scholarly journals Milovan Đilas and the British Labour Party, 1950-1960

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateja Režek
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
The Relationship

The article deals with Milovan Đilas’ political transformation presented through an analysis of his connections with the British Labourites, and with the reaction of the Labour Party to the Đilas Affair. After the dispute with the Cominform, Yugoslav leaders tried to initiate alternative international contacts through Western socialist and social democratic parties, considering the most suitable partner the British Labour Party. Official contacts with the latter were established in 1950, the key role in the dialogue with the British Labourites played by the head of the Commission for International Relations, Milovan Đilas. In the aftermath of the Đilas Affair, the once warm relations between the British Labourites and Yugoslav Communists grew rather cool, but the leadership of the Labour Party did not wish to compromise their relations with Yugoslavia, and therefore reacted to it with considerable wariness. Although Yugoslavia remained an authoritarian state under the leadership of the Communist Party, in the eyes of the West it continued to represent a significant factor in the destabilisation of the Eastern Bloc, and the friendly relationship between the Labour Party and the Yugoslav Communists were primarily based on foreign policy interests of the two parties. In the second half of the 1950s, the relationship between the Labour Party and the Yugoslav Communists rested, even more than before, on pragmatic geopolitical consideration and not on ideological affinity; the interest of the British Labourites in the Yugoslav self-management experiment decreased significantly, as did the Yugoslav interest in democratic socialism, the idea that Đilas was so passionate about.

scholarly journals The renewal of social democracy and the „third way” of the British Labour Party

2003 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Havas
Keyword(s):  
Social Democracy ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
The Third ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

The author tries to enlighten and analyse the current processes in the European Social Democracy intending to renew its strategy and doctrine and adapt it to the new economic, political and social challenges. He devotes special attention to the attempts of the British Labour Party to modernise itself and create a new doctrinal approach, the so-called third way. The author analyses the history of the New Labour and characteristics of the Tony Blair-led party, elaborating in detail the contents of the third way. The main conclusion he makes is that, in spite of the New Labour?s success at the two last general elections in Britain and the positive lessons to be drawn from the third way, it does not mean that all Social Democratic Parties should follow that example, for different social conditions demand different strategies and policies and relevant responses by every party.

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.

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....

The Italian Socialist Party in postwar Europe: a study of its relationship with the USSR and the October Revolution from the 1940s to the 1960s

Modern Italy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jacopo Perazzoli
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Postwar Europe ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

The main goal of this article is to analyse the relationship between the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) – a party that followed a different trajectory from other Western social democratic parties following the Second World War – and the October Revolution and the USSR from the 1940s to the 1960s. In particular, given the political context of postwar Europe, it aims to use this relationship to understand the party's political and programmatic evolution from a new perspective. To this end, the article is largely based on archival investigation and on a wide examination of press sources from the period.

Authoritarianism and the Evolution of Voting Behaviour

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Radical Right ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Party Support ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the evolution of the relationship between authoritarianism and party support from 1990 to 2017. The chapter presents the analyses of eight different countries, and two conclusions emerge. First, high authoritarians have shifted towards radical right parties over the past three decades though there was no prior cross-national relationship between authoritarianism and party support in each country. As a result, different mainstream parties in each country have lost support as high authoritarians increasingly vote for PRR parties. This finding challenges the popular narrative that PRR parties have gained at the expense of social democratic parties, which only holds true in certain countries. The analysis also shows that low authoritarians have shifted towards left-liberal parties such as the greens, further contributing to the worldview evolution. As high authoritarians move towards radical right parties and low authoritarians towards left-liberal parties, traditional centre-left and centre-right parties that were based on twentieth-century class and religious conflicts struggle for support, particularly as generational replacement results in the depletion of their traditional voters.

The trade union contribution to the British Labour Party

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Thorpe
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Relationship

Andrew Thorpe examines the long-established and continuing relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party. He argues that whilst both organisations have changed over the years, and despite the contentious nature of the alliance, the relationship has proved enduring and profitable because it has made them stronger together than apart. In particular, he examines the origins of this relationship, how it has introduced and how it has intruded into the policy, membership, party structure and parliamentary leadership of Labour Party. Only one of Labour’s six Labour prime ministers. James Callaghan, has come from a trade union background but the others, often coming from a socialist background, have had, as Callaghan did, come to an arrangements with the trade unions movement within the context of what Lewis Minkin referred to as a ‘contentious alliance’.

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.

Rethinking a Socialist Foreign Policy: The British Labour Party and International Relations Experts, 1918 to 1931

2009 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucian M. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Intellectual Revolution

AbstractBetween 1918 and 1929 the British Labour Party, working in conjunction with many of the top names in International Relations (IR), developed a coherent foreign policy centered around reforming the international system. This was a major policy change for a political party that, up until then, had concentrated on domestic social and political issues. The construction of Labour's interwar foreign policy was part of a wider intellectual revolution that produced the separate discipline of IR after the First World War, and the splits in Labour over foreign policy mirrored similar splits in the wider IR literature. Particularly important here were the differences of opinion over the relationship between arbitration, sanctions, and disarmament in a system of League of Nations pooled security. Labour's close association with IR experts and intellectuals resulted in the construction of an international policy that, while addressing socialist themes, drew on an older liberal tradition. The ultimate goal of this policy was to create pacific international conditions favorable to the development of democratic socialism. While events after 1931 forced a major rethinking in the Party, Labour's IR experts continued to provide policy-relevant advice that shaped the Party's responses to the rise of fascism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document