Harold Wilson, the British Labour Party, and the War in Vietnam

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhiannon Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
Power Base ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Military Support ◽  
Domestic Power

When British Prime Minister Harold Wilson urged Lyndon Johnson not to escalate hostilities in Vietnam in 1965, he did so not because he was morally opposed to the war or thought the war was intractable but because he was concerned about the likely impact of U.S. actions on his own domestic power base. Wilson's stance of providing moral but not military support for U.S. policy in Vietnam caused anger and disillusionment among leftwing Labour Party activists and members of Parliament, spurring them to active opposition against Wilson's government. Even so, Wilson managed to prevent a major schism within his government and party over the Vietnam War. His attempts to broker a peace deal between the combatants were largely designed to placate Labour Party activists while raising Wilson's profile as a world statesman. Although the initiatives did not generate any progress toward a ceasefire, they were relatively successful on the domestic front.

The Johnson Administration and the British Labour Government: Vietnam, the Pound and East of Suez

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dumbrell
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Limited Support ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
To Come

Recent accounts of Anglo-American relations in the mid-1960s revolve around the supposed existence of “deals” made between President Lyndon Johnson and Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The memoir of Edward Short, Wilson's Chief Whip, goes so far as to describe a “deal” done before the 1964 general election, whereby the US would support the pound in return for an undertaking not to devalue if a Labour Government were to be returned. Clive Ponting, Philip Ziegler and Ben Pimlott all accept that a “deal” or “secret agreement” — Pimlott's phrase — had been made by the early summer of 1965. The US would organise a multilateral rescue for the sinking pound, in return for British policies of deflation at home, retention of overseas military commitments, and (limited) support for the Vietnam war. The 1965 “deal” appears to have been reinforced during the sterling crisis of July 1966, only to come adrift in 1967. Wilson's own account has him rejecting the excessive demands accompanying an American sterling rescue in 1967, and devaluing as — in effect — an assertion of British sovereignty.

The British Labour Party and Twentieth Century Ireland

Race & Class ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-107
Author(s):  
John Newsinger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
British Labour

Party Matters

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
National Party ◽  
Strategic Responses ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Real Picture ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the relationship between political decentralization and the organization of political parties in Great Britain and Spain, focusing on the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, respectively. It assesses two rival accounts of this relationship: Caramani's `nationalization of politics' thesis and Chhibber and Kollman's rational choice institutionalist account in their book The Formation of National Party Systems. It argues that both accounts are seriously incomplete, and on occasion misleading, because of their unwillingness to consider the autonomous role of political parties as advocates of institutional change and as organizational entities. The article develops this argument by studying the role of the British Labour Party and the Spanish Socialists in proposing devolution reforms, and their organizational and strategic responses to them. It concludes that the reductive theories cited above fail to capture the real picture, because parties cannot only mitigate the effects of institutional change, they are also the architects of these changes and shape institutions to suit their strategic ends.

The Impact of the British Labour Party on the Dissidence of Milovan Djilas 1950–1958

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-187
Author(s):  
Nikola Mijatov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Impact

The article analyses the influence of the leadership of the British Labour Party on the first Cold War dissident, Milovan Djilas. Up until his dissidence in 1954, the main Yugoslav official for official relations with the British Left was Djilas. He had many contacts with the members of the British Labour Party such as Morgan Phillips, Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. While many of these contacts were professional, Djilas established a firm friendship with Bevan, under whose influence Djilas gradually abandoned communism and embraced the Labour movement. When he called for another party in Yugoslavia (one similar to the Labour Party), he was condemned by Tito’s regime.

West European Social Democracy in the Early 21st Century

2010 ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
N. Rabotyazhev
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Suitable Model ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
British Labour ◽  
West European

The article is devoted to the evolution of the West European social democracy in the late 20th and early 21st century. The author analyses the causes of the social democracy crisis in 1980-90s and considers its attempts to meet the challenges of globalization and the “new economy”. Modernization of the British Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership and updating of the German Social Democratic Party initiated by Gerhard Schröder are thoroughly examined in the article. Political and ideological processes ongoing in such parties as the French Socialist Party, the Dutch Labour Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Austrian Social Democratic Party are also considered. The author comes to a conclusion that the radical shift towards social liberalism took place merely in the British Labour Party. Schröder’s attempt to modernize the German Social Democratic Party turned out to be unsuccessful, while other European social democratic parties did not regard Blair’s “Third Way” as a suitable model for them.

Foreword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheri Berman
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
National Level ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
British Labour ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Government ◽  
Democratic Parties

The decline of the centre-left over the past years is one of the most alarming trends in Western politics. During the latter part of the 20th century such parties either ran the government or led the loyal Opposition in virtually every Western democracy. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), once the most powerful party of the left in continental Europe, currently polls in high 20s or 30s. The French Socialist Party was eviscerated in the 2017 elections, as was the Dutch Labour Party. Even the vaunted Scandinavian social democratic parties are struggling, reduced to vote shares in the 30 per cent range. The British Labour Party and the US Democrats have been protected from challengers by their country’s first-past-the-post electoral systems, but the former has recently taken a sharp turn to the hard-left under Jeremy Corbyn, while the latter, although still competitive at the national level, is a minority party at the state and local levels, where a hard-right Republican Party dominates the scene....

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