
ISBN 0906224454
Printed by Cox and Wyman
The Socialist Workers Party is one of an international grouping of socialist
organisations:
•Australia: International Socialists, PO Box A338 Sydney South
•Belgium: Socialisme International, Rue Lovinfosse 60, 4030 Grivengee,
Belgium
•Britain: Socialist Workers Party, PO Box 82, London E3
•Canada: International Socialists, PO Box 339, Station E, Toronto, Ontario
M6H 4E3
•Cyprus: Ergatiki Demokratia, PO Box 7280, Nicosia
•Denmark: Internationale Socialister, Postboks 642, 2200 K0benhavn N,
Denmark
•France: Socialisme International, BP 189, 75926 Paris Cedex 19
•Greece: Organosi Sosialisliki Epanastasi, c/o Workers Solidarity, PO Box
8161, Athens 100 10, Greece
•Holland: International Socialists, PO Box 9720, 3506 GR Utrecht
•Ireland: Socialist Workers Party, PO Box 1648, Dublin 8
•New Zealand: International Socialist Organization, PO Box 6157, Dunedin,
New Zealand
•Norway: Internasjonale Socialisterr, Postboks 5370, Majorstua, 0304 Oslo 3
•Poland: SolidarnCISC Socjalistyczna, PO Box 12, 01-900 Warszawa 118
•South Africa: Socialist Workers Organisation, PO Box 18530, Hillbrow
2038,Johannesberg
•United States: International Socialist Organisation, PO Box 16085, Chicago,
Illinois 60616
•Zimbabwe: International Socialists, PO Box 6758, Harare
Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Birth of Reformism ..... 5
2. 'Out of the Bowels of the TUC' . . .. 23
3. War and Reconstruction: Labour adopts socialism . 54
4. Riding the post war storm .. 79
5. Proving Labour 'fit to govern': The 1924
administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6. Revolution or Reform: The left in the 1920s ..... 105
7. General Strike and aftermath ... 133
8. Reformists and the Slump: the second
Labour government 151
9. From Socialist Dictatorship to National
Unity: Labour in the 1930s ... 166
l 0. Labour during the Second World War .... 192
11. The Attlee government: Zenith of reformism .... 218
12. 'Thirteen wasted years' .. 256
13. The Wilson governments 1964-69 .......... 279
14. The Labour Party under the Heath government .. 307
15. The Labour government of 1 97 4-79 ....... 320
16. Labour under Thatcher ....... 345
17. New Labour . 389
18. Conclusion .... . 429
Notes .. ..... 435
Index
Acknowledgements
Several people have helped in the writing and preparation of
this book. Many thanks are due to Alex Callinicos, Lindsey
German, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harman and Gareth Jenkins for
their advice and suggestions. We also owe a debt to Lynda
Aitken, Sue Cockerill, Geoff Ellen, Nick Howard and Martin
Roiser for help in locating material and to Peter Marsden for
editing and advice. Chaine Rosenberg deserves a special thanks
for work on research materials in the Public Record Office and
elsewhere, for typing and for allowing us to borrow freely from
her article on the Labour Party and the struggle against
fascism.
Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein. 31 March 1988
The authors are both members of the Socialist Workers Party in
Britain. Tony Cliff has written many previous book, including
the classic State Capitalism in Russia, a three volume
biography of Lenin and others. Donny Gluckstein is s history
lecturer in Edinburgh an the author of the Western Soviets:
Workers' councils 1915-20. together, they wrote Marxism and
the Trade Union Struggle (1986), which is a study of the
British General Strike of 1926.
Introduction
THE LABOUR PARTY is the dominant political force in the
British labour movement. It is an enigma, neither fish nor fowl,
a mixture of unmixables. Labour claims to be socialist, yet when
in government it does its best to defend capitalism. Its supporters
are largely working-class but at the same time it poses as represent
ative of all sections of society. The party derives most of its in
come and support from the mass of trade unionists, yet it has
attacked this section each time it has come to office.
While Labour governments invariably support the system as
zealously as the Tories, the party's working-class adherents are very
different from their Tory counterparts. They have fought time and
again to maintain their unions and their class in the face not only
of the bosses but of Labour adminstrations. Yet Labour is still the
central political focus for the majority of workers, and electoral
defeat for Labour means disappointment for the class.
One Labour supporter has written: 'The Labour Party has
been at once the manifestation and the expression of the economic
emergence of the working-classes [giving] political expression to
the hopes and needs of the industrial workers.'' We reject this
formulation in favour of Lenin's:
most of the Labour Party's members are workingmen. However,
whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does
not depend solely upon a membership of workers, but also upon the
men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tac
tics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us
a political party of the proletariat. Regarded from this, the only correct
