2. Freedom and the Security Services – a Labour Party Discussion Document (£1.50 plus postage from The Labour Party, 150 Walworth Road, London, SE17 1JT) With this the Labour Party has taken a significant step towards the public recognition that, as far as the spook industry is concerned, the view of this society long […]
[…] careers and pensions – the really important things, after all – stayed on track. The British security and intelligence services had long since stopped worrying about the Labour Party. The Left in the Parliamentary Labour Party had lost interest in the subject, and though Neil Kinnock had shown a flicker of interest in the […]
The first of three essays in this issue are about New Labour and its origins. I put mine first because of its general, context-setting nature. The subsequent essays, on the Successor Generation and the operations in the British Unions, deepen and thicken the section towards the end of the opening essay which discusses New […]
Donovan Pedelty Prometheus Press, Builth Wells, Powys, £13.50 This is a fascinating book. As the Labour Party approaches its 100th birthday, Donovan Pedelty critically assesses the extent to which it has realised its aim. In a detailed and well-argued account, he shows that whereas Labour always espoused equality, nevertheless the gulf between rich and […]
[…] sustain its hegemony. This is actually more evident in Britain than the US and, indeed, much of Marshall’s book concerns itself with the British situation. Here, New Labour has completely replaced the Tories as the main party of British capitalism by hijacking the historical Labour Party in violation of its own constitution. But while […]
[…] Blair London: Little, Brown, 2008, h/b, £18.99 The relentless harrying of Neil Kinnock by the Murdoch press at the time of the 1992 general election outraged Labour Party people, among them Cherie Blair. This was the general election when The Sun proudly boasted that it was its continual ridicule and abuse of the […]
[PDF file]: […] of the door, the author of Broken Heartlands finds little to comfort those hoping to see Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street any time soon. While the Labour leader may want to flush his efforts to block Brexit down the memory hole along with his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, he has far to go in […]
[PDF file]: […] it by two events. The first was the death of its author earlier this year; the second has been the recurrence of the ‘doom’ narrative of the Labour Party. This fatalistic style of thinking has reappeared following Labour’s fairly dismal election results in May 2021, and its previous drubbing in the 2019 general election. […]
What was Henry Brandon? One of the most interesting secondary sources covering the struggles of the British Labour government under Harold Wilson to prevent the devaluation of sterling between 1964-66 is Henry Brandon’s In the Red, published by Andre Deutsch in 1966. It is a remarkably well-informed text and its reliability is underlined by […]
Edward Pearce London: Little, Brown, 2002, £25, h/b. Compared to the present crop of media-trained, PR-conscious, line-following, careerist pigmies who comprise the current Labour Cabinet, Denis Healey looks like a giant from a golden age. Before his well known roles as Minister of Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer (during the Tory-induced inflation […]
