sections:
This book starts from the assumption that, in spite of an extensive literature on the Labour Party, we still lack an adequate overall explanation for how a purely sectional party became one of the two major parties of government in
Britain. This is partly because Labour historiography tends to dwell on the failures, divisions and betrayals that held the movement back and finds it difficult to recognise the successes that brought it to power.
Traditional historiography also focuses on left-wing personnel and left-wing ideas and activities, giving thereby a misleading overall impression of the movement. This original book demonstrates how central Conservative personnel and Conservative thinking has been to the long-term evolution of the Labour Party.
Founded as the working-class party, Labour was always rather less and in some ways rather more than this suggests. Forced to adapt to the prevailing political culture of the regions, Labour actually developed as several distinct parties rather than a single coherent one. It drew upon the Socialist and the Radical Liberal traditions but this was far from being sufficient in many regions and among much of the working class. The party’s ideas, personnel and electoral success was crucially linked to its capacity to exploit the Tory-Labour or Tory-Socialist tradition which has been critically neglected by most students of the subject.
The book explains how Labour’s historic role has been not so much to challenge or overthrow the political and social system but to learn how to use it – and in the process to become, quite early in its development, part of the Establishment especially in parts of the country such as Wales, Scotland and Durham.
The book also demonstrates how critical war has been in forging the character and the fortunes of the Party during the twentieth century.
Finally, the author shows how it is possible to make sense of Blair and New Labour as part of a long-term pattern of recruiting Conservatives and harnessing right-wing ideas into the Labour Movement, rather than as an aberration or as something new in the party’s history.
book reviews
- The Herald
“Pugh has at least two of the most important attributes of an author: lucidity and accessibility...fascinating material on the countryside, on food, sex and marriage, the woeful state of medicine and the role of women...a beguiling and often thought provoking book.” - BBC History Magazine
“The great success of Martin Pugh’s sparkling new volume is to set the familiar events of the 19320s and 30s in their proper context and to connect them to longer-term patterns of change....Full of colourful anecdotes, this is social history with a human face....Pugh has an eye for the entertaining anecdote, and writes in an accessible style, but his analysis is underpinned by a thorough knowledge of the extensive scholarly literature on the period. By demonstrating how many of the tendencies associated with the affluent 1950s and 60s were prefigured in the inter-war era, he has deepened our understanding of the broader historical currents of 20th-century Britain. This is one of those rare books that deserves a wide audience, but which will also be required reading for specialists.”
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