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Nostalgia and the post-war Labour Party

Author: Richard Jobson

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-01-08

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1526113333

This book examines the impact that nostalgia has had on the Labour Party’s political development since 1951. It argues that nostalgia has defined Labour’s identity and determined the party’s trajectory. Nostalgia has hindered policy discussion, determined the form and parameters of party modernisation, shaped internal conflict and cohesion and made it difficult for the party to adjust to socioeconomic changes. It has frequently left the party out of touch with the modern world. In this way, this study offers an assessment of Labour’s failures to adapt to the changing nature of post-war Britain and will be of interest to both students and academics and to those with a more general interest in Labour’s history and politics.

Nostalgia and the Post-war Labour Party, 1951-83

Author: Richard Jobson

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation examines the impact of nostalgia on the political development of the Labour Party between 1951 and 1983. In particular, it looks at the way that nostalgia for a heroic male traditional industrial working class shaped the party's trajectory in these years. New Labour argued that Old Labour was nostalgic but the nature and function of that nostalgia was poorly conceptualised. More generally, the political significance of nostalgia has hitherto been neglected and undervalued by Labour Party historians. I suggest that the idea of the 'nostalgia-identity' - the way in which nostalgia shapes identity and, simultaneously, identity shapes nostalgic memory - offers a useful theoretical lens through which to analyse the history of the Labour Party. In contrast to traditional narratives concerning the political development of the party, I argue that the intraparty conflict over Hugh Gaitskell's attempt to revise Clause IV of the party constitution between 1959 and 1960 should be seen less as a battle over ideology and policy and more as a dispute over the party's nostalgia-identity. I suggest that nostalgia dictated the Labour Party's response to Harold Wilson's modernising 'White Heat' policies between 1963 and 1970 and shaped the parameters within which these policies could be pursued. Nostalgia influenced both the political development and the form of Labour's Alternative Economic Strategy between 1970 and 1983 to such an extent that the strategy itself gained restorative nostalgic dimensions. I conclude that, in a number of ways, nostalgia fundamentally shaped the political development of the Labour Party between 1951 and 1983.

The Labour Party Since 1945

Author: Eric R. Shaw

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1996-04-11

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780631196556

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This book provides a critical overview of the changing Labour Party in postwar Britain. Adopting a thematic approach within a structured, chronological framework, the book revolves around one central question: what has the Party been about and what specific objectives has it striven to realize? The author examines the so-called transformation from "Old Labour" to "New Labour", and not only identifies the key stages in its evolution, bur highlights, too, the major determinants of the change.

The Politics of Nostalgia

Author: Paul Spoonley

Publisher: Palmerston North, N.Z. : Dunmore Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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""The politics of nostalgia" looks at the history of political racism in New Zealand. From the early 1970s, extreme right-wing groups began to proliferate in this country and to present their ideas more forcefully. The author describes the growth of extremism in the 1970s and 1980s, examines the arguments, style and support for such groups and offers reasons for their appearance. Extreme right-wing and neo-fascist groups are one part of the New Right, and a move towards conservatism. They represent one response to the growing concern about raical and gender issues, a discontent with economic developments and a nostalgia for the untroubled days of the immediate post-war period. Here is an extensive analysis of the new politics of the late 1980s, including a comparison between the experiences of New Zealand, Australia, UK and Canada."--Back cover.

Politics of the Past

Author: David Cowan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-04-11

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1009340298

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The inter-war period (1918–1939) is still remembered as a period of mass deprivation – the 'hungry thirties'. But how did this impression emerge? Thousands of conversations about life in the inter-war period – between parents and children around the dinner table; among workmates at the pub – shaped these understandings. In turn, these fed into popular politics. Stories about the embryonic welfare system in the early-twentieth century informed how people felt towards the National Health Service; memories of the Great Depression shaped arguments about state intervention in the economy. Challenging accounts of widespread political disengagement in the twentieth century, Politics of the Past shows how re-telling family stories about the inter-war period offered ordinary people an accessible way of engaging in politics. Drawing on six local case studies across Scotland and England, this book explains how stories about the inter-war working-class experience in industrial areas came to appear commonplace nationwide.

Rethinking Labour's Past

Author: Nathan Yeowell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-01-13

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0755640187

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The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn is charting a new direction. Here, Nathan Yeowell has brought together a remarkable array of contributors to provide expert insight into twentieth-century British history and Labour politics – and how they might shape thinking about Labour's future. Reframing the span of Labour history and its effects on contemporary British politics, the book provides fresh thinking and analysis of various traditions, themes and individuals. These include the shifting significance of 1945, the need for more grounded interpretations of Tony Blair's legacy, and the enduring importance of place, identity and aspiration to the evolution of the party. Contributions from leading historians such as Patrick Diamond, Steven Fielding, Ben Jackson, Glen O' Hara and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite are supplemented by those with experience of Labour electoral politics, such as Rachel Reeves and Nick Thomas-Symonds. The result is an intellectually rich and politically relevant roadmap for Labour's future.

Age of Promises

Author: David Thackeray

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0192580957

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Age of Promises explores the issue of electoral promises in twentieth century Britain - how they were made, how they were understood, and how they evolved across time - through a study of general election manifestos and election addresses. The authors argue that a history of the act of making promises - which is central to the political process, but which has not been sufficiently analysed - illuminates the development of political communication and democratic representation. The twentieth century saw a broad shift away from politics viewed as a discursive process whereby, at elections, it was enough to set out broad principles, with detailed policymaking to follow once in office following reflection and discussion. Over the first part of the century parties increasingly felt required to compile lists of specific policies to offer to voters, which they were then considered to have an obligation to carry out come what may. From 1945 onwards, moreover, there was even more focus on detailed, costed, pledges. We live in an age of growing uncertainty over the authority and status of political promises. In the wake of the 2016 EU referendum controversy erupted over parliamentary sovereignty. Should 'the will of the people' as manifested in the referendum result be supreme, or did MPs owe a primary responsibility to their constituents and/or to the party manifestos on which they had been elected? Age of Promises demonstrates that these debates build on a long history of differing understandings about what status of manifestos and addresses should have in shaping the actions of government.

Futures of Socialism

Author: Colm Murphy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1009278819

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Overhauls the history of 'modernisation' and the British Left and recasts our understanding of New Labour.

Going to My Father's House

Author: Patrick Joyce

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1839763256

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A historian's personal journey into the complex questions of immigration, home and nation From Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, de-industrialised Manchester, Joyce finds the ties of place, family and the past are difficult to break. Why do certain places continue to haunt us? What does it mean to be British after the suffering of Empire and of war? How do we make our home in a hypermobile world without remembering our pasts? Patrick Joyce's parents moved from Ireland in the 1930s and made their home in west London. But they never really left the homeland. And so as he grew up among the streets of Paddington and Notting Hill and when he visited his family in Ireland he felt a tension between the notions of home, nation and belonging. Going to My Father's House charts the historian's attempt to make sense of these ties and to see how they manifest in a globalised world. He explores the places - the house, the street, the walls and the graves - that formed his own identity. He ask what place the ideas of history, heritage and nostalgia have in creating a sense of our selves. He concludes with a plea for a history that holds the past to account but also allows for dynamic, inclusive change.

The Left Case for Brexit

Author: Richard Tuck

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-04-09

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1509542299

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Liberal left orthodoxy holds that Brexit is a disastrous coup, orchestrated by the hard right and fuelled by xenophobia, which will break up the Union and turn what’s left of Britain into a neoliberal dystopia. Richard Tuck’s ongoing commentary on the Brexit crisis demolishes this narrative. He argues that by opposing Brexit and throwing its lot in with a liberal constitutional order tailor-made for the interests of global capitalists, the Left has made a major error. It has tied itself into a framework designed to frustrate its own radical policies. Brexit therefore actually represents a golden opportunity for socialists to implement the kind of economic agenda they have long since advocated. Sadly, however, many of them have lost faith in the kind of popular revolution that the majoritarian British constitution is peculiarly well-placed to deliver and have succumbed instead to defeatism and the cultural politics of virtue-signalling. Another approach is, however, still possible. Combining brilliant contemporary political insights with a profound grasp of the ironies of modern history, this book is essential for anyone who wants a clear-sighted assessment of the momentous underlying issues brought to the surface by Brexit.