The Labour Party S Political Thought

This book provides a synoptic and accessible history of the development of political ideas within the Labour Party. It traces the complex relationship between power and political thought and illustrates how Labour's political ideas have been shaped and formed by the Labour Party's political experience. It presents 'labourism' or trade union politics as a clear theory and stresses its importance in understanding the different phases in the party's history, arguing that it constitutes the bedrock of the party's thought and that its crisis has caused the recent changes in party ideology.

This book provides a synoptic and accessible history of political ideas within the Labour Party. It traces the complex relationship between power and political thought and illustrates how Labour's political ideas have been shaped and formed by the Labour Party's political experience. It presents 'labourism' or trade union politics as a clear theory and stresses its importance in understanding the different phases in the party's history, arguing that is constitutes the bedrock of the party's thought and that its crisis has caused the recent changes in party ideology.

Contributors, ranging from Chancellor Gordon Brown to the Guardian newspaper's Polly Toybee, discuss the Labour Party's political philosophy and address key topics like globalization, constitutional reform, equality and the 'third way'.

The election of the most left-wing Labour Party Leader since 1945, followed by the Party's third consecutive general election defeat and the ongoing cultural divisions around Brexit present an ideal opportunity for a thorough re-evaluation of the state of the Party within its broader ideological and historical context. This second edition of this highly respected book analyses the current developments and places them in their historical setting through a clear three-part framework of Ideological Positions, Struggles and Commentaries. Thoroughly updated and featuring contributions by leading academics and politicians, it continues to represent one of the most ground-breaking and thorough analyses of Labour's political thought in a generation and will be of key interest to scholars, students and observers of British Politics, British History, Party Politics, and the Labour Party.

"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.

Friedrich Hayek was a founding figure of the neo-liberalism that flourished in the 1980s. Yet, despite his antagonistic relationship with socialism, his work became a surprising source of inspiration for several influential thinkers on the left. This book explains the left’s unusual engagement with Hayek and reflects on its significance. Engaging Enemies uses the left’s late discovery of Hayek to examine the contemporary fate of socialism and social democracy. Did socialism survive the twentieth century? Did it collapse with the fall of the Berlin Wall as Hayek claimed? Or did it transform into something else, and if so what? In turn this allows an examination of ideological and historical continuity. Was the left’s engagement with Hayek part of a wider break with a period of ideological continuity that marked the twentieth century, but which did not survive its ending? As such, the book is also a study of how ideologies change with the times, incorporating new elements and jettisoning others. The left’s engagement with Hayek was also influential on party politics, particularly on the ‘modernization’ of the Labour Party and the development of New Labour. Engaging Enemies concludes with a discussion of the wider role of the market for the left today and the contemporary significance of the engagement with Hayek for Labour in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

"Is New Labour more style than substance? Are its policies merely driven by pragmatism? Little has been published on the party's core ideas, the very existence of which is contested. This book is a study of the political philosophy of New Labour. Matt Beech approaches the study of New Labour's political philosophy in two ways. The first section of the book attempts to place New Labour in the intellectual history of the Labour Party and to set the context out of which New Labour has developed. It charts the intellectual history of the Labour Party from its nineteenth century origins in the Labour Movement, through the twentieth century, and into the 21st Century.The second section is an analysis of the basic ideas of New Labour and their contemporary interpretation of traditional values such as equality, liberty and community. This is then compared to New Right and various 'Old Labour' or traditional social democrat perspectives on these values. Matt Beech claims that New Labour in power is a revisionist social democratic government. Beech argues that New Labour believes in positive as well as negative liberty, prioritarian conceptions of equality that focus on the poorest groups in society and believes in a communitarian social philosophy."--Bloomsbury Publishing.