Table Of ContentRethinking Labour’s Past
ii
Rethinking Labour’s Past
Edited by
Nathan Yeowell
I.B. TAURIS
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Names: Yeowell, Nathan, editor.
Title: Rethinking Labour’s Past / edited by Nathan Yeowell.
Description: New York : I.B. TAURIS, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021037623 (print) | LCCN 2021037624 (ebook) | ISBN 9780755640171
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Foreword Rachel Reeves xiii
Part 1
1 Introduction: Rethinking Labour’s past Nathan Yeowell 3
2 The disenchantment of the Labour Party: Socialism, liberalism and
progressive history Ben Jackson 25
Part 2
3 ‘A party not unlike the Democrats’: Labour, the left and encounters
with America from the New Deal to the New Frontier Richard Carr 39
4 The shifting significance of ‘The Spirit of ’45’ Steven Fielding 57
5 The fall and rise of Harold Wilson Glen O’Hara 75
6 Crosland in the seventies: Revisionist social democracy in a cold
climate Patrick Diamond 95
Part 3
7 Municipal socialism and municipal feminism: Women and local
Labour politics from the 1900s to the 1980s Krista Cowman 119
8 Social democracy, the decline of community and community politics
in postwar Britain Nick Garland 137
9 Linking up Labour: Place, community and buses in 1980s
Sheffield Daisy Payling 159
10 Race and the left: From protest to power? The story of Black
Sections Robin Bunce and Samara Linton 175
11 ‘This party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing’: Foreign aid and
Labour’s ethical identity Charlotte Lydia Riley 195
vi Contents
Part 4
12 ‘What did the 1983 manifesto ever do for us?’ Colm Murphy 215
13 Neil Kinnock: A reassessment Jonathan Davis and Rohan McWilliam 231
14 Past, present and future: Tony Blair and the political legacy
of New Labour Andrew Hindmoor and Karl Pike 249
15 Renewal beyond New Labour: From the LCC to Corbynomics
George Morris, Emily Robinson and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite 267
Part 5
16 The Labour Party and aspiration Jeremy Nuttall 289
17 Conclusion: Shaping Labour’s future Nick Thomas-Symonds 307
Further Reading 311
Index 322
Contributors
Robin Bunce is a historian based at Homerton College, Cambridge. He is co-
author of Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography (2020, with Samara Linton)
and of Renegade: The Life and Times of Darcus Howe (2017, with Paul Field).
With Field, he served as historical consultant on the Steve McQueen film
Mangrove (2020), and the BBC documentary Black Power: A British Story of
Resistance (2021).
Richard Carr is a Senior Lecturer at the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia
Ruskin University. He is author of March of the Moderates: Bill Clinton, Tony
Blair, and the Rebirth of Progressive Politics (2019) and a political biography of
Charlie Chaplin (2017).
Krista Cowman is Professor and Head of the School of History, Politics
and International Relations at the University of Leicester. She has published
widely on women’s suffrage and on women’s political activism in a variety of
sites throughout the twentieth century, including Women of the Right Spirit:
Paid Organisers of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) 1904–18
(2011) and Women in British Politics, c. 1968–1979 (2010).
Jonathan Davis is Associate Professor in Modern European History and Director
of the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University. He is author of
a number of books, including The Global 1980s: People, Power and Profit (2019)
and The Second Labour Government 1929–1931: A Reappraisal (2011) and co-
editor (with Rohan McWilliam) of Labour and the Left in the 1980s (2018).
Patrick Diamond is Director of the Mile End Institute and Senior Lecturer in
Public Policy at Queen Mary University, London. He was previously Senior
Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister (2001–05), and Head of Policy Planning
in Ten Downing Street (2009–10). He is author of a number of books including
The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power (2020), The Crosland Legacy:
The Future of British Social Democracy (2016) and Endgame for the Centre Left?
The Retreat of Social Democracy Across Europe (2016).
viii Contributors
Steven Fielding is Professor of Political History at Nottingham University. He is
the author and editor of a number of works including The Churchill Myths (with
Bill Schwarz and Richard Toye, 2020), Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches
to Labour Politics and History (co-edited with John Callaghan and Steve Ludlam,
2004) and England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain
(with Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, 1995). He is currently writing The
Labour Party from Callaghan to Corbyn for Polity Books.
Nick Garland is an adviser to a member of the Shadow Cabinet, DPhil candidate
in Modern History at the University of Oxford and commissioning editor for
Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy.
Andrew Hindmoor is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the
University of Sheffield, editor of Political Studies and associate editor of New
Political Economy. He is author of several books including 12 Days that Made
Modern Britain (2019) and What’s Left Now? The History and Future of Social
Democracy (2018).
Ben Jackson is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of
Oxford and co-editor of Political Quarterly. He is the author of The Case for
Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern
Scotland (2020), Equality and the British Left (2007) and co-editor (with Robert
Saunders) of Making Thatcher’s Britain (2012).
Samara Linton is an award-winning freelance writer and content producer who
previously worked as a junior doctor in London. She is author of the Colour of
Madness: Exploring BAME Mental Health in the UK (2018) and co-author (with
Robin Bunce) of Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography (2020).
Rohan McWilliam is Professor of Modern British History and Director
of the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University. He has
published widely on a range of social, cultural and political topics covering
Victorian and twentieth-century Britain. His most recent books include
London’s West End: Creating the Pleasure District (2020), Labour and the Left
in the 1980s (co-edited with Jonathan Davis, 2018) and New Directions in
Social and Cultural History (co-edited with Sasha Handley and Lucy Noakes,
2017).
George Morris is a PhD candidate in Modern British History at the University
of Cambridge and is co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy.
Contributors ix
Colm Murphy is a Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary
University, London, and Past and Present Fellow at the Institute for Historical
Research.
Jeremy Nuttall is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Kingston
University, London. He is co-editor (with Hans Schattle) of Making Social
Democrats, Essays for David Marquand (2018), author of the book Psychological
Socialism: The Labour Party and Qualities of Mind and Character (2006) and
of articles on British social democracy in leading journals including Historical
Journal and English Historical Review.
Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford
Brookes University. A former schoolteacher and journalist, he is the author of
The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain (2017) and Governing Post-War Britain:
The Paradoxes of Progress (2012). He is currently principal investigator on an
Arts and Humanities Research-funded project on the history of rights of way in
England and Wales and is writing a book on the domestic policies of the Blair
government for Manchester University Press.
Daisy Payling is a Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of
Essex working on the Wellcome-funded project ‘Body, Self and Family: Women’s
Psychological, Emotional and Bodily Health in Britain, c. 1960–1990’. When she
is not writing about the history of women’s health, she can be found working on
her book on local government and grassroots activism in 1980s Sheffield, soon
to be published by Manchester University Press.
Karl Pike is a Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute and Lecturer in British
Politics and Public Policy at Queen Mary University, London. He has published
articles in a number of academic journals, including Political Studies and The British
Journal of Politics and International Relations. He is currently working on a book
about Labour’s traditions after the 2010 general election. Prior to academia, he
worked as an adviser to the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Home Secretary.
Rachel Reeves is the Labour MP for Leeds West and a member of the Shadow
Cabinet. She is the author of Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed
Politics (2019) and Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon (2016).
Charlotte Lydia Riley is a Lecturer in Twentieth-Century British History at the
University of Southampton, specializing in the intersections between foreign
and domestic policy, politics and popular culture. Recent works include The Free
