Steven Fielding

Class and ethnicity : Irish Catholics in England, 1880-1939

Introduction interpretations social context church and people Catholicism and popular culture the politics of Home Rule Labour and the Church conclusion.

What did ‘the people’ want?: the meaning of the 1945 general election

Labours victory at the general election of 1945, the first in which the party won an absolute majority in the house of commons, had fundamental implications for Britains post-war history. Despite this, historians have failed to examine the popular political temper which made Labours term of office possible. Instead, they have largely assumed that the Second World War radicalized the public, turning an unprecedented number into enthusiastic Labour voters. Whilst not denying that the war had a profound impact on the politics of some sections of society this article proposes a rather different perspective to that normally offered. Instead of promoting pro-Labour sentiment it seems that the conflict left many members of the public disengaged from the political process and cynical about the motives of all politicians. As a consequence, rather than have Labour hold office by itself the generally favoured outcome appears to have been the formation of a progressive coalition committed to the implementation of the Beveridge report. However, in reality, electors who did not want to see the return of a Conservative government had no choice but to vote ‘straight left’.

England Arise!: The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain.

Labour and society before 1939 wartime radicalism and Labours response hopes and fears - the 1945 General Election building socialism popular culture and reconstruction into affluence Labour after 1951.

The British Labour Party and ‘ethnic entryism’: Participation, integration and the Party context

Abstract Concern has been expressed by some members of the British Labour Party about certain instances of increased membership by people of Asian origin. They imagine them to represent a form of ‘ethnic entryism’, designed to unduly influence the selection of parliamentary candidates. This allegation has elicited the response that such claims are another example of Labour Party racism. In this article, tensions arising from such localised increases in Labour membership are examined and compared with reactions to Irish participants in the Party earlier in the twentieth century. These responses are assessed in light of perspectives developed within the influential notion that British politics has been ‘racialised’. It is argued that these viewpoints need to be at least supplemented by an appraisal of Labours own institutional context. Undoubtedly, notions which foreground racism contribute something to a comprehension of the Partys attitude to contemporary ethnic minority political participation. Nonethe...

Review Article Looking for the `New Political History'

Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds), Recovering Power. The Conservatives in Opposition Since 1867, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2005; pp. ix + 287; ISBN 1 4039 3241 7 John Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict. The CPGB 1951–68, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 2003; pp. 320; ISBN 0 85315 958 0 Mark Jarvis, Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957–64, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005; pp. x + 187; ISBN 0 7190 7082 1 Keith Laybourn, Marxism in Britain. Dissent, Decline and Re-emergence, 1945–c.2000, London, Routledge, 2006; pp. xii + 206; ISBN 0 415 32287 1 Emmet O’Connor, Reds and the Green. Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43, Dublin, University College Dublin Press, 2004; pp. xii + 260; ISBN 1 904558 19 4 Neil Redfern, Class or Nation. Communists, Imperialists and Two World Wars, London, Tauris, 2005; pp. x + 257; ISBN 1 85043 723 8 Andrew Taylor, The NUM and British Politics. Volume 2: 1969–1995, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2005; pp. xiv + 357; ISBN 0 7546 5333 1 Tom Villis, Reaction and the Avant-Garde. The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy in Early Twentieth Century Britain, London, Tauris, 2006; pp. vii + 264; ISBN 1 8451 1039 0 Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin (eds), Baldwin Papers. A Conservative Statesman, 1908–1947, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; pp. xxii + 526; ISBN 0 521 58080 3 Matthew Worley, Labour Inside the Gate. A History of the British Labour Party between the Wars, London, Tauris, 2005; pp. vii + 278; ISBN 1 85043 798 X

Rethinking Labour's 1964 Campaign

This article reassesses Labours 1964 general election campaign. It questions the extent to which it marked a break with the past since, if it was underpinned by a revisionist ‘catch-all’ electoral strategy, so too had been the campaign of 1959. The article contends that, despite impressions to the contrary, the party under Harold Wilson in most respects merely ventured a bit further down the roads already established by Hugh Gaitskell. For in terms of ideology, policy and organisation Labour did not change much between 1959 and 1964. The main difference was the extent to which the party elite tried to promote what they believed was a more contemporary ‘image’—a process encouraged by Wilson but initiated by Gaitskell. If more successful in terms of seats Labours 1964 campaign actually generated 11,000 fewer votes than in 1959. Power was won for many reasons; and Labours electoral strategy was not necessarily the most important factor. Thus, it is argued, Labours 1964 election campaign was not (as many believe) an example of how a party can reap electoral reward by pragmatically responding to social trends. Instead it more closely illustrates how difficult it is for any party to come to terms with the society in which it operates.

Brotherhood and the brothers: Responses to ‘coloured’ immigration in the British Labour Party c. 1951–1965

Abstract This article attempts to explain the variegated response of British Labour Party members to post‐war ‘coloured’ Commonwealth immigration. Most accounts consider that, by the early 1960s, Labour had abandoned its ‘principled’ support for unrestricted entry for electoral reasons, something which betrayed an inherent ‘racism’. This view has some merit, but it oversimplifies a matter which exposed a deep‐set uncertainty about Labours ultimate purpose, one shared by other parties of the European Left. Was Labour—as its revisionist leaders and left‐wing activists believed—the bearer of progressive, universal values? Or was it simply the agent for the material improvement of manual workers, a majority of whom viewed coloured immigrants as a threat to their own well‐being? Thus, this article contends, Labour members’ reaction to coloured immigration can only be fully understood with reference to the contested nature of ‘Labourism’.

The Liberal Connection

The feature many commentators initially considered most novel about ‘New’ Labour was Tony Blair’s desire to build a new relationship between his party and the Liberal Democrats (LibDems). Blair certainly went out of his way to highlight the Liberals’ contribution to Labour history and claimed that even the Attlee government — so beloved by adherents of ‘Old’ Labour — owed much to the work of Liberals such as John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge. With that in mind, Blair suggested his members should in future ‘welcome the radical left-of-centre tradition outside our own party’. He went so far as to express regret that Labour’s Edwardian association with the Liberal Party had given way to full independence after the First World War as it had obscured an ‘intellectual bridgehead’ that linked these two ‘progressive’ forces. The split was not only politically unnecessary but, Blair believed, had also allowed the Conservatives to hold on to national office for too long. The Labour leader consequently claimed he wanted to re-establish this lost ‘radical centre’ and so lay the electoral foundations for a ‘progressive century’ (Blair, 1996, 7–12).

UK Elections in Fiction

Steven Fielding takes a look at representations of British general elections in fictions – and finds that on the page and on screen depictions often influence how voters view real world politics, contributing to the current populist rejection of established politics.

The Thick of It: Politics Just for Laughs?

Since 2005, The Thick of It has delighted viewers with its jokes about Westminster and inventive swearing. But is it nothing more than an amusing take on political life? Or should we be concerned about how it depicts our political representatives?Steven Fielding investigates.