‘Fill a bag and feed a family’: the miners’ strike and its supporters

The 1984-5 Miners’ Strike drew upon an exceedingly broad basis of support from representatives of the churches and trade unions to environmentalists, feminists, students, anti-nuclear campaigners, peace activists and inner city radicals. The strike was sustained by an extensive network of miners’ support groups working closely with the mining communities. This chapter analysis the composition, methods and effectiveness of the groups which raised prodigious amounts of money. By emphasising their gender and sexuality, Women Against Pit Closures and Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners presented a substantive challenge to the chauvinistic attitudes of the coalfields. Working-class women’s activism drew upon equal rights traditions established in the mining areas between the wars. The support demonstrated by some trade unions and individual trade unionists is contrasted to the equivocation of the TUC and the support offered by the Communist Party (despite its internal divisions) and by many Labour authorities, councillors and constituency Labour Parties which contrasted with the position taken by Neil Kinnock as Labour Party leader.

Neil Kinnock’s perestroika: Labour and the Soviet influence

The Labour Party’s socialism changed dramatically in the 1980s. Neil Kinnock’s restructuring of Labour occurred at the same time as the international socialist movement moved away from the statist model of economics and turned, in varying degrees, to more market-orientated ideas. This chapter assesses the ways in which Labour’s political thought adapted both to New Right realities and to the fact that much of world was adopting free market economic ideas. The particular focus here is the development of Kinnock’s ideas in light of the changes in Soviet socialism after Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his reform programme. The Soviet Union had long influenced Labour’s ideology in both positive and negative ways, and this chapter shows how it continued to do so in 1980s. It examines the relationship between Kinnock’s Labour and Gorbachev’s USSR, and it shows how the changes introduced by both leaders began to lead to a convergence of ideas between Eastern and Western European versions of socialism.

Retrieving or re-imagining the past? The case of ‘Old Labour’, 1979–94

This chapter explores the concept of ‘Old Labour’. It contends that rather than affording a description of Labour’s ideology, programme and character prior to Tony Blair’s election as leader in 1994, it constituted a particular politically-driven representation of the party’s past and one which often corresponded poorly to the historical record. It was essentially a rhetorical device coined by the circle around Tony Blair designed both to discredit their opponents and to highlight the novelty and modernity of their ‘New Labour’ project. In this it achieved a large measure of success to the extent that, in the words of the Independent, the language of ‘Old Labour’ became ‘an effortless part of our vocabulary’ (22 July 1995), in this way advancing New Labour’s strategic purposes.

The international context: end of an era

A pattern was visible across Western Europe in the 1980s; the policies and objectives favoured by the Left in the 1970s – a list which often included industrial democracy, greater economic equality, hostility to NATO and the European Economic Community as well as plans for more state ownership and economic planning – were being renounced. By the middle of the decade the word ‘globalisation’ had entered business literature. The theories associated with it in the 1990s had already begun to emerge – the diminished potency of states in national economic management, the closer integration of the world economy, the greater mobility of capital, the greater power of anonymous market forces, the impact of cheaper and faster communications, the growing strength of forces of convergence, and the redundancy of old socialist ideas. This chapter examines how these international developments were interpreted by the Left in Britain.

Introduction: new histories of Labour and the left in the 1980s

In 1980, notwithstanding the defeat of the Labour government the year before, the political left in its various forms remained a major presence in British life. Local government, the media, trade unions, pressure groups, the arts and academia: all were often dominated by left-of-centre voices that created networks of opposition to the recently elected Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. Since the reforming Labour government of 1945, the liberal left had some reason to believe that it had shaped the orthodoxies of modern Britain with the welfare state, Keynesian economic policy and the liberal reforms that abolished censorship and challenged gender and racial discrimination. It was still possible, in 1980, for some to believe that a socialist future beckoned....

Labour’s liberalism: gay rights and video nasties

This article covers a time in which the defence and improvement of the Lesbian and Gay community was employed as a political stick with which to beat Labour. It highlights the tensions and contradictions with Labour’s liberalism and considers how a Party which, in the 1950s and 60s, had facilitated a relaxation of censorship laws in Britain, was unsure how to react to the great ‘Video Nasties’ furore of the mid-1980s and did little to provide constructive criticism of the legislation when it was presented. The Party stumbled over the path it wished to take in pursuit of a more liberal country, and this represented the classic dilemma faced by Labour in having to appeal to both the (perceived) liberal-minded middle classes and the more socially conservative working class which it was set up to serve. This article shows that, despite the upheaval that was taking place within Labour, it could still be a reforming force. It maintained its commitment to minority rights at a time when such sentiments were viewed with downright hostility, particularly in the eyes of the tabloid newspapers. In spite of the divisions within the Party, Labour found common ground in the promotion of social liberalism.

Militant’s laboratory: Liverpool City Council’s struggle with the Thatcher Government

This chapter considers how, during the 1960s and 1970s, the far left Militant Tendency, also known as the Revolutionary Socialist League, developed a power-base in Liverpool politics from where it could take control of the local Labour Party and Liverpool City Council by the early 1980s. The chapter uses local archives and central government sources to analyse the struggle between the Militant-led Labour-run City Council and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government over Liverpool’s finances at a time when the city-region was on the verge of a social, economic and political nervous breakdown. The discussion also examines how the fallout from Militant’s experiment in Democratic Centralism called into question the existence of the Labour Party, and how this led to a watershed moment which changed the face of the party.

Responsible capitalism: Labour’s industrial policy and the idea of a National Investment Bank during the long 1980s

This article discusses Labour’s pledge to introduce a National Investment Bank (NIB) – included in the General Election manifestoes of 1983, 1987, and 1992. It considers the long term intellectual history of this idea, the various machinations regarding the similarly corporatist National Enterprise Board of the 1970s, and how the NIB policy not only survived the fiasco of 1983 but remained a key part of Labour’s agenda until 1992. As the chapter argues, this policy serves as an exemplar of the way Neil Kinnock managed the Labour Party – providing just enough meat to his party’s left and right, and allowing both to read into the NIB what they wished it to be.

‘Race Today cannot fail’: black radicalism in the long 1980s

The Race Today Collective occupied a unique position on the British left during the 1980s. Inspired by the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the thought of radicals such as CLR James and Walter Rodney, and drawing activists from radical organisations such as the Black Panthers and the Black Unity and Freedom Party, the Race Today Collective became the most influential black rights group in Britain in the 1980s. Centred around a magazine, Darcus Howe and the Collective organised some of the most important grassroots campaigns of the decade, bringing black power to housing, industry, policing and the arts. This chapter considers the group’s emergence in the 1970s, the intellectual foundations on which the Collective was built, its distinctive approach to campaigning, its relationship to various ‘white left’ groups, and the different aspects of its work during the 1980s.

Leading the Labour Party in the 1980s

The Labour Party had three leaders in the 1980s. None found the experience fulfilling. James Callaghan, Michael Foot, and Neil Kinnock, as leaders do, sought to convey their purpose and to shape the party; it was their misfortune to try to lead at a moment when the very nature of leadership was questioned, and the motivations of those who led doubted. Their circumstances varied but the outcomes were similar. As each tried to manage the party and appeal to the public, there were challenges to their authority (both formal and informal), representations to convey and misrepresentations to endure, both at the time and subsequently. Though each has been considered individually, this chapter offers the first comparative assessment.