Labour's fourth successive electoral defeat in 1992 rekindled the muffled controversy over its future.

How Jeremy Corbyn, the radical left candidate for the Labour leadership, won twice—and won big In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ‘soft-left’ detractors. Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government’s authority, and even Corbyn’s most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas. For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership. Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ‘Old Labour’ pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media’s Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left’s revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Interpreting the Labour Party consists of twelve essays on the principal thinkers and schools of thought concerned with the political and historical development of the Labour Party and Labour movement. The essays are written by contributors who have devoted many years to the study of the Labour Party, the trade union movement and the various ideologies associated with them. The book begins with an in-depth analysis of how to study the Labour Party, and goes on to examine key periods in the development of the ideologies to which the party has subscribed. Each chapter situates its subject matter in the context of a broader intellectual legacy, including the works of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Theodore Rothstein, Stuart Hall and Samuel Beer, among others.

David Cameron has been sold to the British electorate as a thoroughly modern politician, part Blair, part Thatcher, a one nation conservative with a soft spot for social democracy, the green movement, big and small business, youth, minorities, traditionalists, the armed forces and the old. Has a politician ever been sold as so many things to so many people, at home in fashion magazines as he is at Party conferences? But despite being told, arguably more, about Cameron the man than any other politician he remains vacuous, strangely unformed, a cipher for the real interests and forces he represents. The Meaning of Cameronis an unmasking of the false politics Cameron embodies, and an examination of the face the mask has eaten into.

This volume examines the anxieties that caused many nineteenth-century writers to insist on literature as a laboured and labouring enterprise. Following Isaac D’Israeli’s gloss on Jean de La Bruyère, it asks, in particular, whether writing should be ‘called working’. Whereas previous studies have focused on national literatures in isolation, this volume demonstrates the two-way traffic between British and French conceptions of literary labour. It questions assumed areas of affinity and difference, beginning with the labour politics of the early nineteenth century and their common root in the French Revolution. It also scrutinises the received view of France as a source of a ‘leisure ethic’, and of British writers as either rejecting or self-consciously mimicking French models. Individual essays consider examples of how different writers approached their work, while also evoking a broader notion of ‘work ethics’, understood as a humane practice, whereby values, benefits, and responsibilities, are weighed up.

Where other books are either highly partisan dismissals or appreciations of the Third Way, or dull sociological accounts, this book gets behind the clichés in order to show just what is left of Labour party ideology and what the future may hold. New Labour has changed the face of Britain. Culture, class, education, health, the arts, leisure, the economy have all seen seismic shifts since the 1997 election that raised Blair to power. The Labour that rules has distanced itself from the failed Labour of the 70s and 80s, but the core remains. Labour remains gripped by its own past - unable and unwilling to shed its ties to the old Labour party, but determined to avoid the mistakes of which lead to four electoral defeats between 1979 and 1992. Cronin covers the full history of the party from its post war triumph through decades of shambolic leadership against ruthless and organised opposition to the resurgent New Labour of the 90s that finally took Britain into the new millennium.

This compact and accessible reference work provides all the essential facts and figures about major aspects of modern British history from the death of Queen Anne to the end of the 1990s. The Longman Handbook of Modern British History has been extended to include a fully-revised bibliography (reflecting the wealth of newly published material in recent years), the new statistics on social and economic history and an expanded glossary of terms. The political chronologies have been revised to include the electoral defeat of John Major and the record of New Labour in office. Designed for the student and general reader, this highly-successful handbook provides a wealth of varied data within the confines of a single volume.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the social policy of New Labour. It examines differences between current policy areas and provides topical information on the debate on the future of the welfare state.

This text discusses the development of the Women's Co-operative Guild from the 1880s to World War II. Charting the rise and fall of a feminist organization, the author assesses its political significance and examines the causes of its demise.

The Lancashire Giant tells the story of a nine-year-old cotton weaver who went on to carve out two extraordinary careers for himself. In the first, David Shackleton became a truly dominating presence in the Edwardian trade union movement, was the third MP to be elected under the banner of the Labor party, and played a critical role in the infancy of the party. His second career, begun at Winston Churchill’s prompting in 1910, took him to the summit of the British civil service and to active participation in the deliberations of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet. Prominent union officials have frequently become government ministers, but none has repeated Shackleton’s achievement in becoming the permanent secretary of a ministry. "This distinctive career is presented and analysed in meticulous detail by Ross Martin... The result is a thorough and rounded portrait strengthened by some suggestive analysis of Shackleton as a private individual."—Labor History "An accessible, detailed, analytic and sympathetic study."—English Historical Review