Modernising colonialism: The British Labour movement and Africa

The article evaluates the widely held view that the Attlee governments lacked a distinctive approach to colonial affairs by examining the Labour movement's post-war, institution building activities in Kenya. In Labour's colonial policy deliberations, Kenya was the focus of particular attention and is used as a case study to shed light on the Labour leadership's wider imperial concerns and objectives. From the 1920s, the Labour party advocated that the colonies be encouraged to develop trade unions, co-operatives and local government. Some tentative moves in this direction were made in 1930 by Ramsay MacDonald's administration but it was not until Labour came to power in 1945 that, in response to international pressure and the nationalist challenge, significant steps were taken to promote institutions which would organise the African masses. The argument advanced is that Labour leaders drew on their movement's historical traditions to encourage forms of African economic and political activism which were likely to stabilise colonial rule.     

Labour's Strategic Defence Review

Labour’s Strategic Defence Review claims to be ‘radical’, leading ‘to a fundamental reshaping of British forces’ while being ‘firmly ground in foreign policy’. Five questions are discussed: 1) Is labour’s defence policy different from that of its Conservative predecessors? 2) Has foreign policy ‘led’ defence policy? 3) How open was the review process and to what extent has Labour succeeded in creating a new consensus on defence policy? 4) Has the SDR successfully addressed the problem of overstretch? 5) Does it provide the ‘modern, effective and affordable armed forces which meet today’s challenges but are also flexible enough to adapt to change’, as it claims? This article argues that on the first two questions the answer is a qualified ‘yes’; that on the third, the process was more open than ever before but that it is difficult to identify specific decisions influence by more open debate; that on the fourth, Labour has attempted a balancing act which may be vulnerable, not least to changes in the economy; and that on the last question, Labour has succeeded in shifting the focus of the armed services towards power projection capabilities as required by their foreign policy baseline.     

Were New Labour’s cultural policies neo-liberal?

This article assesses the cultural policies of ‘New Labour’, the UK Labour government of 1997–2010. It takes neo-liberalism as its starting point, asking to what extent Labour’s cultural policies can be validly and usefully characterised as neo-liberal. It explores this issue across three dimensions: corporate sponsorship and cuts in public subsidy; the running of public sector cultural institutions as though they were private businesses; and a shift in prevailing rationales for cultural policy, away from cultural justifications, and towards economic and social goals. Neo-liberalism is shown to be a significant but rather crude tool for evaluating and explaining New Labour’s cultural policies. At worse, it falsely implies that New Labour did not differ from Conservative approaches to cultural policy, downplays the effect of sociocultural factors on policy-making, and fails to differentiate varying periods and directions of policy. It does, however, usefully draw attention to the public policy environment in which Labour operated, in particular the damaging effects of focusing, to an excessive degree, on economic conceptions of the good in a way that does not recognise the limitations of markets as a way of organising production, circulation and consumption.     

Urban Governance Under Neoliberalism: New Labour and the Restructuring of State‐Space

Abstract: In the UK there has been a proliferation of agencies at differing regulatory scales as part of the rescaling and restructuring of the state by New Labour, following the neoliberal policies of previous Conservative governments. This raises questions concerning the extent to which New Labour's urban state restructuring is embedded within neoliberalism, and the local tensions and contradictions arising from emergent New Labour urban state restructuring. This paper examines these questions through the analysis of key policy features of New Labour, and the in‐depth exploration of two programmes that are reshaping urban governance arrangements, namely Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes. We conclude that New Labour's restructuring is best understood in terms of the extended reproduction (roll‐out) of neoliberalism. While these “new institutional fixes” are only weakly established and exhibit internal contradictions and tensions, these have not led to a broader contestation of neoliberalism.     

Nuclear free New Zealand and rogernomics: The survival of a labour government

New Zealand's fourth Labour government, elected to power in 1984, has become known most generally for two of its policies: a refusal to accept nuclear warships in New Zealand waters, and the vigour and consistency with which it has pursued market orientated economic policies. A post‐election near‐national survey of 1013 respondents is employed to measure the extent to which the two policies may have aided Labour's re‐election in 1987. Contrary to most interpretation hitherto, we find that defence and economic policy opinion were at least of equal importance. But there is further evidence to indicate that defence policy opinion was the more important It is concluded that the expression of “post‐materialist” values through anti‐nuclear politics may have perversely allowed a new materialism to conquer New Zealand politics.     

Organic Union or Aggressive Altruism: Imperial Internationalism in East Africa in the 1920s

This article assesses the influence of international questions on the Conservative and Labour parties’ imperial policy in East Africa in the 1920s. Conservatives encouraged a policy of ‘organic union’, which meant the consolidation of settler control in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika by either formal or informal means. They preferred to ignore or minimise the influence of the League of Nations mandates provisions in Tanganyika, arguing that colonial questions, which in their view included mandatory affairs, were a domestic jurisdiction. The Labour Party was more sympathetic to ideas of liberal internationalism, and pursued a policy of ‘aggressive altruism’ in East Africa when in office, especially in the late 1920s. The article compares the two parties’ respective positions with reference to closer political union, settler relations, labour and land policy, and Indian rights, and by detailing the personal relationship between the conservative governor of Kenya, Sir Edward Grigg, and Labour's colonial secretary, Lord Passfield.     

Labour and the bomb: the first 80 years

The UK government's consideration of whether to replace Trident evokes past controversies about the bomb including occasions when the Labour Party advocated unilateral renunciation of British nuclear weapons. Out of office, fierce debate engulfed the party, fuelled by, and in turn fuelling, intra-party conflict. In power, while Labour governments took different decisions on key defence issues to their Conservative counterparts, they nevertheless ensured that the UK remained a nuclear weapons state. Labour also ensured the habits of secrecy in nuclear decision-making were ingrained, though these were challenged by the current government. This article examines the development of Labour's approach to nuclear weapons since 1945. Particular attention is given to the 1980s as members of the current cabinet will have clear recollections of campaigning on an anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s. The Blair government has embarked on public debate ahead of a formal decision and should the issue of Britain's nuclear status become embroiled in a political battle over the leadership succession, anti-nuclear sentiment may re-emerge. Yet if the past is guide to the future, the history of Labour governments suggests that the real debate will be about what replaces Trident not whether it is replaced.     

Making Space for “Neo‐communitarianism”? The Third Sector,State and Civil Society in the UK

During the 1990s the urban became an important "institutional laboratory" for state‐initiated policy experiments to address the social costs and political repercussions of economic polarisation and social exclusion associated with neo‐liberalism. One such policy experiment has been neo‐communitarianism, emphasising the contribution of the "third sector" to improving social welfare and reinvigorating a sense of civil society. Focusing on the UK, I examine the background to and implications of the emergence of a neo‐communitarian strategy under the "new" Labour government, which came to power in 1997. First, I consider the repositioning of the third sector within contemporary policy discourse as a result of the Labour government's programme of welfare reforms and Prime Minister Blair's "Third Way" political philosophy, which attempts to combine neo‐liberalism with a neo‐communitarian stance of stressing the importance of civil society for social cohesion. Then, I draw on Foucauldian notions of governmentality to examine how Labour's neo‐communitarian agenda has involved a fundamental reconfiguration of the governance of the third sector, centred on the creation of government–voluntary sector "compacts" at national and local levels. These compacts are of strategic importance for the restructuring of the UK third sector and so the local implications of such restructuring are then considered. In particular, case study evidence from Glasgow is used to critically evaluate government claims that the third sector can contribute to the "reinvigoration of civic life" by highlighting the importance of the internal characteristics and political environment of local third sector organisations for the differential development of social capital and citizenship.     

‘But They Just Don't Respect Us’: young people's experiences of (dis)respected citizenship and the New Labour Respect Agenda

The New Labour Respect Agenda fuses anti-social behaviour policies, Third Way active citizenship, and a theory of community-based support and regulation. The Respect Agenda itself has a specific focus on, and direct implications for, children and young people, as well as for children living in vulnerable families. This paper argues that the theoretical basis for New Labour's ‘Respect’ is limited and ultimately flawed. Whilst New Labour policy demands respect from young people, young people's lived citizenship is too often experienced in terms of disrespect and even shame of the self. Young people respond to these feelings of disrespect by seeking out other ways through which respect can be acted out and negotiated. Respect, as conceptualised through the New Labour lens will criminalise vulnerable young people, thereby further stripping them of self-respect, inter-personal respect and societal respect. The paper concludes that respect should be an outcome of policy and a philosophy of a social justice led politics, rather than a conditionally led policy.     

Change and continuity in strategic culture: the cases of Australia and New Zealand

The relationship between strategic culture and defence policies has not yet been much explored. Australia and New Zealand provide some evidence of the impact of strategic culture on defence policy. Australia has a dominant strategic culture which is strong enough to prompt both the major political parties to adopt realist defence policies, even though Labor has a traditionally ‘idealist’ outlook. Until the 1970s, New Zealand had a similar dominant strategic culture which influenced both major political parties, but it was always less strong than Australia's. In recent years, the Labour Party has rejected that culture, and allowed an alternative strategic culture based on its ideology to influence its defence policies. The result has been that on the last two occasions when Labour has been in government, New Zealand's defence policy has changed dramatically.     

New Labour - New Europe?

The key question often asked of the new Labour government’s approach to Europe is whether this is new Labour, new Europe or new government, old Britain? There are three routes into the EU which Britain could follow: (1) it could play a lading part in the definition of a new political role and vision for an enlarged EU in the twenty-first century; (2) it could be a constructive and pragmatic participant in EU policy discussions, but without an overall vision for the EU; 93) it could become a side player within the EU, left behind as Europe develops in directions it cannot support. In its tone and rhetoric, the new government is certainly aiming for the first of these roles. On policy substance, however, its approach is somewhat cautious and pragmatic. In the four policy areas examined in this article - employment, the single currency, enlargement and institutional reform - some striking changes in tone and emphasis are not wholly matched by new policy innovations. This indicates continued caution over public opinion and the question of sovereignty. However, as the authors argue in the final section, British public opinion allows considerable scope to define a new role for Britain in the EU, while domestic constitutional reform could begin to change the nature of the sovereignty debate.     

‘Today is the Dawn’: The Labour Party and the 1929 General Election

This article treats three themes: how Labour planned and fought the 1929 election, to whom it appealed and the results. It draws upon the MacDonald Papers, National Executive Committee minutes, the Daily Herald, London News, Labour sources in book form, electoral materials and secondary sources. It discusses the party's tactics and strategy for progress, funding and influences on its campaign. Such influences included the 1927 Trade Union Act, the Cheltenham agreement (1927) with the Co-operative Party and the appearance of the Liberal counter-cyclical economics proposals. The article argues that Labour's perceived base was wider than expected. Women and the rural classes, including farmers, were emphasized as target groups. Labour thought the key to a majority lay in the countryside. An investigation of the results from 1929 seems to imply this was not strictly the case, but there was a number of such constituencies which Labour was close to gaining. The Liberal revival helped Labour in the rural areas. Central planning was a light touch in 1929. It did, however, involve setting the framework for the campaign and making policy on all of the matters referred to above.     

Defenders of the state: the Irish Labour Party,coalitionism and revisionism, 1969–77

Irish Labour Party politics underwent a significant transformation during the period 1969–77. During these years, the party moved from a position of opposition to coalition and apparent support for socialist politics to involvement in a coalition government with Fine Gael and an abandonment of its previously stated goal, the thirty-two-county socialist republic. This paper locates the main factor behind this shift in Labour’s attachment to the institutions of the Republic of Ireland state. As that state was threatened by the crisis in Northern Ireland from 1969 onwards, so the Labour Party was compelled to shift ground politically and move towards agencies that could offer stability. This led to permanent shifts in Labour policy and strategy.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

New Labour’s overseas development aid policy – charity or self-interest?

Robin Cook argued that New Labour’s foreign policy would have ‘ethical dimensions’,(Cook, “Robin Cook’s Speech on the Government’s Ethical Foreign Policy.”) and an assumption is often made, within existing literature, that this is an accurate statement when considering the overseas development agenda of New Labour government’s between 1997 and 2010. Tingley argues that the more left-wing a party, the more likely they are to increase attention on, and funding of, overseas development aid (ODA) projects.(Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics.”) This article uses the New Labour governments, from 1997 to 2010, as a case study to test the argument of Tingley and determines that his conclusions are accurate in the case of the UK. This article will then argue, using the work of Breuning that the motivations of the New Labour governments, and the way they conveyed their policy to the electorate changed overtime rather than remaining morally focused for the duration of their time in power.(Breuning, “Words and Deeds.”) By focusing on the rhetoric of the Labour Party, the changes in motivation can be identified in the period 1997–2010, with a distinct move from moral justifications to more self-interested pragmatic reasoning, which confirms Breuning’s argument.     

The Yugoslav Communists' Special Relationship with the British Labour Party 1950–1956

This article uses new evidence to investigate Yugoslav foreign policy through the prism of inter-party relations rather than traditional high diplomacy. It shows the Yugoslav Communists hoped comradeship with Britain's Labour Party would influence Western policies to counter the Soviet threat. Initial successes, especially a deterrent statement by the British Cabinet in February 1951, inspired great optimism. The Labour left was also delighted that Communism could be reformed and Cold War tensions lessened. However, ideological differences crystallised over the Djilas affair and Yugoslavia's choice for Non-Alignment. Only mutual opposition to the USSR during the crises of 1956 ensured their continuing friendship.     

Playing Both Sides Against the Middle: The Labour Party and the Wholesaling Industry 1919 1951

This article examines the Labour party's attitude towards thewholesaling industry. During the inter-war period wholesalers,‘middlemen’ as they were commonly called, occupiedthe position of bogeyman in much Labour party thinking and literature.As a result the Labour governments of the 1920s took actionsdesigned to achieve two ends: to improve the efficiency of fooddistribution, and to limit the power of middlemen to exploitboth ends of the food production chain, farmers and consumersalike. This ideological positioning of the middleman by Labour,and the reforms introduced under the MacDonald governments,stressed the need to establish farmers’ co-operativesand consumers’ protection agencies, and also emphasizedthe importance of other measures designed to boost efficiency.However, by the time of the Attlee governments the cornerstoneof the inter-war policy, the producer co-operative, had beenabandoned and the focus of debate shifted to various forms ofnationalization. This change of policy is examined in this article.Though post-war Labour manifestos pledged to nationalize sectionsof the wholesaling industry, and despite the fact that the partyunder Attlee discussed the nationalization of wholesaling atlength, the industry remained in private hands. An attempt tounderstand how and why the nationalization of wholesaling wasopposed within the party and shelved by the Attlee governmentsis central to this study.     

The British Parliamentary Labour Party and the Government of Ireland Act 1920

Immediately after the First World War the British Labour Party was forced to reconsider its relationship with an increasingly militant Irish nationalism. This reassessment occurred at the same time as it was becoming a major political and electoral force in post‐war Britain. The political imperative from the party's perspective was to portray itself as a responsible, moderate and patriotic alternative governing party. Thus it was fearful of the potential negative impact of too close an association with, and perceived sympathy for, extreme Irish nationalism. This explains the party's often bewildering changes in policy on Ireland at various party conferences in 1919 and 1920, ranging from support for home rule to federalism throughout the United Kingdom to ‘dominion home rule’ as part of a wider evolving British Commonwealth to adopting outright ‘ self‐determination’ for a completely independent Ireland outside both United Kingdom and empire. On one aspect of its Irish policy, however, the party was adamant and united – its opposition to the partition of Ireland, which was the fundamental principle of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Bill of 1920 which established Northern Ireland. Curiously, that aspect of Labour's Irish policy was never discussed in the party at large. All the running was made by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the house of commons in 1920. The PLP's outright opposition to the bill acted as balm throughout the wider party, binding together the confusing, and often contradictory, positions promulgated on the long‐term constitutional future of Ireland and its relationship with Britain.     

Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative: A national policy in regional clothing?

Since the late 1980s, there has been no explicit regional policy in Canada. Indirectly, though, equalization payments, industrial policies, as well as regional agencies encouraging the adoption of federal industrial and innovation policies, impact regional economies. In 2017, the federal government appeared to alter its approach: the Supercluster initiative was announced, drawing upon the idea that localized networks of interrelated firms can generate innovation and local development. In this paper, we discuss the mechanisms through which spatially focused industrial innovation policy can lead to regional development. We then focus on Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative. The question we address is as follows: to what extent can this initiative (and, more widely, Canada's Supercluster policy) be understood as a regional development strategy driven by a coherent rationale for regional intervention? Apart from the fact that each Supercluster focuses on a pre-existing core of firms located within a region, there is little evidence that the Supercluster initiative has regional development objectives or impacts.     

The Problem of the Epoch? Labour and Housing, 1918-51

As one of the salient political issues in twentieth-centuryBritain, housing helped define the differences between the mainpolitical parties but also gave rise to tensions and conflictingapproaches within them. This article traces some of these tensionsand anomalies as they manifested themselves in Labour's housingpolicies between the first and second world wars. While withinthe Labour movement there was a common acceptance of the needfor expanded public housing provision, the ways in which thisneed was to be met were the subject of considerable dissension.In the early inter-war period, Labour's housing policies werestrongly influenced by the building unions' notions of industrialself-government, ranging from guild socialism and the BuildingGuild to the corporatist inflexions of the Wheatley HousingAct of 1924. In the short term, there was little evidence ofthe marriage of industrial innovation, modernist aesthetics,and socialist politics that characterized responses to the housingproblem in other parts of Europe. However, by the time of theSecond World War the ascendancy of a professional modernizingdiscourse within the Labour Party, along with the emergenceof a younger generation of left-wing architects and planners,led to the marginalization of the building unions within Labour'spolicy-making apparatus. Increasingly restive at the developmentof Labour’s housing policy, union leaders continued toarticulate notions of economic citizenship rooted in guild socialism.These were largely disregarded, and have remained so in theliteratures both on housing policy and the Labour Party itself. ^* Kevin.morgan{at}manchester.ac.uk. Interviews cited in this articlewere recorded as part of a research project funded by the ESRC,award no R000237924.