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Politics Notes New Labour (1997-2010) Notes

New Labour Notes

Updated New Labour Notes Notes

New Labour (1997-2010) Notes

New Labour (1997-2010)

Approximately 28 pages

This is part of the British Politics series covering Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative governments (1979-97), New Labour and British Constitution. This package contains: (1) exam notes on New Labour (1997-2010) and an essay titled 'Is New Labour a coherent ideology or just an electoral strategy?' Useful for: understanding contemporary British political processes and history, and history of the ideas of the Labour Party and electoral strategies. Especially useful in conjunction with the Marga...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our New Labour (1997-2010) Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Labour Party leaders:

  • 1935-55: Clement Attlee

  • 1955-63: Hugh Gaitskell

  • 1963-76: Harold Wilson

  • 1976-80: James Callaghan

  • 1980-83: Michael Foot

  • 1983-92: Neil Kinnock

  • 1992-94: John Smith

  • 1994-2007: Tony Blair

  • 2007-2010: Gordon Brown

  • 2010-2015: David Miliband

According to Andrew Gamble (2010), there are three approaches to whether the 1997 election is a watershed election like the ones in 1945 and 1979:

  • First approach emphasises the continuity between the Thatcher and Major govts and New Labour

    • Those who accepted the radicalism of Thatcherism will tend to accept the legacy of Thatcherism in New Labour, and those that downplay the former will downplay the latter too

    • E.g. Eric Shaw who claims that New Labour has completely broken with the old Labour Party—'post-revisionism regarded the central Croslandite proposition, that democratic government had the ability to prevail over the power of business, as false'

    • E.g. Perry Anderson: 'Labour's new programme accepts the basic parameters of the Thatcher Settlement, in much the same way that the Conservative government of the fifties accepted the parameters of the Attlee Settlement'

  • Second interpretation is that New Labour was a period of radical ideological and policy renewal that combined social justice and economic efficiency. It also developed a new electoral strategy that changed the landscape.

  • Third interpretation: New Labour is a continuation of old Labour

    • e.g. Martin Smith and Tudor Jones who claim that New Labour is a return to the spirit of Croslandite revisionism of the 1950s and 60s

History of the Labour Party

  • organisation origin was a resolution passed by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in 1899 to establish an independent political body whose purpose was to represent the unions in Parliament. They were in electoral pact with the Liberals in early days. Made little progress to appeal to beyond the union members prior to WWI.

  • some factors contributed to the elevation of the party's status to become the second party: split within the Liberal Party, extension of franchise to all men and most women. They appealed more overtly to non-union members. An important expression of this breakaway from Liberal Party was the party's commitment to common ownership, embodied in clause four of its founding 1918 constitution.

  • the National Government was so weakened during the military reverses during 1940 that Churchill offered Attlee participation in office on equal terms. Moreover, the public demand for full employment after the war.

  • During the 1945 govt, Labour nationalised 20% of the economy and created a welfare state, notably the NHS.

  • During the 1950s, Labour lot three general elections. Some believe that the party was losing touch with the younger and better-off working and middle class voters who saw the party's aims as old-fashioned. This is where the first wave of revisionism came in. Leader Hugh Gaitskell published the policy document Industry and Society in 1957 to present a less class-conscious image of the party. He also tried to revise clause four after the party's 1959 defeat, but was prevented through a lack of trade union support.

  • Wilson introduced proposals in 1969 to limit the no. of wildcat strikes, but was forced to withdraw in the face of union outrage.

  • Callaghan provoked the 1979 'winter of discontent' because he was unwilling to give the public sector workers the wage rises they demanded

  • In opposition (under Michael Foot), the party turned on its leaders and reverted to the 1973 programme, adding support for unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC. Some party members left to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Suffered a very bad defeat in the 1983 election.

  • When Neil Kinnock took over the the 1983 defeat, although he had been a staunch leftist, he began adopting the strategies of Gaitskell and Wilson.

  • Labour members suffer from nostalgia for a time in the past when things were supposedly better, like during the 1950s they looked back on 1930s with fondness and see it as the golden age (Steven Fielding)

Scholars disagree on when the turning point of 'New Labour' is:

  • aftermath of the 1987 defeat and the publishing of Policy Review

  • 1985 and Mandelson's appointment as Director of Communications

  • 1983, the year Kinnock became Labour leader

  • Labour left's loss of control of the party's National Executive Committee in the autumn of 1981

  • Adam Lent (1997): each should be seen as transition points in a complex process

  • Richard Hefferman (1998): New Labour was the climax of the gradual accommodation with the Conservatives' neoliberal agenda.

The novelty of New Labour

  • The term 'new' was used 37 times in Blair's speech to the 1994 Labour Party conference and a further 104 times in the Road to the Manifesto document (1996).

  • New Labour marks it novelty by juxtaposing itself with two historical 'others'

    • Old Labour: overshadowed by the economic recession under the Wilson and then the Callaghan governments, the bailout by the IMF. Marked by 'Keynesianism, (quasi) corporatism, collectivism, egalitarianism, expansive welfarism’.

    • the more immediate period in opposition, when the Labour Party was associated with 'socialist extremism'

  • Definition of the ‘third way’

    • Steven Fielding (2003): A third way between individualism and laissez-faire on one hand, and the old style government intervention and corporatism of the 1960s social democracy on the other hand It was a modernised social democracy, reconciled with individual liberty in market economy, with social justice as the main aim.

    • In his Fabian pamphlet on the Third Way, Blair set out four broad policy objectives for his government: (1) a dynamic knowledge-based economy; (2) a strong civil society; (3) a modern government based on partnership and decentralisation; and (4) a foreign policy based on international cooperation.

  • Many policies were part of the package to signify a new kind of politics

    • decentralisation of power. The state would seek to enable...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our New Labour (1997-2010) Notes.

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