A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left

by Simon Hannah, John McDonnell (Foreword)

For over a hundred years, the British Labour Party has been a bastion for working class organisation and struggle. However, has it ever truly been on the side of the workers? Where do its interests really lie? And can we rely on it to provide a barrier against right-wing forces? By looking into its history, this book shines a light on the internal dynamics of the 'party with socialists in it'. From its origins in the late nineteenth century, the Labour Party was uncomfortably divided between a metropolitan liberal and a working class milieu, which characterises the party to this very day. This history guides us through the Bevanite movement and the celebrated government of Clement Attlee, to the emergence of a New Left that was highly sceptical of the Labour party during the Wilson era. It explores the move towards Blairism and the disheartening story of the decline of the Labour Left after their historic defeat in the 1980s. With the emergence of socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party's fate rests in the balance. Will they reconcile their internal divisions or split into obscurity? Published in partnership with the Left Book Club.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Adult

272 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2018

Reviews

[Mark Hebden · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been many histories of the Labour Party; Keith Laybourn, Brian Brivati, Andrew Thorpe and Henry Pelling to name a few. This appears to be the first (or the first for quite some time) to focus on the Labour Party purely from the left wing angle and attempts to set the historic framework for the current leadership which is probably the most progressive in the party’s history, in the context of a post-Thatcherite local and post-Soviet global politics.

It is a fairly short book to focus on such a large period of history, and indeed such large personalities therein, so for those wanting more insight into what drove Ellen Wilkinson or what galvanised Nye Bevan they would be better off reading direct biographies of their targets. This is very broad brush and looks at how the left have consistently been marginalised by party and governmental machinery, how Labour looks outward and more progressive in opposition, but suddenly looks inward and conforms to establishment norms when in power. The lack of depth on certain key moments is my only real criticism of the book, but once the reader is aware of them, they can be researched more thoroughly elsewhere. Also, the author tires quickly of the early history of the party where much of the political philosophies going forward were enshrined; this is clearly the book of a political activist as opposed to historian.

Very few party leaders are praised (with the exception of Clement Attlee, with qualifications), with the right of the party usually in control of the major seats of power, from the leader himself (always a him) to NEC members and trade union general secretaries; only recently have trade unions had leaders moved somewhat to the left of their general membership with notable past exceptions, and have often been in conflict with the left of the Labour Party due to naked self-interest at times, and at others a narrow but well intentioned view on what is best for their members in the short term – this latter point is nothing new, Len McCluskey may be a died in the wool socialist but UNITE represent members working in the nuclear industry and will block any moves to abolish Trident.
The book maintains a quick pace throughout and Hannah seems in his element when speaking of the splits in the 1970s and 80s. He breaks some sacred myths here about the IMF loan, Militant Tendency and the so-called “longest suicide note in history”; all these things have become millstones tied to the neck of the Labour left, unfairly in Hannah’s view and he explains why with great clarity and shows up the timidity of the late 80s / early 90s Labour leadership with passion, reserving full scorn for those in the party who refused to back the miners, dockers and printworkers in their various strike actions, which we know now (and some knew at the time) was part of a larger assault on workers’ rights under Thatcher and Major.

Moving forward, he details how left wing members of the party were deselected or not put forward for potential seats under John Smith briefly and Tony Blair more permanently. Here we see the centralisation of the party machine under Blair and his policy unit. How Party Conference was subdued and deliberately undermined to keep power within the grasp of the leadership and his cabal.

We finish of course chronologically with the defeat of 2015, with some sympathy for Ed Miliband who should have been given far more freedom to be himself, and the movement that gathered behind Jeremy Corbyn who was entered on to the leadership election ticket as a sop to the left but quickly grabbed the attention with his unfailingly human and compassionate responses to questions in debates.

Obviously this book is partial, as all political books are and indeed all histories of the Labour Party. Hannah clearly is a Corbyn supporter along with a huge number of other people and has become party of the army of dedicated activists pushing for a Labour government with a socialist face. However, despite his (twice made) democratic mandate there is a warning here that the right of the party are ideologically opposed to the politics of Jeremy Corbyn and the vast majority of members, they will come again in another coup attempt before long and those of us wanting to continue this project must be ready.

It is a vital read for anyone engaging with politics for the first time, particularly in Momentum or other Corbyn supporting movements to see how we got here, and to show them that they have the fight of their lives on their hand if they want to see a democratically elected socialist leader in this country.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely good read. While there are far larger studies of Labour Party history, Labourism, and extensive biographies of the various Labour personalities profiled, no other single work is so digestible and offers such breadth and depth without getting bogged down in the innumerable details. As Hannah says, ultimately for the Labour left to be successful it has to achieve what it has never done before - build a mass extra-parliamentary movement. As the book was released in 2018 (although a new edition soon to be released updates the story to 2022) it can only touch on the emergence of Corbynism, its initial shoots and mature development, not its ignoble death in 2019; but it notes the teething problems and anticipates the difficulties and contradictions that followed which were not resolved in favour of the Labour left.

Or more specifically, the section of the Labour left which remained concerned about remaining trapped in rather than transcending parliamentarism, electoralism, Labourism and the other typical features that have characterised the Labour Party virtually for its entire organisational history in and out of power, despite the repeated historical phenomenon of shifts to the left and the emergence of left currents inside Labour when out of power.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book seeking essentially to contextualise the rise of Corbyn as a historic shift in an ever present struggle in the Labour party between its left and right. His ascension to leadership was, for Simon Hannah, a passionate outburst of anger by ordinary members and a grassroots movement against a parliamentary establishment that had decided, since at least the 1980s, that the way to power and electability was to accept conservative economic principles, purge the "loony left" and discourage activism in attempts to woo right-wing press, and pivot the party away from working class interests in favour of the middle-class and bankers. And indeed, the history of Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair seems to show the complete failure of the rightwing of the party to actually win votes and push change; Kinnock failed repeatedly despite his McCarthy-esque purges, and Blair won thrice but at the cost of repelling roughly 5 million voters and more than halving the size of Labour Party membership - even while given the illusion of popular electability by the press and by the unrepresentative FPTP system. And, it needs to be said, during that time that he was in power, Blair pursued the Thatcherite economic policies that were so destructive to working class communities, took up the Tory sports of immigrant-bashing and harassing those on benefits, and even his "progressive" policies had sinister undertones - he would increase funding to the NHS and schools, but on the condition of letting the private sector creep in and profit, and he would introduce the minimum wage, but only after consulting business owners to make sure they found it comfortably low. All the while, he was attacking and criticising the power of unions, leading to multiple disaffiliating with the party, and the others to bashfully agree not to stir up trouble for him. This was all while attacking at every opportunity the internal structures of the Labour Party to reduce its internal democracy in order to cement his (and his group, Progress's) hegemony. Labour Conferences were reduced to shams. Yet through this, even the left wing of the party mostly acquiesced, many deciding that power (even when clearly not being used to make real change) was worth the cost of your soul. During many votes, Corbyn was the lone dissenter standing up for traditional Labour principles and the working class. As counter to this, Corbyn failed to win in the 2017 and 2019 elections (the latter of which taking place after the book was published), yet managed to massively swell the ranks of the party and its voter base - increasing membership from less than 200,000 to over half a million and gaining back millions of the voters that Blair lost, even while dogged by internal divisions (the right wing of his party trying intentionally and viciously to sabotage and undermine him), attacks and slander in the press, and the looming shadow of Brexit. The book, then, highlights the great myth that the left, socialist, wing of the Party is unpopular and unelectable, and also draws attention to the fact that sadly it is the Tories and the press that are allowed to dictate the narrative of events around Labour defeats. It was true in 1983 and it's true now.

That's the rough history that the last third of the book races through. I say "races" because, sadly, the book does struggle to fully grapple with its lofty subject matter, and a detailed history wouldn't exactly fit into 250 pages. So it does feel in parts that perhaps important details are missed - the Labour Party's very reluctant relationship with Gay rights, and black and female liberation (all "loony" fringe groups that the PLP thought would cost it votes), in the 70s and 80s being just one example. But, for it faults, the book does offer a compelling narrative with which to traverse the Labour Party's history and to contextualise recent events.

[Andy Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers an excellent history of the left in the Labour Party and should be required reading for anyone with an interest in Labour politics. It is particularly relevant given that Labour is now lead by Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, and the left are in the ascendancy within the party. Simon Hannah details the development of Labour’s left from the origins of the party through to the present day and highlights a history of betrayal, compromise and accommodation that have seen the hopes of successive generations of socialists dashed.

Now though under Corbyn and Labour’s mushrooming into a mass party of 600,000+ members, the stage is set for the left to offer a real choice to the previous Hobson’s Choice of neoliberal alternatives that were put forward by previous Labour leaderships. So now, the British Public have a real opportunity and a genuine political choice, perhaps for the first time in half a century. Whether they make the right socialist choice will determine the future of the left in the Labour Party for years to come.

A Party With Socialists In It is an essential read and Simon Hannah has done the labour movement a great service in writing it.

[Lee Humphries · Rating 5 out of 5]

John McDonnell provides the forward asking the question - What is the Labour Party (LP), for? Is the LP simply to ameliorate our existing capitalist society, to tweak it by making slight reforms, or to transform it by "aiming at the radical replacement of the existing economic & social system". McDonnell talks of the Party's development from lack-luster leadership of Ramsay McDonald in the1930's after the Great Depression, to the Party's monumental success after WWII with Clement Atlee and leads us up to the Blair years which were neither reformist of transformative.

Hannah's introduction begins with the current leader of the LP, Jeremy Corbyn, and the battles he has faced with the Labour right, and how the LP has faced division within it's own party since it's early formation. To understand the division within the LP one needs to go back to its inception.

During the 19th Century, trade unions and worker cooperatives were naturally forming as a defence for working people against the exploitative economic system of capitalism. Members of the highly skilled trade unions and guilds sided more with the Liberal Party than what the ILP was trying to establish & some indeed went on to become Liberal MPs, however mass union organizing was growing and challenging capitalists further fighting for higher pay, improved working conditions and the 8 hour working day.

In 1893, Keir Hardie was elected as the first explicitly working class MP and championed an independent working class party which led to the Independent Labour Party (ILP). As members grew Hardie wanted to strengthen the working class by unifying the ILP with one of the biggest unions at the time, the TUC, but its leaders were hostile to a split in parliament as they saw the Liberals as their best chance of winning reforms.

By the early 1900s, the unifying of the ILP, the (Marxist) Social Democratic Foundation and the Liberal-leaning Fabian Society, began to meet in parliament as the Labour Party. The first test for the party was the demand for women's suffrage which many radicals & members (notably the Pankhursts), forced the issue by making it a national debate. Mass strikes erupted alongside women's suffrage in the years leading up to WW1 and there was a growing distrust against both unions leaders and MPs and later again during the General Strike of 1926.

Hannah then documents, the ongoing divisions within the LP from the Great Depression, Easter Uprising in Dublin, the call to arms in the WW1 and the Russian Revolution which did indeed divide opinions. The 1918 Constitution really increased the size of the LP as former liberal voters switched to the LP and trade unions became more affiliated and it became a membership orgaisination. The famous Clause IV was introduced which really gave birth to the rise of socialism in the party and began setting sights on the nationalistion of industry to the benefit of the country post-WWII.

Post WWII, Labour rose to parliamentary success due to the unpopularity of Churchill at the time and many advances in the 'spirit of 45' were made such as the creation of the NHS; the welfare state; national house building programme; full employment and the start of public ownership of certain aspects of industry under Clause IV. Open ideology-warfare began between Nye Bevan on the left & Hugh Gaitskell on the right and ran through to the 50's leaving Bevan to resign as the US was pressuring the LP to spend more money on the war machine as Gaitiskill won his goal of removing dental & eye treatment from the NHS.

The book continues from the 50s-80s and then to the 90s in which Hannah points to the more recent right of the LP - 'New Labour', described by Roy Hattersley as the 'cuckoo in the nest', as Blair and his followers adopted the neoliberal model. Big changes were afoot with the removal of Clause IV, Public-Private partnerships opened up with the Private Finance Initiatives leaving hospitals dangerously indebted to private firms, the RMT withdraw its funding due to the failure to bring the railways back under public control, as did the Fire Brigade Union due to the increasing attacks on trade unions, and of course the Iraq War.

Hannah's last chapter discusses the rise of Corbynism and he concludes with:

"Any serious reading of history can lead to only one conclusion; the socialist left will have to break down the traditional institutions of government and power in order to make any headway at all".

This a welcome addition to understanding the history of the LP and one I would certainly recommend it to understand the factionalism within the Party. I bought a copy from Printed Matter Bookshop in Hastings, East Sussex.

[Crooked · Rating 3 out of 5]

Labour has always been riven with factional divisions, perhaps first and foremost between what is usually called the party 'right' and party 'left', the specific ideologies and policies of which have changed over time with the shifting tides of the British political Overton Window.

Noting these changes and the issues it makes in creating a coherent concept of a 'Labour Left' (and 'Right'), Hannah Simon separates the two primary tendencies of Labour into 'transformative' and 'integrative' tendencies.

The former ('transformative') entails a commitment to "far-reaching economic, social, constitutional, and political changes that challenge the existing power relations in society...being generally anti-capitalist and socialist-minded, seeking radical solutions to everyday problems, [and] opposing Britain's role as an imperialist power".

by contrast, the ever-more dominant 'Right' Integrationist tendency is typified "by those who want to weld the Labour Party to already state and social structures for the purpose of incorporating the interests of the labour movement into the establishment. They take society as it is but want greater representation, believing that this in itself will ensure laws that create a better quality of society".

As a whole, I think this is a very good way of conceptualising the main divide, though I think its potency loses a little bit of strength as you get to the New Labour years, at which point the Labour right loses a lot of its connections to the trade union movement both in terms of how much they actually listen to the trade unions, in terms of the declining importance and power of trade unions, and in the social background of their leadership. This is particularly clear in the current Labour Party in which very few of the senior leaders have a union background (the vast majority come from either a purely party-political background or a 'professional-managerial background) and in which most of the new MP intake come from the consultancy sector and other jobs detached from the labour movement that nonetheless orbit the Labour and Tory parties.

Still, the overall gist of transform vs integration remains powerful, and better than any alternatives I can think of or that I've read before.

The prose is nice enough-it's written for a general audience and isn't especially academic or heavy as a text. It's also fairly 'play-by-play' history, and not necessarily very analytical, especially in the first half. It does not have a central framework or argument running through it explicitly, and the central argument isn't explicated until the conclusion, and even then not really in sufficient detail. While it's very obvious what some of the author's views are throughout, I was always taught that you don't want to leave the actual conclusions/evaluations to the end like a murder mystery novel, you want it weaved in throughout the book, with the evidence (critically) related back to the overall hypothesis, rather than a story being told and then a 'moral of the story' being given at the end.

I think part of the issue the book faced is that it was too short. I know publishers like non-fiction works to be 200-300 pages, but this really could've done with quite a lot more given the ambitious scope of the book. Particularly in the earlier parts of the book, I feel like you're almost rushed through the details in a short narrative that gives little indication to the actual structures and bodies that comprise the Labour left vs right, nor the determining factors in the outcomes of these struggles (e.g., the book mentions nothing about the transition from Hardie to Henderson, and I still have no particular idea how or why that happened). Towards the latter part of the book, particularly from the 1926 General Strike onwards, it becomes stronger in this regard, and you get more of a sense of the concrete struggles going on rather than just approximate vibes. I'd say overall, though, that pretty much none of it (except perhaps the Corbyn years) is really in as much detail as I'd have liked, though.

I also think that at times the author seems to lack a level of tactical sense in which their own ideological beliefs are projected onto basically impossible or suicidal political decisions. E.g., the author argues that Foot should have opposed a military response to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. To me, this seems tactically nonsensical as he'd just be labelled a traitor, unable to look after Britain, etc; not to mention the fact that the Falklands genuinely ought to be defended IMO, even as a socialist, because there was no pre-existing native population and the people living there want to be part of the UK.

Furthermore, I think, while the author does correctly address the limitations of a solely parliamentary route (100% correct IMO), I wish there was more time given to what an alternative to that might actually look like. I guess that would be pushing my luck a bit, though, as I recognise the author may have been under pressure from the publisher to keep the book a certain length.

Still, overall it's worth reading, and I agree that the Labour Left will never be what brings about socialism in this country (if anything ever does) for many of the reasons elucidated in the book. The core hypothesis is wholly correct and the book does a good job of evidencing it, though it is hard not to feel a bit glum and hopeless by the end of it. Both the structural aspects of the Labour Party in particular (PLP autonomy, centralised executive body, meaningless and powerless conferences, no mechanisms of accountability, undemocratic leadership selection processes for the vast majority of the party's history other than the 2015 one) and structural aspects of British state and society as a whole (the dominance of finance capital, inequal mobility and power between capital and labour, lack of collective worker organisations, powerful and reactionary media class, powerful and reactionary intelligence services, the electoral pressures of representative parliamentarianism, trade union corporatism, etc etc) pose a surely insurmountable challenge too the goal of the Labour Left. There are some other factors (e.g., international political economy ones) that aren't included in the book, but I think that's 100% fine as they'd go beyond the scope of the book and would definitely make it too cumbersome if included.

One is left wondering why McDonnell and Whittome remain in the PLP in the first place (well, McDonnell is suspended at the time of writing, but still) if they have read and like the book considering it wholly eviscerates the feasibility of their entire lifes work.

[Thom Kirkwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good - quite whistlestop and introductory, but not the worse for that. I feel it would have benefitted from more examination of Labour's left leaders (Lansbury, Wilson, Foot, and Miliband) and the traps in which they found themselves, rather than suggesting that they became a part of the establishment as soon as they became leader.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is generally really good. However, it took me so long to finish. This is just from my perspective; but the book kind of I felt went too much into the bureaucracies of things, I was hoping it would focus more on the principal figures; which they definitely do do. But I just found myself not caring about the bureaucracy, maybe that's my fault, but yeah.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better on the early history than the past 50 years. The author's own bias becomes increasingly obvious in recounting the story from the 1970s onwards. Without an attempt at balance, to my mind it's not really a history.

[Tolga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to see how the Labour right have never compromised and always have been diverging from socialism whereas the left always mistakingly compromised to no avail and have always put their faith into one politician to always be broken down when that person is no longer principled.

[Charlie Mayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent primer on the history of the Labour Left but would have benefited from either being longer or focusing on a shorter period. This would have helped it dig into more of the details for how events unfolded rather than defaulting to the same two or three reasons for the left not coming out on top.

For example, in the section on the General Strike the author even mentions in passing that the unions were aware that successful strike action could spiral into a socialist revolution but then doesn't interrogate in any detail why some groups might not have wanted to end up there - instead falling back on the easy answer of union bosses betraying their workers.

[Geoff Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book, you realise - with surprise, for Corbyn-cheering lefties like me - that the Labour Party has never been a party of socialists, but as the title suggests, a Party with socialists and others in it - the famous “broad church” - and that the battles between left and right (who often call themselves “centrists” or “moderates”) has been going on since the Party was started 120 years ago.

[spen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hannah produced an okay condescending primer.

This book has the standard, manipulatively pedagogical Trot paperback problems. It offers a gloss analysis of the UK left's defeats and enemies, with no interest in the stated motivations of the Labour right, soft left, or historic defectors. I enjoyed it as a whirlwind tour of roll-calls, old movements and seated resentments.

[Judith Bowen · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be honest it was so boring , rather like trying to count how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, that I skimmed and gave up.
But perhaps it does unwittingly suggest a reason why the Labour party is not very successful, alas, in unseating those dratted Tories.

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few criticisms and disagreements notwithstanding, this an extremely thoroughly researched, well written and timely history. Essential reading for those with an interest in modern British politics.

[Shelagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Easy to read account of how hard it has been and still is to introduce any socialist policies into the Labour Party let alone the country. Fascinating but demoralising.

[Andrea Fiore · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Exposing the depth of anti-Trotskyist feeling, the right opposition named themselves Operation Icepick - a reference to Trotsky's assassination by a Stalinist agent."

[Marlon Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book contains socialists but no parties 2/10

[Mel Stead]

Review from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard:

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blog...

[Alex Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

extraordinarily well written and informative, does a great job of illustrating how useless labour is and always has been. shoutout tony benn and nye bevan.

[Pete Judge · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was very good, will help you gain an understanding of some of the forces in uk politics. it makes you question whether the tactic of Labourism is worth bothering with- not in my book!

[Bradley Endsor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic! The labour party is a party with many factions and Simon Hannah gives a great overview of the history of the socialist wing, it was well written in such a way you wanted to keep reading. Highly reccomend!