Abstract
Labour experienced a crushing defeat in the general election on 9 June 1983. The party’s share of the popular vote fell by 9.5 per cent from 1979 and it won only 209 seats. Labour’s portion of the total vote was its lowest since 1918, and its lowest share per candidate since 1900. Within days of the election, Michael Foot announced his resignation as leader. In October, at the party conference, Neil Kinnock was overwhelmingly elected by the electoral college on the first ballot as his replacement. Tony Benn had lost his seat in Bristol at the general election and was unable to stand -it is, in any case, a matter of speculation as to how well he might have done. Soon after the election major changes were instigated by Neil Kinnock to Labour’s internal structure, policy-making machinery and the content of its economic strategy. I discuss these developments, which dominated Kinnock’s nine-year leadership of the party, in the Epilogue following.
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References
This section draws heavily from articles in the Socialist Economic Review (London, Merlin, 1981–3), especially Adam Sharpies, ‘Alternative Economic Strategies: Labour Movement Responses to the Crisis’, Socialist Economic Review, 1 (1981), pp. 71–92; Economic Bulletin; Politics and Power; and New Socialist.
See also CSE London Working Group, The Alternative Economic Strategy (London, CSE Books and the LCC, 1980);
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Francis Cripps et al, Manifesto (London, Pan, 1981);
Sam Aaronovitch, The Road from Thatcherism (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1981);
Mike Prior and David Purdy, Out of the Ghetto (Nottingham, Spokesman, 1979);
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and Mark Wickhamjones, ‘The Political Economy of the Alternative Economic Strategy’ (University of Manchester PhD Thesis, 1994), pp. 521–32.
Stuart Holland (ed.), Out of Crisis (Nottingham, Spokesman, 1983).
RD: 2751/March 1983.
Richard Pryke, The Nationalised Industries (Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1981), p. 257.
Robert Dahl, ‘Workers’ Control of Industry and the British Labour Party’, American Political Science Review, XLI (1947), pp. 875–900, p. 875.
CEPG, Cambridge Economic Policy Review, 8 (1982), pp. 1–3.
See Tony Topham (ed.), Planning the Planners (Nottingham, Spokesman, 1983).
David Lipsey, ‘A “Right” Critique of the Alternative Economic Strategy’, Socialist Economic Review, 2 (1982), pp. 109–17.
Barry Hindess, Parliamentary Democracy and Socialist Politics (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 88.
Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London, Macmillan, 1987), p. 30;
and J. Tomlinson, The Unequal Struggle? (London, Methuen, 1982), pp. 2–4.
Anna Coote, ‘The AES: A New Starting Point’, New Socialist (November/December 1981), pp. 4–7.
Jean Gardiner and Sheila Smith, ‘Feminism and the Alternative Economic Strategy’ Socialist Economic Review, 2 (1982), pp. 31–46, p. 31.
He echoed many points made earlier by Crosland and others; Jim Tomlinson, The Unequal Struggle, pp. 99–122.
See S. Holland (ed.), Out of Crisis, p. 29.
Interview, Labour research official, August 1993.
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, Harper and Row, 1957), p. 28.
Ivor Crewe, ‘Why the Conservatives Won’, in Howard Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls (Washington, AEI, 1981), pp. 263–306;
and Ivor Crewe, ‘The Labour Party and the Electorate’, in Dennis Kavanagh (ed.), The Politics of the Labour Party (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 9–49.
Gallup Political Index (July 1972), p. 113.
On import controls see Gallup Political Index, (September 1977, and July 1980). On industrial democracy see Gallup Political Index (September 1973), p. 160 and (September 1975), p. 8. For support for leaving the EEC, reflation, import controls and a Labour-union agreement on economic policy see Gallup Political Index (October 1981 and October 1982).
See, for example, RD: 2798/May 1983, p. 1.
Gallup Political Index (November 1974).
A. Heath, R. Jowell and J. Curtice, How Britain Votes (Oxford, Pergamon, 1985), p. 89.
Patrick Dunleavy and Christopher Husbands, British Democracy at the Crossroads (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp. 51–2;
and Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 100–4 and 112–44.
‘The General Election Campaign A Note On Priorities’, RD: 2522/October 1982, p. 2.
RD: 576/November 1980.
See Gallup Political Index (March 1974–June 1975).
A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 55–60.
RD: 716/February 1981, p. 2.
See Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London, Macmillan, 1987), pp. 180–1.
For a theoretical account stressing the role of institutions see K. Thelen and S. Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’, in S. Steinmo, K. Thelen and F. Longstreth (eds), Structuring Politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–32.
Jonas Pontusson, The Limits of Social Democracy (Cornell, Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 2.
See David Coates, Labour in Power (London, Longman, 1980), pp. 246–51;
and David Coates, ‘The Labour Party and the Transition to Socialism’, New Left Review, 129 (1981), pp. 3–22. See also Alan Freeman, ‘The Alternative Economic Strategy: A Critique’, International (1981), pp 15–24; and Coventry Trades Council et al, State Intervention in Industry, pp. 141–62.
David Howell, British Social Democracy (London, Croom Helm, 1976), p. 289.
David Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 211.
Leo Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis (London, Verso, 1986), p. 93.
See also Leo Panitch, Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 229–30.
L. Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis, p. 101.
D. Coates, ‘The Labour Party and the Transition to Socialism’, pp. 5–7. See also David Coates, ‘Space and Agency in the Transition to Socialism’, New Left Review, 135 (1982), pp. 49–63.
L. Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis, p. 116.
See L. Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis, pp. 1–55; and L. Panitch ‘Socialist Renewal and the Labour Party’, Socialist Register (1988), pp. 319–65.
Bob Rowthorn, ‘The Politics of the Alternative Economic Strategy’, Marxism Today (January 1981), pp. 4–10; D. Coates, Labour in Power, p. 246; D. Coates, ‘The Labour Party and the Transition to Socialism’, pp. 9–11; and John Harrison, ‘A “Left” Critique of the Alternative Economic Strategy’, Socialist Economic Review, 2 (1982), pp. 117–26.
Ben Fine, ‘Multinational Corporations, the British Economy and the Alternative Economic Strategy’, Economic Bulletin, 10 (1983), pp. 10–35.
Andrew Glyn, Capitalist Crisis Tribune’s Alternative Strategy’ or Socialist Plan (Militant, 1983), pp. 37–9.
L. Panitch, ‘Socialist Renewal and the Labour Party’, p. 322.
See Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London, Merlin, 1972, originally, 1961), p. 376.
See D. S. King and M. Wickham-Jones, ‘Social Democracy and Rational Workers’, British Journal of Political Science, 20 (1990), pp. 387–413, pp. 406–412.
For example, A. Freeman, ‘The Alternative Economic Strategy: A Critique’, pp. 23–24.
D. Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism, p. 220.
S. Steinmo, ‘Social Democracy versus Socialism: Goal Adaptation in Social Democratic Sweden’, Politics and Society, 16 (1988), pp. 403–50, pp. 405 and 435.
J. Pontusson, The Limits of Social Democracy, p. 20.
L. Minkin, The Labour Party Conference (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1980), pp. 239–42.
R. McKenzie, British Political Parties (London, Heinemann, 1967, originally 1955), p. 526.
RD: 2889/October 1983, p. 3.
Patrick Cosgrave, The Spectator, 17 February 1973.
‘An Agenda for Agreement’, RE: 966/February 1977, p. 4.
P. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left, p. 159.
R. Crossman, New Statesman, 21 July 1961, p. 82.
Interview, November 1984.
NEC report, 27 July 1983.
N. Webb and R. Wybrow, The Gallup Report (London, Sphere, 1981), p. 24.
N. Webb and R. Wybrow, The Gallup Report (London, Sphere, 1982).
Gallup Political Index (May 1979–December 1981).
See Helmut Norpoth, Confidence Regained (Michigan, University of Michigan, 1992), p. 190;
and Paul Whiteley, The Labour Party in Crisis (London, Methuen, 1983), pp. 46–50.
See Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 216.
See also P. Whiteley, The Labour Party in Crisis, p. 3.
Patrick Seyd, ‘Labour: The Great Transformation’, in Anthony King et al, Britain at the Polls, 1992 (Chatham, New Jersey, 1993), pp. 70–100, p. 72.
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© 1996 Mark Wickham-Jones
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Wickham-Jones, M. (1996). Conclusions. In: Economic Strategy and the Labour Party. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373679_9
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