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.

Concluding remarks

2018 ◽  
pp. 271-279
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Future ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Different Levels

The conclusion begins with an overview of the way the chapters in the volume have offered an exploration of three different levels of conflict – intra-organisational tensions, tensions which exist between different types of organisations, and tensions between labour organisations and spontaneous working-class protests – to collectively provide explanations to the paradoxes affecting the Labour movement. It then stresses the benefits of the volume’s integrated and multidisciplinary approach of the labour movement, underlining the fact that the contributors share a common concern for the future of the British labour movement. In the following section the conclusion ponders the future prospects for the labour movement and the Labour Party, sketching a number of possible scenarios. It stresses the fact that visions of the future differ according to political positioning. It then highlights the shared conviction of the contributors that class remains relevant as an analytical tool.

The Militant Tendency and entrism in the Labour Party

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Massey
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the tactic of entrism within the British Labour Party pursued by the Revolutionary Socialist League and the Militant Tendency between 1955 and 1991. It also explores Labour’s response to such tactics by assessing the impact of the party’s internal investigations into Militant in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the expulsion of the Militant Editorial Board in 1983, and the Inquiry into the Militant Tendency in Liverpool in 1985-6. Through an examination of the Militant newspaper, the group’s penetration of Labour’s youth wing, and its activities in Liverpool, this study analyses the extent of Militant’s infiltration of the Labour Party.

The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942–7

1984 ◽  
Vol 24 (93) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The North ◽  
Party Organisation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

The Commonwealth Labour Party (Northern Ireland), hereafter referred to as the C.L.P., came into existence on 19 December 1942. Its birth was the result of a split in the ranks of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (N.I.L.P.). This split centred on the personality and the political outlook of the man who had led the N.I.L.P since 1932, and who was to be leader of the C.L.P during its five-year lifespan: Harry Midgley.Midgley (1892-1957) was, by the time of the formation of the C.L.P., one of the best-known and most controversial politicians in Northern Ireland. Born into a working-class protestant home in north Belfast, he acquired an early political education as a youth through the medium of the Independent Labour Party organisation in the city. He was close, at least initially, to William Walker, the most outstanding labour leader produced by the north of Ireland during the early troubled years of the labour movement. In addition, he met and listened to some of the most eminent spokesmen of British labour, most notably Keir Hardie. Midgley served his time as a joiner in the Workman Clark shipyard (where his father was a labourer) before spending a brief period in America in 1913 and 1914. After serving in the Ulster division in the First World War, he returned to Belfast in 1919 and quickly got himself a job as a trade-union organiser with the Linenlappers’ Union.

Introduction: the British labour movement between unity and division

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Long Term Trends

This introduction explains how the Labour Party’s current difficulties have made a number of concerns that seemed outmoded topical again and have rekindled the interest of both academics and practitioners in organisational matters. It shows that there is a need to put present troubles into historical perspective, to demonstrate that the present disunities are nothing new, and that they are far from capturing every source of disagreement within the British labour movement, which was, from its inception, never a homogeneous entity, and was formed of different groups trying to achieve different things. This does not imply that those different components did not seek to achieve some form of unity, since for practical reasons it was often felt that divergences over long term objectives should not be an obstacle to united action around short term goals. In order to better bring out these long-term trends, the book follows a diachronic approach, from the 1830s to the present day, progressively zooming on the dilemmas experienced by the contemporary Labour Party.

scholarly journals VII. Arthur Henderson, the Russian Revolution, and the Reconstruction of the Labour Party

1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Winter
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

The dominant role of the secretary of the British Labour party, Arthur Henderson, in the reconstruction of the party in 1917–18 has never been disputed. It is surprising, therefore, that little attention has been paid in recent historical literature to the development of Henderson's political ideas during the First World War and, more particularly, to the impact of the Russian Revolution on his attitude towards the conduct of international affairs and domestic politics. The neglect of this aspect of an important chapter of labour history has obscured the fact that Henderson came to advocate the reconstruction of the Labour party only after and partly as a result of his visit to Russia in mid-1917

Labour united and divided from the 1830s to the present

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
The 19Th Century

Spanning a period which stretches from the 19th century to the present day, this book takes a novel look at the British labour movement by examining the interaction between trade unions, the Labour Party, other parties of the Left, and other groups such as the Co-op movement and the wider working class, to highlight the dialectic nature of these relationships, marked by consensus and dissention. It shows that, although perceived as a source of weakness, those inner conflicts have also been a source of creative tension, at times generating significant breakthroughs. This book seeks to renew and expand the field of British labour studies, setting out new avenues for research so as to widen the audience and academic interest in the field, in a context which makes the revisiting of past struggles and dilemmas more pressing than ever. The book together brings well-established labour historians and political scientists, thus establishing dialogue across disciplines, and younger colleagues who are contributing to the renewal of the field. It provides a range of case studies as well as more wide-ranging assessments of recent trends in labour organising, and will therefore be of interest to academics and students of history and politics, as well as to practitioners, in the British Isles and beyond.

John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, and a Lost Labour Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connal Parr
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Impact

This chapter demonstrates the importance of the Labour movement on two Belfast-born Protestant writers and how this inculcated a socialist conviction quite separate, and antagonistic, to Ulster Unionism. Referencing Sam Thompson’s unpublished plays as well as his trio of performed works, it illuminates his public impact as well as the significance of the play Over the Bridge (1960). John Hewitt’s early political activities and regionalist outlook are explored, as is the controversy surrounding his 1957 move to Coventry. The underestimated importance of a class perspective within Ulster Protestantism is addressed, with questions of national identity secondary to the writers’ Left and internationalist politics. With continuing resonance literature itself is shown as intrinsic to the Northern Ireland Labour Party, of which both were associated. The chapter concludes with analysis of the impact of both writers.

LABOUR, THE LEFT, AND THE STALINIST PURGES OF THE LATE 1930s

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-207
Author(s):  
PAUL CORTHORN
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
British Labour ◽  
United Front ◽  
Soviet Experiment

It is clear that a strand of anti-Stalinism had firmly entered the political discourse of British Labour and the Left by the late 1940s. This was largely a response to mounting Cold War tension and is rightly seen to contrast with their earlier broad support for the Soviet experiment. This article adds to this picture by arguing that anti-Stalinism was first adumbrated in the late 1930s in reaction to the Stalinist purges. Whereas previous accounts have given the impression that the Labour party and the wider Left were largely uninterested in the purges, this article shows instead that they provoked sharp criticisms of Stalin from across the range of Labour and Left opinion. Moreover, it also demonstrates that while certain figures and groupings did choose not to discuss the purges publicly, this was not necessarily because of a lack of interest or knowledge. For the Left the domestic political necessities of supporting the united front meant that, at least temporarily, their real views had to be concealed. More generally, the international pressure of endorsing the Soviet Union as an ally against international fascism inhibited an even more forthright condemnation of Stalin.

The Party Connection: Divergence and Convergence in the British Labour Movement

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-484
Author(s):  
Lewis Minkin
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Society Meeting ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Fabian Society

The consultations which led to the Social Contract of 1973 are understood to have been initiated as a result of a proposal by Jack Jones made to a Fabian Society meeting held at the 1971 Labour Party Conference. At that meeting Jones told the story of a man who having completed fifty years of marriage was asked if he had ever contemplated divorce. He replied, ‘Divorce—never. Murder—often’.In the past two decades the relationship between the unions and the labour party — the central feature of labour politics in Britain — has undergone some remarkable changes. It has passed through severe crisis: reinforcing tensions which built up in the 1960s became so great at the end of the decade that the alliance appeared ‘threatened as never before’. One scholar of labour movement politics suggested at the time that there might be a life-span to ‘Labour’ parties. To the Left of the Labour Party some revolutionary critics looked to a militant union break with ‘the immense contradiction’. To the Right of the Labour Party some social democratic critics looked to a realignment which would facilitate the emergence of a new radical centre party.

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