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Peter Shore: Labour's Forgotten Patriot
Peter Shore worked under Hugh Gaitskell, serving in successive Labour Cabinets under first Harold Wilson and subsequently James Callaghan. He wrote the 1964, 1966 and 1970 general election manifestos for the party and stood in both the 1980 and the 1983 party leadership elections. He would go on to be known as one of the Labour Party's most important thinkers. He had a long political career at the upper levels of the Labour Party and was close to successive leaders. Despite this, he was also independent minded, as evidenced by the 1976 IMF crisis and his long-standing opposition to European integration. As well as this key debate, the authors also address crucial issues within the Labour movement, from macroeconomic management to the extent to which the party can be a force for socialism. This remarkable new study offers a comprehensive and timely reappraisal of the man and his record, examining the context within which he operated, his approach and responses to changing social and economic norms, his opposition to Britain's membership of what is now the EU, and how he was viewed by peers from across the political spectrum. Finally, it examines the overall impact of Peter Shore on the development of British politics. With contributions from leading experts in the fields of political theory, and from Shore's own contemporaries, this book is an important new assessment of one of Labour's most interesting political thinkers in twentieth-century British politics.
- GenresPolitics
280 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2020
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34 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Hickson
21 books2 followersKevin Hickson is Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 22, 2022
fascinating. very detailed
July 3, 2021
Democrat, Socialist and Champion of British Independence
I was only vaguely aware of Peter Shore while he was alive and the fact that he was anti-European integration but not much more. However, during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 I remember finding online his electrifying speech at the Oxford Union on the eve of the UK's first referendum on Common Market membership (the Common Market or European Economic Community (EEC) being the forerunner of today's European Union) in 1975 where he tore into the European project and the loss of British sovereignty it would entail. This made me want to find out more about this passionate and articulate defender of British independence.
Unfortunately and somewhat shamefully, there was very little available to read on his life until this very good biography from Kevin Hickson and colleagues remedied that fact. What it revealed was a man who, whilst modest and self-effacing, was also incredibly tenacious and prescient in his views about the European Union. In fact he could arguably be called the father of Euroscepticism (or Euro-realism as Shore apparently labelled his stance) with his political struggle in defence of the nation state and parliamentary democracy leaving him very firmly on the right side of history (and the right of his party). He was also at one time very close to becoming the leader of the Labour Party in 1980 until Michael Foot changed his mind and stood. The book intimates that if he had been successful he would have been a far more unifying leader than Foot and who knows what that would have meant for the trajectory of the socialist movement.
With an early life blighted by financial crisis and poverty and after wartime service in the RAF and Cambridge University he joined the Labour Party Research Department. Here he was influential in then leader Hugh Gaitskell's famous 1962 speech where this other patriotic Labour man spoke of Britain joining the EEC resulting in, "The end of a thousand years of history."
Becoming the MP for Stepney in 1964 (a position he held until retiring in 1997), after writing the Labour Party manifesto, he become one of then Prime Minister Harold Wilson's "kitchen cabinet". He went on to write further Labour Party manifestos for the 1966 and 1970 election campaigns and was a Cabinet minister in both the 1964-70 and 1974-79 Labour administrations. Although socially liberal he was a conservative on issues such as the Constitution and never wavered in his anti-EEC sentiments as his political fortunes rose. Indeed The Times considered him "the most formidable anti-European member of the Parliamentary Labour Party." This is hard to argue with when one learns from this biography that he was one of the few in politics to have actually read in detail the massive Treaty of Rome!
I had to smile when as Trade Secretary he ended up alone (Jim Callaghan, then Foreign Secretary, had been called away) representing the UK at a Council of Ministers meeting in 1974 and took the opportunity to block progress on trade negotiations and raise issues outside the scope of his brief much to the chagrin of other European representatives. He was never left alone to negotiate in Brussels again! I wondered to myself how things would have worked out if this man had been involved in negotiating with the EU instead of Olly Robbins or David Frost? Given what I learnt about the man, walking away and no-deal would have been very real propositions instead of the somewhat phony war of the May and Johnson negotiations.
Encouraged by Harold Wilson to come out strongly against EEC membership during the 1975 In/Out referendum on EEC membership Shore was firmly in the Out camp along with the likes of Tony Benn, Barbara Castle and Michael Foot. Like in 2016 those in favour of leaving the European project were facing an uphill struggle against the weight of the major political parties, industry and the media and unfairly portrayed as a rag-tag bunch on the fringes. However, undeterred he fought on and the referendum campaign made him politically. Who can forget that speech at the Oxford Union when he looked Ted Heath (the man who took the UK into the EEC two years earlier) in the face, pointed and said of the In campaign, "So the message, the message that comes out is fear! fear! fear!". Again, parallels with the 2016 campaign were eerily present and the book's authors point out that fear-mongering has remained a consistent feature of pro-EU politicians and commentators since the 2016 referendum result. Indeed Hickson and co believe that to recover from their political decline the Labour Party needs to rediscover its Eurosceptic tradition, "and unearthing the arguments of Peter Shore is an essential part of that task."
If you are watching a speech that many contend is not just the greatest political speech of all time but one of the greatest speeches of all time continues past Shore and you will see Jeremy Thorpe at his mocking best as he tries to belittle Shore's views. Ask yourself, knowing what we now know, out of those two who had the greatest integrity?
However, Shore shouldn't be judged just on his anti-EEC credentials as there was so much more to him than this. A keen proponent of Keynesian economic principles (i.e. government expenditure and low taxes to stimulate the economy) he was one of the few Labour figures to emerge with any credit from the humiliating IMF 'cap in hand' episode of 1976. He fought against the hard left in the early 1980s (even fighting off deselection), cared passionately about housing and the inner cities and was instrumental in getting Labour to support the use of force in regaining the Falkland Islands (something the authors believe prevented the party from suffering an even worse defeat in the General Election of 1983) and a convert to maintaining the UK's nuclear deterrent. He also refused overtures to join the SDP as he was committed to his principles and the values of the Labour Party.
In 1983 he again unsuccessfully ran for the Labour leadership losing out to Neil Kinnock but not before bemoaning the fact that Labour had lost the confidence of their traditional support and that their preoccupation with pressure groups and minorities at the expense of the majority were a contributory factor in Labour's second defeat to Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives. These two factors again seem very similar to those contributing to Jeremy Corbyn's defeats in 2017 and 2019 and Keir Starmer's travails in the Hartlepool by-election of 2021.
Shore's beliefs and political philosophy are also something of an indictment of the modern Labour Party which I think he would struggle to recognise, let alone have a political home in. His patriotic instincts, belief in the nation state, Euroscepticism, and aversion to identity politics (before that term was even a thing) would seem to be anathema to today's Labour movement. Indeed his refusal to compromise on his core beliefs, natural sincerity and refusal to be beholden to the trade unions combined to prevent him reaching the very top of a party he believed should be a crusading movement with their goal being the "transformation of society".
You are left with the overriding impression of a donnish and reserved but thoroughly decent and honest man, with a strong sense of duty and in the words of Jim Callaghan a man of, "courage, integrity and ability", committed to his principles, public service, British sovereignty and parliamentary democracy.
Whilst the authors reveal that following his death in 2001 obituary writers were divided about his achievements they believe they were numerous not least in writing the party manifestos for three General Elections including the one in 1964 that returned Labour to power after 13 years in opposition. The authors were also right to point out that he was hampered as a minister simply by the positions he was appointed to and promising initiatives such as with inner-city regeneration were never followed through by his successors.
This book left me somewhat sad that Shore never lived to see Brexit or take part in a campaign he would certainly have enlivened but maybe with Labour as a party which after sitting on the fence moved towards a position of trying to thwart the UK leaving the EU it's just as well. As Rod Liddle comments in his foreword to the book, "If only we had someone of Shore's stature now."
With renewed interest in this forgotten patriot whose position on Europe was ultimately vindicated by the British people, I'll leave the last word to his gravestone, which simply states that Peter Shore was a "Democrat, Socialist and Champion of British Independence".
I was only vaguely aware of Peter Shore while he was alive and the fact that he was anti-European integration but not much more. However, during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 I remember finding online his electrifying speech at the Oxford Union on the eve of the UK's first referendum on Common Market membership (the Common Market or European Economic Community (EEC) being the forerunner of today's European Union) in 1975 where he tore into the European project and the loss of British sovereignty it would entail. This made me want to find out more about this passionate and articulate defender of British independence.
Unfortunately and somewhat shamefully, there was very little available to read on his life until this very good biography from Kevin Hickson and colleagues remedied that fact. What it revealed was a man who, whilst modest and self-effacing, was also incredibly tenacious and prescient in his views about the European Union. In fact he could arguably be called the father of Euroscepticism (or Euro-realism as Shore apparently labelled his stance) with his political struggle in defence of the nation state and parliamentary democracy leaving him very firmly on the right side of history (and the right of his party). He was also at one time very close to becoming the leader of the Labour Party in 1980 until Michael Foot changed his mind and stood. The book intimates that if he had been successful he would have been a far more unifying leader than Foot and who knows what that would have meant for the trajectory of the socialist movement.
With an early life blighted by financial crisis and poverty and after wartime service in the RAF and Cambridge University he joined the Labour Party Research Department. Here he was influential in then leader Hugh Gaitskell's famous 1962 speech where this other patriotic Labour man spoke of Britain joining the EEC resulting in, "The end of a thousand years of history."
Becoming the MP for Stepney in 1964 (a position he held until retiring in 1997), after writing the Labour Party manifesto, he become one of then Prime Minister Harold Wilson's "kitchen cabinet". He went on to write further Labour Party manifestos for the 1966 and 1970 election campaigns and was a Cabinet minister in both the 1964-70 and 1974-79 Labour administrations. Although socially liberal he was a conservative on issues such as the Constitution and never wavered in his anti-EEC sentiments as his political fortunes rose. Indeed The Times considered him "the most formidable anti-European member of the Parliamentary Labour Party." This is hard to argue with when one learns from this biography that he was one of the few in politics to have actually read in detail the massive Treaty of Rome!
I had to smile when as Trade Secretary he ended up alone (Jim Callaghan, then Foreign Secretary, had been called away) representing the UK at a Council of Ministers meeting in 1974 and took the opportunity to block progress on trade negotiations and raise issues outside the scope of his brief much to the chagrin of other European representatives. He was never left alone to negotiate in Brussels again! I wondered to myself how things would have worked out if this man had been involved in negotiating with the EU instead of Olly Robbins or David Frost? Given what I learnt about the man, walking away and no-deal would have been very real propositions instead of the somewhat phony war of the May and Johnson negotiations.
Encouraged by Harold Wilson to come out strongly against EEC membership during the 1975 In/Out referendum on EEC membership Shore was firmly in the Out camp along with the likes of Tony Benn, Barbara Castle and Michael Foot. Like in 2016 those in favour of leaving the European project were facing an uphill struggle against the weight of the major political parties, industry and the media and unfairly portrayed as a rag-tag bunch on the fringes. However, undeterred he fought on and the referendum campaign made him politically. Who can forget that speech at the Oxford Union when he looked Ted Heath (the man who took the UK into the EEC two years earlier) in the face, pointed and said of the In campaign, "So the message, the message that comes out is fear! fear! fear!". Again, parallels with the 2016 campaign were eerily present and the book's authors point out that fear-mongering has remained a consistent feature of pro-EU politicians and commentators since the 2016 referendum result. Indeed Hickson and co believe that to recover from their political decline the Labour Party needs to rediscover its Eurosceptic tradition, "and unearthing the arguments of Peter Shore is an essential part of that task."
If you are watching a speech that many contend is not just the greatest political speech of all time but one of the greatest speeches of all time continues past Shore and you will see Jeremy Thorpe at his mocking best as he tries to belittle Shore's views. Ask yourself, knowing what we now know, out of those two who had the greatest integrity?
However, Shore shouldn't be judged just on his anti-EEC credentials as there was so much more to him than this. A keen proponent of Keynesian economic principles (i.e. government expenditure and low taxes to stimulate the economy) he was one of the few Labour figures to emerge with any credit from the humiliating IMF 'cap in hand' episode of 1976. He fought against the hard left in the early 1980s (even fighting off deselection), cared passionately about housing and the inner cities and was instrumental in getting Labour to support the use of force in regaining the Falkland Islands (something the authors believe prevented the party from suffering an even worse defeat in the General Election of 1983) and a convert to maintaining the UK's nuclear deterrent. He also refused overtures to join the SDP as he was committed to his principles and the values of the Labour Party.
In 1983 he again unsuccessfully ran for the Labour leadership losing out to Neil Kinnock but not before bemoaning the fact that Labour had lost the confidence of their traditional support and that their preoccupation with pressure groups and minorities at the expense of the majority were a contributory factor in Labour's second defeat to Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives. These two factors again seem very similar to those contributing to Jeremy Corbyn's defeats in 2017 and 2019 and Keir Starmer's travails in the Hartlepool by-election of 2021.
Shore's beliefs and political philosophy are also something of an indictment of the modern Labour Party which I think he would struggle to recognise, let alone have a political home in. His patriotic instincts, belief in the nation state, Euroscepticism, and aversion to identity politics (before that term was even a thing) would seem to be anathema to today's Labour movement. Indeed his refusal to compromise on his core beliefs, natural sincerity and refusal to be beholden to the trade unions combined to prevent him reaching the very top of a party he believed should be a crusading movement with their goal being the "transformation of society".
You are left with the overriding impression of a donnish and reserved but thoroughly decent and honest man, with a strong sense of duty and in the words of Jim Callaghan a man of, "courage, integrity and ability", committed to his principles, public service, British sovereignty and parliamentary democracy.
Whilst the authors reveal that following his death in 2001 obituary writers were divided about his achievements they believe they were numerous not least in writing the party manifestos for three General Elections including the one in 1964 that returned Labour to power after 13 years in opposition. The authors were also right to point out that he was hampered as a minister simply by the positions he was appointed to and promising initiatives such as with inner-city regeneration were never followed through by his successors.
This book left me somewhat sad that Shore never lived to see Brexit or take part in a campaign he would certainly have enlivened but maybe with Labour as a party which after sitting on the fence moved towards a position of trying to thwart the UK leaving the EU it's just as well. As Rod Liddle comments in his foreword to the book, "If only we had someone of Shore's stature now."
With renewed interest in this forgotten patriot whose position on Europe was ultimately vindicated by the British people, I'll leave the last word to his gravestone, which simply states that Peter Shore was a "Democrat, Socialist and Champion of British Independence".
May 21, 2024
An excellent study of a politician who’s views help explain much of the British Lefts positions on the EU as well offering an insight into Labour Party history outside the usual suspects
November 2, 2022
Excellent book, I’ll be honest I never heard of Peter Shore before reading this book. But there is so much the Labour Party could learn. In the book he was a head of his time on the way the EU would go and the danger of wokeism and identity’s politics that engulf the Labour movement today. He represented that tradition of old patriotic Labour that believed in the power of the nation state, was proud of our history and genuinely abided by their principles.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews