Roots Of Labour

New Labour was not conjured up out of thin air -- it only looks like that because of the party's amnesia concerning its intellectual development. This book provides extracts from fifteen thinkers located within the revisionist tradition as an antidote to that amnesia. It is an 'all star cast' from Labour's history, from Tawney, Jay and Gaitskell to Gordon Brown.The collection shows that revisionism is not a body of doctrine but a cast of mind that distinguishes between core values (ends) and policy instruments (means) -- revisionist thinkers do not shrink from abandoning any policy that fails to deliver the desired ends. In the contentious debates about the future of public services, the Blair government is determined to avoid the confusion of means and ends. These essays show this determination to be deep-rooted in Labour thinking and to be focused on the commitment to equality.

"Labour's Thinkers" seeks to examine the key ideas emphasised by the twelve individuals whom the authors judge to have made the most significant development to the political thought of the Labour Party since the 1930s. Hickson and Beech argue the Labour Party is a party of values but often not of ideas. The number of people involved in the serious discussion of ideas in the Labour Party is relatively small and intellectuals are often viewed with suspicion in what is, or was, a party set up to represent the interests of the working classes. The formulation and development of ideas are therefore crucial to understanding the outcomes of the Labour Party's internal struggles and the basis of the party's appeal. "Labour's Thinkers" highlights influential and, at times, controversial figures involved in the battle of socialist ideas in the Labour Party thus exploring concepts, such as equality, liberty, community, power, the state, ownership and patriotism.

Annotation A comprehensive comparative study of the development of labour unions and political change in the countries of the English Speaking Caribbean, focussing mainly on the period 1934-1954.

This multi-disciplinary edited collection critically examines the causes and effects of anti-unionism in Canada. Primarily through a series of case studies, the book's contributors document and expose the tactics and strategies of employers and anti-labour governments while also interrogating some of the labour movement's own practices as a source of anti-union sentiment among workers. Contributors to this collection are concerned with the strategic implications of anti-union tactics and ideas and explore the possibilities and challenges for unions intent on overcoming them for the benefit of all working people.

In the early twentieth century, politicians singled out the Lakehead as a breeding ground for radical labour politics. Michel S. Beaulieu returns northern Ontario to its rightful place as a birthplace of leftism in Canada by exposing the conditions that gave rise to an array of left-wing organizations. Cultural ties among workers helped bring left-wing ideas to Canada, but ethnicity weakened the left as each group developed a distinctive vocabulary of socialism and as Anglo-Celtic workers defended their privileges against Finns, Ukrainians, and Italians. At the Lakehead, ethnic difference often outweighed class solidarity at the cost of a stronger labour movement for Canada.

A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn’s rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn’s roots in the Bennite Labour New Left’s long struggle to transcend the limits of “parliamentary socialism” and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party. Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn’s leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.