scholarly journals The Liberal and Labour Parties in North-East Politics 1900-14: The Struggle for Supremacy

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Purdue
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
North East ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Consensus View

The related developments of the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberal Party have been subjected to considerable scrutiny by historians of modern Britain. Their work has, however, had the effect of stimulating new controversies rather than of establishing a consensus view as to the reasons for this fundamental change in British political life.

Money and the real impact of the Fourth Reform Act

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
National Party ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
The Real ◽  
The People ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
Progressive Party

AbstractThe real significance ofthe Representation of the People Act, 1918, for the Liberal and Labour parties lay in its mundane and little discussed financial provisions, not in its extension of the franchise. Despite the electoral reforms of 1883–5, election contests before 1914 were still expensive enough effectively to exclude the Labour party from politics outside the industrial centres. In 1918 the politicians of the older parties took the opportunity to relieve their pockets of a substantial part of the expense of elections. However, Labour was the main beneficiary: its new strategy of contesting seats nationwide was only made possible by the changes in and underlying the Fourth Reform Act. These changes, in turn, enabled Labour to benefit from being a ‘national’ party and ‘alternative government’, during a period when the established leading ‘progressive’ party was divided and weakened. The Fourth Reform Act also assisted Labour's strategy of eliminating the Liberal party as a parliamentary force: Liberals could be denied election victories in the countryside and the suburbs by hopeless but inexpensive Labour interventions.

Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change?

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indirect Rule

This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the reasons for this. On balance, this testimony suggests that a re-interpretation of early Akan political culture using a wider range of evidence is desirable.Although this implies that the impact of colonial ‘indirect’ rule was not as profound as has often been supposed, I have not discussed this problem directly except as it bears on the quality of the data. Nor have I attempted to analyse the day-to-day dynamics of political life, either for the earlier period (which would be impossible on the evidence) or for the colonial period (which would be irrelevant for comparison). Nevertheless, within the restricted compass of stool succession and paramountcy the argument here is that colonial rule involved little fundamental change from earlier practices. If anything, it probably served to delimit a greater range of previous options by seeking to codify them.

Labour Party Politics and the Working Class

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Beackon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Urban Working

By the late 1960s the shift of the Labour party away from its traditional base among the urban working class appeared to be gaining momentum. The opinion polls showed a marked swing of working-class sentiment away from the party, and the policies advanced during the period, especially with regard to prices and incomes and industrial relations, hardly seemed designed to satisfy the redistributive concerns traditionally imputed to the working class. Indeed the government's overriding concern with the problem of the economy during a period in which the Labour party had a large majority over all other parties in the House of Commons was seen by one commentator as the final act of a tragic farce entitled ‘The Decline and Fall of Social Democracy’. Clearly this conclusion was drawn somewhat prematurely: in the 1970s there is fragmented evidence to suggest that the Labour party has regained the votes of a number of its traditional supporters who had previously defected, just as there is evidence that the ‘left’ of the party is asserting itself. However, the events of the early 1970s are not sufficient to refute the proposition that some kind of fundamental change either has occurred, or is occurring, in the relationship between the Labour party and its traditional supporters. Even if the curtain has yet to fall, there is no reason to believe that the play has not begun.

The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1886–1906

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Powell
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Policies

The political history of Liberalism in the twenty years after 1886 was dominated by two great concerns: the need to find a unifying platform for the party which would be capable of sustaining it as an effective political force in the post-Gladstonian era and the need to come to terms with the growing economic and political strength of organized Labour. It was axiomatic that the two concerns were closely connected and that ‘social reform’ was the crucial link between them. It seemed clear that a more active social policy would not only renew the reforming impetus of Liberalism, but would also enable the Liberals to retain working-class support and so help to prevent the formation of a separate Labour party. This was the assumption that spurred Liberals to a redefinition of their political creed and led to the formulation of a ‘new Liberalism’ committed to policies of state intervention and social reform of the kind implemented by Asquith, Churchill and Lloyd George after 1906.3 However, while the New Liberalism may have acted as a cohering influence on the Liberal party (itself a moot point) and provided a firm intellectual justification for its policies, it proved less successful as a means of retaining Labour's undivided electoral support. With the formation, first of the Independent Labour Party in 1893, and then of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, there was set in train the formal organizational separation of the Liberal and Labour parties that was so drastically to affect the subsequent fortunes of Liberalism and so decisively to shape the pattern of modern British politics. The question that remains is whether this rift was the result of the tardiness with which the Liberals adopted their new policies, whether it was the product of other, quite separate factors, or whether in some way the nature of the New Liberalism itself may have contributed to the breach.

scholarly journals Fabianism, permeation and Independent Labour

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Expert Advice ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTThe leading Fabians held different versions of permeation: Shaw saw permeation in terms of weaning the Radicals away from the Liberal party, so he favoured an independent party; Webb defined permeation in terms of the giving of expert advice to a political elite without any need for a new party. These varieties of permeation can be traced in the individual and collective actions of the Fabians, and, in particular, in their attitude to the formation of the Independent Labour party (I.L.P.). The Fabians did not simply promote the I.L.P. nor did they simply oppose the I.L.P.

scholarly journals The Formation and the Evolution of the British Labour Party

2018 ◽  
pp. 50-62
Author(s):  
Olha Buturlimova
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Party System ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Xxth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Individual

The article examines the processes of organizational development of the British Labour Party in the early XXth century, the evolution of the party structure and political programme in the twentieths of the XXth century. Special attention is paid to researching the formation of the Social Democratic Federation, Fabian Society and Independent Labour Party till the time of its joining to the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and adopting the “Labour Party” name in 1906. The author’s aim was to comprehensively investigate the political manifests and activities of those organizations on the way of transformation from separate trade-unions and socialist groups to apparent union of labour, and then to the mass and wide represented parliamentary party. However, the variety of social base of those societies is distinguished, and difference of socialist views and tactics of achieving the final purpose are emphasized. Considerable attention is paid to the system of the individual membership and results thereof in the process of the evolution of the Labour Party’s organization. The reorganization of the Labour party in 1918, Representation of the People Act, 1918 and the crisis in the Liberal party were favourable for the further evolution of the Labour Party. It is summarized that the social base, the history of party’s birth, the conditions of formation and the party system had influenced the process of the evolution of the ideological and political concepts of Labourizm.

Informality and Informalization Among Eritrean Refugees

2019 ◽  
pp. 644-668
Author(s):  
Magnus Treiber
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
North East ◽  
Informal Practices

Transnational migration has important implications on the respective country of departure and its political dynamics. This article addresses informal practices and processes of informalization during migration from dictatorially ruled Eritrea in North-East-Africa. On the base of dense ethnography among refugees and migrants in neighboring Ethiopia the article discusses migration's cultural and social effects and sheds a light on the potential role of migrants in Eritrea's expected political transition. It will be argued that refugees and migrants are unable to fully liberate themselves from Eritrea's authoritarian political culture while seeking prosperity, democracy and human rights elsewhere. Instead they blunder into informal practices such as deceit, exploitation and denial of solidarity, which inevitably backfire on social and political life.

‘A not unedifying field for some local antiquary of the future’: new evidence on library activity and mutual improvement. The experience of the north-east of Scotland

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-31
Author(s):  
John C. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Prior Learning ◽  
Early Form ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The University

Mutual improvement, an early form of lifelong learning, was widespread among the nineteenth-century working classes and has been portrayed as a variable and relatively unstructured phenomenon. This essay challenges this view by examining the movement in north-east Scotland in the nineteenth century and its symbiotic relationship with library activity as libraries provided information to facilitate debate. The movement originated in the 1830s and flourished until the end of the century. Mutual improvement activity was fuelled by religious division and a relationship with the Liberal Party. The principal ideologue of the movement, which peaked in the 1850s, was Robert Harvie Smith, who articulated a sophisticated lifelong learning ideology supported by specific learning objectives, prioritised in order. A notable feature was the involvement of women in the movement. Most of the participants were tradesmen or small tenant farmers, and the subjects of their debates reflected their preoccupations: modern farming, religious controversy, and the ‘farm servant problem’. The movement anticipated the university extension movement by about thirty years. Because the north-east had its own university and was a self-contained learning culture, mutual improvers might proceed to university, thus anticipating modern ideas about received prior learning (RPL) and articulation. Mutual improvement activity demonstrates the continuing intellectual vitality in rural Scotland in the late nineteenth century.

Elections, Statistics, and the Rise of the Labour Party, 1906–1931

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Municipal Election ◽  
Accurate Quantification ◽  
The Way

Between 1900 and 1918 the Labour party changed from being a new organization operating on the fringes of the Liberal party, to being the largest British opposition party. This change has attracted a great deal of historical attention. The analysis of electoral results in general, and municipal election results in particular, rightly plays a major part in the conflicting explanations of why this realignment took place. Negatively, this paper seeks to establish that many of the methods of examining electoral material common in the literature are in fact inadequate. It is also suggested, more positively, that despite problems with the way results are currently used, even a modestly elaborated treatment of municipal election results can reveal significant information about the origins and location of Labour's support. Accurate ‘quantification’ cannot of itself explain the rise of Labour, or the pattern of electoral politics more generally. It can, however, be an important component of broader attempts at establishing why political changes took place both in Edwardian Britain and in the still under-researched period between 1918 and 1931.

Opposition in the British Political System

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nevil Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
General Election ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Everyday Politics ◽  
The Government

BY 1997 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY HAD BEEN IN POWER FOR EIGHTEEN years, the longest period of uninterrupted rule by a single party this century. To many it looked as if the alternation of two parties in government had stopped. And if that really had been the case, it would have meant that the British conception of opposition as the institutionalization within the workings of everyday politics of a standing alternative to the government of the day had broken down or been abandoned. But this is not what happened. The official opposition, the Labour Party, had re-established itself as a viable alternative government and was then able to gain not just an effective, but an overwhelming majority in Parliament in the general election of 1 May 1997. This outcome testified to more than the triumph of one party over another, marking the revival of the victor and the exhaustion of the loser: it also reasserted a crucial element in the constitutional practices of modern Britain.

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