The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (145 page)

In official Soviet parlance, the kulak was a rich peasant who exploited private labour. He was designated for ‘liquidation as a class’ by Stalin during collectivization in the 1930s. In practice, however, the kulak was frequently the best farmer, whose destruction irrevocably harmed Soviet agriculture.
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Imprecise term referring to two ideas: first, that workers, especially blue-collar or manual workers, share common political and economic interests which may be advanced through organized trade union and political action; secondly, that trades unions can form an effective alliance with left of centre parties in Parliament with the objective of forming a government in which workers' interests would be of central importance.
Labour movements in Europe derive from the reaction of the newly urbanized workers to industrialization in the nineteenth century.
Marxism
made a powerful impact on the emergence of labour movements in continental Europe and led to the formation of socialist political parties (Germany 1869); in Britain the labour movement was reformist rather than revolutionary and in the nineteenth century worked within the framework of the existing system of political parties (Labour Representation Committee formed 1900, Labour Party 1906).
The labour movement was strongly internationalist in character, emphasizing the shared interests between workers in different countries in opposing capitalist political regimes. However, in 1914 the socialist parties were swept up in a tide of nationalist fervour and, with the exception of a few individuals, supported the war efforts.
After 1917, labour movements were strongly influenced by the success of the Russian Bolsheviks. However, the established socialist and labour parties almost immediately turned their back on the ‘Third International’ organized from Moscow to co-ordinate revolutionary activity by the international labour movement, and separate communist parties were formed. Socialist and communist parties were locked in conflict during the interwar period. In some countries such as Britain, Germany, and the United States communists played a role within a single trades union movement, while in countries such as France the communists controlled their own trades unions which competed with socialist and Christian trades unions.
After the Second World War, when anti-fascism provided an imperative for unity, the labour movements again divided and trades unions and socialist parties formed international organizations divided on Cold War lines into pro- and anti-Communist groupings. Further weakening of the significance of the labour movement has occurred with the decline of manual employment, and the declining influence of trades unionism on socialist parties, especially in government. In the United States the concept of the labour movement has been much more seriously eroded by the divisions between the American Federation of Labour and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, conflicts between workers on grounds of race, the declining density of trade union membership, and the corruption of some union leaderships.
The idea of the labour movement was revived by the role played in the 1950s and 1960s in the Third World by trades unions in the movements for freedom from colonial rule. However, post-independence, the idea of independent trade unionism representing the rights of workers
vis-à-vis
governments, which often proclaimed themselves to be socialist, was often difficult to carry into effect.
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The principal centre-left party in modern British politics. It was established as the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, becoming the Labour Party in 1906. Labour developed as a mass party, with its origins in late 19th century working class protest. Its strategy from its formation was electoral, eschewing direct action as a route to political power. Its structure formally placed a high premium on internal party democracy, putting responsibility for policy with the annual Party Conference. A key part of Labour's origins, however, lay in the desire of the trade union movement to seek political representation and throughout its history the trade unions have been the party's principal funder.
Up to 1993, the Party constitution offered a unique role for the trades unions, who through the power of the block vote dominated decisions at Party Conference. They played a considerable role in the selection of parliamentary candidates, and had the largest share of the vote in the election of the Party's leader and deputy leader. In practice, though, the parliamentary leadership, especially when the Party is in government, has always enjoyed considerable autonomy on policy issues from both the party and trade unions.
Labour's electoral history makes tortuous reading. After allying with the Liberal Party in pre-1914 electoral pacts, it broke through as a party in its own right after the franchise was widened to the lower working class in 1918. Labour formed minority governments in 1924 and 1929–31. However, in 1931 Cabinet division over cuts in public spending led to Labour's leader, Ramsay McDonald , deserting the party to lead a coalition of so-called ‘national’ Conservatives, Liberals and Labour members. Labour later participated in Churchill's Second World War coalition government and after the Second World War Labour became one of the two parties which dominated government. However, Labour's electoral successes before 1997 were much more limited than the Conservatives, and the Party won a clear governing majority on only two occasions (1945 and 1966). In 1950 it won a small majority which it lost the following year. In 1964 it won a small majority which it consolidated in 1966, and in February 1974 it became the largest party but without an overall majority. In October 1974 it won a majority of three seats, though by April 1976 by-election defeats had removed the majority. For nine months in 1977 the Party governed on the basis of a parliamentary pact with the Liberal Party. Not once did Labour win a genuine two-term tenure on power at Westminster.
After 1918 the Party traditionally presented its policies as ‘socialist’, emphasizing the importance of a large state-controlled sector of the economy, relatively high levels of taxation, and comprehensive state organized welfare provision. In office, the 1945–50 government of Clement Attlee , is widely credited with successful radical reform which epitomized much of this progressive agenda. The Attlee Government created a mixed economy through the nationalization of a number of strategic industries and public utilities, as well as Keynesian ideas of economic management. A welfare state was established involving a commitment to full employment, universal social security, free universal state-funded health care and extensive state-funded social housing. Attlee also laid down a foreign and defence policy based on NATO, bilateral co-operation with the United States and the development of nuclear weapons. Such approaches set the framework for government for the next twenty to thirty years.
The general picture, however, was that Labour Governments were haunted by caution and failure. The inter-war minority governments lacked political power and were heavily influenced by the desire to show that they were fit to govern. Critics of the 1945 Attlee Government highlight that actually it should have gone a lot further in nationalization and in introducing greater industrial democracy. Post-war governments commonly were unable to develop state intervention as they were beset by economic crises. Both the 1945–50 and 1966–70 Labour governments were forced to devalue the pound. The Labour Governments 1974–79 presided over the shock-waves from the oil crisis following the Arab-Israeli war and domestic industrial relations problems. Inflation rose to over 25% and unemployment to over 1 million. Labour was forced to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund in 1976, and left government in 1979 tarnished by the image of the winter of discontent, 1978–79, when Britain was hit by a wave of strikes. Labour's common experience was to enter office with big plans and high expectations, only to retreat a few years later overwhelmed by events.
By the time Margaret Thatcher became Conservative Prime Minister in 1979 Labour had turned bitterly in upon itself. What emerged initially was a victory for the more radical left, leading to the departure of leading moderates, known as the ‘gang of four’, to establish the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. The Party entered the 1983 General Election committed to a fully planned socialist economy, defended by protectionism that made withdrawal from the European Community virtually certain, withdrawal from NATO and the unilateral dismantling of nuclear weapons. Leadership and campaigning were shambolic and the policy programme was widely attacked. As Labour's vote plummeted to just above that of the Liberal-SDP alliance, one party figure described the 1983 manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. The new leader, Neil Kinnock , intent on making the party electable again, took on the left in 1985, denouncing the Militant Tendency as an entryist organization that should be expelled. Kinnock's purging of the hard left by the early 1990s and the work of his successor, John Smith , paved the way for effective party modernization. This included reform of party organization to reduce the power of the trade unions and to enhance the power of the central leadership to keep discipline in the party. It also involved an embrace of social democratic policies that gave much more emphasis to market economics and defined a lesser role for the state, based on regulation rather than direct ownership or control of the economy.
The advent of Tony Blair as leader in 1994 hastened reform of party organization to move the party even more away from union control and the influence of the left. He also re-branded the Party as
New Labour
to emphasize its abandonment of doctrinaire policies of state intervention. In a massive symbolic gesture Blair pushed through reform of clause IV of the 1918 party constitution , which committed the party to public ownership. It was replaced by a more general commitment to social justice, although cynics should note that the new clause IV explicitly termed Labour a democratic socialist party where the original clause did not. From this basis Labour were able to offer themselves unambiguously as a modernized centre-left party, and develop policies that mixed state and market solutions to policy problems relatively free from ideological baggage. Blair talked instead of the politics of community, the third way, and of practical evidence-based approaches to managing the economy and the welfare state. Under Blair Labour became the most pro-Business and pro-European Union the party has ever been.
Faced by a heavily factionalized Conservative party Labour won two landslide election victories in 1997 and 2001 to establish itself for the first time as a two-term party of government. Blair's New Labour has already established for itself a place in history comparable to the Attlee Government through its large-scale reforms of the constitution, including House of Lords reform and devolution. The 2001 manifesto set itself the task of the modernization of public services, which perhaps will provide the most substantive evidence for comparison with previous traditions in Labour party history. While advocates suggest Blair and other modernizers from Kinnock onwards have skillfully adapted democratic socialist principles for modern times, critics suggest that they more generally represent a betrayal within the party comparable to that of Ramsey MacDonald's in 1931 and the SDP's ‘Gang of Four’ in 1981.
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