“The Labour party is in danger more mortal today than at any point in the over 100 years of its existence… If Jeremy Corbyn becomes the leader, it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation…” (Tony Blair, writing in the Guardian, 13th August 2015)

A myth is a story handed down by a tradition, a story that is told and retold, and which, in its classical form, is usually about the origins of the world. Modern politics and the Labour Party have their myths, stories that are retold, and shared as a sound-bite, used to reinforce a created narrative. One of these more enduring myths is that surrounding the 1983 General Election. So the story goes: “Labour drastically lost that election because of its hard left policies and left-wing leader”. (The leader at that time was Michael Foot.) And, the myth continues, as a consequence of this defeat, we must “never return to the dark days of the 1980s”. Or at least this is the story told by the BBC, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, and those in the Labour Party today who are hostile to Jeremy Corbyn and the policies and ideas he is seen to represent.

You might, of course, wonder why Labour losing one single election, the one in 1983, was so critical, such that it should shape all future policy. After all, Labour has failed to win some nineteen General Elections since it was founded, most of these under leaders who could reasonably be regarded as being on the right wing of the Labour Party. Five of these election defeats came after 1983, with four of these under right-wing Labour leaders, except the 2017 election under Jeremy Corbyn. And in this case, it was a situation where Labour did not win, but did destroy an existing Conservative majority. So why is the one election defeat in 1983 presented as some type of existential crisis, while all the other elections defeats are seen differently, with responses as flippant as putting it down to the need to improve election presentation? (This was the “analysis” made after the second Labour defeat under Kinnock.)

Labour entered the 1983 General Election under the left-wing leadership of Michael Foot and with an NEC comprised of a majority from those on the left of the party. Labour had already endured some three years of back-biting and negative stories in the press from MPs on the right of the party, angry that the left now had a majority and that a prominent left-winger was the party leader. Sound-bites designed to undermine the Labour Party were used. Phrases that often had their origins in the editorial offices of the Daily Mail, now regularly appeared on the lips of these hostile MPs, along with damaging “leaks” and disparaging remarks about the party leader.

If all this has a familiar ring, it is because once again Labour has a left-wing leader and once again we have several MPs writing regularly for anti-Labour papers, appearing in the media with stories designed to undermine the party, along with the inevitable “leaks”. Although the words, themes and sound-bites have changed, we appear very much to be in déja vu territory.

The defeat of the 1983 General Election was immediately used by those who had been attacking the party for the previous three years to go into overdrive and attack the left within the party. The progressive and radical policies developed over the years at party conferences in the early 1980s were made “responsible” for the 1983 defeat. They were even “’a threat to the future existence of the Labour Party” (a tome repeated by Blair about Corbyn in 2015). In consequence, these commentators concluded, Labour needed to move to the “’centre-ground” and adopt “sensible policies”, which, in the context of that time, meant adopting some of the policies of the Thatcher government. 

The base facts of the 1983 election results are clear enough. The three largest parties were the Conservatives with 397 seats, Labour with 209, and the Alliance (Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party SPD) with 23 seats. In terms of actual votes, the Conservatives had 13,012,316, Labour 8,456,934, and the Alliance 7,794,770. The Conservatives received 42.4% of the total votes cast, Labour 27.6%, and the Alliance 25.4%, with all other parties, totalling less than 5%. 

In terms of parliamentary seats, and because of the peculiarities of the election system, the Conservatives gained a large majority, but the principle reason for this was the three-way split in the votes, with non-Conservative voters split between the Labour Party and the Liberal/SDP Alliance. At the same time, there was no viable contender to challenge the Conservatives for their votes, such as UKIP and the Brexit Party have done in recent politics. In actual fact, support for the Conservatives in that election dropped by several hundred thousand votes compared to their vote share in 1979. In a situation where the majority of those voting (nearly 60%) did not vote Conservative, alongside the actual drop in voting numbers, it would be hard to present the election results as a national endorsement of Conservative philosophy and policies. Yet, the media and those on the right of the Labour Party went into overdrive to present it as such, and in turn to attack existing Labour Party policy and its leadership. What the establishment wanted was a Conservative- lite Labour Party, not a Labour Party with socialist policies.

Fifteen years later, under Tony Blair, that wish came true. With the right-wing now firmly in control of a muted Labour Party and on the back of mounting disgust and hostility towards the then Conservative government, election success eventually came in 1997. Labour was now seen by the establishment as more the inheritor and child of the Thatcher period, than its socialist history. What was the result?

Apart from a couple of good policies, such as the introduction of a minimum wage and creation of Sure Start Centres (both which had been strongly pushed by the trade union movement rather than the “leaders office”), the New Labour government fully embraced pro-capitalist and neo-liberal policies. Thus, we saw the introduction of PFI, which has since ripped off hundreds of billions from the public sector. We saw the beginning of the privatisation of the education system, through the introduction of the Academies programme. And we saw the continuation of Conservative policy to block the building of council houses and a refusal to end the sale of council houses, both polices which have contributed to the housing and rent crisis of today. Eventually, as a sort of tragic culmination of these attitudes, we saw Britain becoming part of America’s war machine which bombed Iraq, leaving hundreds of thousand dead and millions in destitution and poverty.

As these neo-liberal policies came to fruition, and working people continued to suffer under the New Labour brand, not only were people’s individual lives ruined, but deep damage was done to traditional communities of Labour supporters. In the election that followed that of 1997, in 2001, Labour retained a majority, but the result was marked by a dramatic increase in voter apathy, with turnout falling to 59.4%, the lowest since the General Election of 1918. In the 2005 General Election, Blair was again returned as Prime Minister, with Labour having 355 MPs, but with a popular vote of only 35.2%, another record figure, being the lowest percentage of any majority government in UK election history. These were the historic fault-lines for future election defeats and brought with them the rise of xenophobic attitudes, and fears and worries about the quality of life. These fault-lines would be inflamed and built upon after the 2008 crash and the Coalition government’s ramping up of their austerity programme, a programme that was actually begun under New Labour.

What then of the policies and programme of Labour in 1983?

One of the lines of attack on the left in 1983 was Labour’s policies and programme and the contents of the 1983 Election Manifesto. The mainstream media and right-wing Labour MPs have consistently echoed a phrase used by right-wing Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, that the manifesto was “the longest suicide note in history”. The phrase has even garnered its own Wikipedia page.

Yet, there is little or no evidence that the policies of the Labour Party at this time were an issue of concern for the majority of voters. We should leave aside the Alice-in-Wonderland suggestion that in 1983 all Labour voters ordered the manifesto and read it. Or that their behaviour was entirety different from all other elections, where decisions are based on a range of factors, including leaflets, discussions on the door and at work, people’s own circumstances at that moment, and, of course, the baneful influence of the media.

In reality, only a few thousand ever read the actual manifestos, and this remains the case today, even with such manifestos being available through the Internet; whereas in 1983 they were only printed in limited numbers. But the reality, in this case, should not spoil a good sound-bite. What is important in any election campaign is the dynamism of that campaign, and the policies and programme put forward and highlighted during the campaign itself. Here there were clear failings in the organisation of the election by the Labour Party, and undoubtedly this could have been better. But such failings were not critical in themselves to the final result, and related much more to campaigning rather than problems with individual policies.

Specific Factors in the 1983 Election: The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Falklands War

The outcome and results of all General Elections are always influenced by a range of factors. This can be a short up- or downturn in the economy, perhaps due to world economic factors, or changes in the price of oil, as well as changes influenced by government policy. There are also longer, more deep-seated, moods, such as that which brought Labour to power in 1945, when there was a clear demand for the type of society Labour was offering and a rejection of Conservatism, in spite of Churchill’s personal popularity at that time.

The structure of the electoral system can also heavily influence outcomes and results. The UK’s First Past The Post (FPTP) election system means that the candidate in each constituency with more votes than the next single candidate wins. However, in many cases, the winning candidate does not have a majority over all other candidates combined, which means that MPs can be elected on a vote of less than 50 per cent. Roll that forward, and we find that governments are nearly always elected by a minority of the people who voted because governments are formed if they have a majority of MPs in the House of Commons, not because they have a majority of votes.

In the 1983 election, the FPTP system helped the Conservatives win a bigger majority than mere voting numbers would indicate. In marginal parliamentary seats, where Labour might have won, the newly established Social Democratic Party took some of Labour’s votes. As the anti-Tory vote was thus split, it meant that the Conservative could sneak through and become the winning candidate. In some Liberal marginal seats, the competition between Labour and the SPD/Alliance also helped the Conservative candidates win. Without this factor, the Conservatives are still likely to have won the election, but on a much smaller majority. 

The other specific issue of the 1983 election is known as the Falklands Factor, or a spin-off from the Falklands War. The war lasted for around twelve weeks, from April to June 1982. Before April, the Conservative ratings in opinion polls regularly put them in a potentially losing position should an election be called. However, from the start of the war through to its aftermath rolling into 1983, Conservative ratings shot up, with the highest rating being achieved in May 1982, which was at the height of the conflict. The higher ratings although falling a little after, generally retained a higher level of support for the Conservatives, although this support was beginning to wear-off when Thatcher called the snap election for June 1983.

Labour’s front-bench stand on the war was not actually against British intervention, and as a front bench, they acted in the standard manner of Her Majesty Opposition, supporting the government in the war. Some Labour MPs rightly did question the rush to war, rather than attempts at negotiation; they questioned what appeared to be careless warmongering by Thatcher. But these issues of holding the government to account, much like Corbyn’s recent questioning of the Gulf oil tanker attacks in June 2019, was immediately branded by the mainstream media as anti-war, as being “against our troops”, and that Labour as a political party “would stab our troops in the back”, etc. The vitriol in 1982/3, as it is today with Corbyn, was unfounded, and was constructed to push an anti-Labour political agenda. Nevertheless, in 1983 it was a contributory factor in the Conservative victory.

Drawing together these general factors that influenced the 1983 elections, we see that none of them relates directly to the political composition of the Labour Party, or more specifically, to the fact that it was left-wing and therefore supposedly unelectable. Rather, they relate specifically to the election circumstances at that time.

Different or similar factors could also be looked at about any of the nineteen General Elections that Labour has lost. The creation of the 1983 myth, however, was necessary for the right-wing to use that election defeat as a battering ram to regain control of the Labour Party. As we look back in history, we can say that they were uniquely successful in their attempts to do so.

The story of the aftermath of 1983, leading up to the Blair years is, however, another story. What we can say is that the right-wing succeeded. They did so principally because they were able to pull over a significant proportion of trade union leaders and a significant number of MPs who had previously been on the left. Individuals such as David Blunkett, who had once been the radical socialist leader of Sheffield Council, but who became an arch-Blairite. The role of these ex-lefts was critical in the journey away from Labour’s socialist roots and towards neo-liberalism. Leading this move was ex-left MP Neil Kinnock, who replaced Micheal Foot as leader. Kinnocks “credentials” as a left-wing MP helped him subdue and minimise the influence of the left in the Labour Party for what became more than 30 years. 

The shift of some of the left in the Labour Party towards a right-wing agenda was more complicated and nuanced than merely a gut reaction to the 1983 defeat. The election did play an important role, particularly for trade union leaders, but this was in the context of both a massive media campaign against the Labour Party and shifts in the attitudes and views of some on the left.

There was an influx of ideas that believed the old working class had changed, and that capitalism was now more about consumer society and life-style. These trends within capitalism inevitably had an influence. And in the wake of the ’83 election these ideas were given voice by some of those on the left in the Labour Party.

Capitalism’s effects on people’s lives has always been a changing experience. In the early 1980s we saw the beginnings of a feature that dominates our world today: a greater predominance of finance capital, with the rapid flow of capital across national boundaries and a greater commodification of everyday life. In this climate, a variation on the old idea that capitalism could be reformed rather than completely changed emerged; the emphasis of working “with” capitalism rather than changing it re-emerged with a vengeance.

This was described colloquially as working with capitalism “as you found it”. In an irony of history, this set of ideas – loosely termed Euro-Communism – had germinated in the Communist Parties of Western Europe, in a reaction to their previous subservience to the Soviet Union. These ideas were also dominant in the British Communist Party, and through this party trickled into both the trade unions and the Labour Party itself.

Perhaps most notable, in terms of the 1983 myth, was an article by Eric Hobsbawm titled Labour’s Lost Millions, published in October 1983 in the Communist Party journal, Marxism Today. Hobsbawm effectively provided an intellectual justification for moving away from what was then Labour’s policies and, by implication, blamed the left within Labour for the defeat of 1983. There is insufficient space in this article to look at these ideas in detail, but I will do so in a future article in this journal. It is perhaps interesting, however, to note that Hobsbawm himself was consulted by Kinnock as he began the attack on the left within the Labour Party and as he started the organisational changes in the Labour Party that would lay the basis for the Blair years.

Conclusion

The myth of 1983 is still with us today, lying in the background to be taken out, brushed off, and used when the opportunity arises. Like hungry wolves, right-wing Labour MPs are waiting in the wings to pounce on any poor election results under the Corbyn leadership. They are also happy to help such results along the way. In what is becoming an almost regular-as-clockwork occurrence, there is a sudden upsurge in denunciations and complaints about “Corbyn’s Labour” by several Labour MPs in the lead-up to elections and during campaigns. We see a series of carefully placed articles in the newspapers, and these same stories are then run at length by the BBC. The narrative the right wishes to create around Jeremy Corbyn includes linking him to the myth of 1983. In one such desperate response, while Corbyn was still standing in the election for leader in 2015, Tony Blair wrote: “Those of us who lived through the turmoil of the 80s know every line of this script [referring to Corbyn]. These are policies from the past that were rejected not because they were too principled, but because a majority of the British people thought they didn’t work.” Blair here repeats the lies about Labour’s policies and stokes up an image of a maligned and miscreant decade of the 1980s. Presumably, before he brought sanity and goodness into the world.

What was learnt from this episode and the myth of ’83 is that one of the key dangers to the Labour Party comes from its determined right-wing MPs – and the PLP has plenty of these at the moment. But danger also comes from influential figures on the left, who use their past left credentials to undermine and subvert the political processes in the party, pulling democratic decision-making away from the membership, and creating a leader-centred model of control. Are there such figures lurking within Labour at the moment? When we look at the leadership of Momentum today and the series of announcements from their London offices that have been undermining Jeremy Corbyn, we can only hope that history will not repeat itself, even if this happens as a farce.

THE LABOUR PARTY was founded in 1900, first as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) then changing its name to the Labour Party in 1906. It emerged as a broad-based organisation, reflecting the diverse range of existing organisations already developed by working people under capitalism. It encompassed the varied working-class political trends: the newly organised, militant, unskilled workers; the more traditional skilled workers; others focused on the co-operative movement; and others focused on issues such as education. Within its ranks were socialists, both Marxists and reformists such as those in the Fabian Society. The Labour Party, in this sense, became an arena within which the political arguments for socialism, and the different policies and tactics to achieve it, were argued and debated. The working class increasingly saw it as a tool with which it could fight, as a class, for change.

An extended period of struggle had preceded this foundation of the Labour Party; this struggle was centred around the idea of establishing an independent political representation of the working class, separate from the existing capitalist parties. In the 1890s the significant obstacles to the new worker’s party were two-fold: the organisational support given by the traditional trade unions to the Liberal Party and the mass vote at elections for the Liberal and Tories by those working-class men who did have the vote.

In an ironic twist of history, the situation in the 1890s has similarities a hundred years later in our present-day politics. Once again, socialists and class-conscious trade unionists have begun struggling for the creation of a new workers party. But this time, the major obstacle is not from the Liberal Party, but New Labour. This party has become a clone of the very capitalist parties it was set up to replace!

In the 1890s the major trade unions of the day saw themselves as being attached to the Liberal Party. Although the trade unions were not formally affiliated to the Liberals, they saw them as the political party which would most represent their interests. Trade union officials both at a national and local level were often Liberal Party members and were wined and dined by the Liberal Party hierarchy. Trade unionists would put forward a version of Liberal ideology, that the economy of ‘the country’ was important, and within this, that the interests of capital and labour could often be the same.

This attachment of trade union officialdom to the Liberal Party had begun forty years earlier in 1867, during the culmination of a mass working-class movement demanding the right to vote. The years 1866 and 1867 had witnessed large scale demonstrations all over the country and a mass rally in London which ended with a riot in Hyde Park. The establishment parties were fearful of a growing mood that hinted at revolution; to stem the tide, they quickly passed legislation giving the vote to millions of urban working-class males. The victory was incomplete, not least the exclusion of women and rural workers from the franchise, but in the ensuing general election the Liberal Party establishment moved quickly to absorb the trade union leadership in a successful attempt to capture sections of the new working-class voters.

Throughout the following three decades the links between the trade unions and the Liberal Party remained solid. Over this period the Liberals were seen by many as the ‘natural party’ for the working class. Some workers became Liberal councillors, and in mining areas where the working class vote was overwhelming, trade unionists became Liberal MPs (to become known as the Lib-Lab MPs). Trade union leaders would argue that their relationship with the Liberal Party was beneficial, and would point to minor pieces of legislation, passed by Liberal governments, that helped the working class or the trade unions directly. The term used by these working-class liberals was ‘labour representation’. This concept was expressed year after year during the 1880s and early 1890s at the TUC annual conference, as the TUC parliamentary committee reported on its work with the Liberal establishment.

Yet within this convivial partnership, there were constant tensions. A relationship between a capitalist party like the Liberals and the working class was full of contradictions. When it came down to a direct decision about favouring profits and capitalism against working-class interests, it was always the former which was supported. Often employers headed the local Liberal Party establishment, or at a national level, the Liberal Party would ignore calls for more deep-seated reforms such as the call by the trade unions for the eight-hour day. The antagonism was also expressed in an attempt by the Liberal Party to ‘keep out’ the undesirable working class from representing the party as councillors or MPs; not dissimilar to the control on these positions exercised by the contemporary New Labour machine, who regard socialists as an alien species who should not belong to their party.

Some of these tensions and conflicts would eventually spread into annual TUC conferences. As early as 1887, the president opened that year’s congress by arguing: “One thing is certain, this labour movement is the inevitable outcome of the present condition of capital and labour, and seeing that capital has used its position in the House of Commons so effectively for its own ends, is it not the strongest policy of labour now that it has voting strength to improve its surroundings?”. This speech set the tone of a debate to set up a new workers party headed by the then young delegate, Kier Hardie, representing the Ayrshire miners in Scotland. But the idea was soon squashed by a series of delegates, who were Liberal Party members. They put forward the argument, later often repeated, that a new party would split the Liberal vote and let the Tories in. The voters were not ready for a new party of labour and it would be much better to keep with the Liberal Party. Indeed Hardie was ferociously attacked by the Liberal MP, C Fenwick (delegate of the Northumberland miners), because he dared raise the anti-working class record of a Liberal parliamentary candidate recently supported by leading Liberal trade unionists at a by-election in Northwich.

A change came in 1889, in what would later be seen as a historic turning point. This was the victory of newly organised trade unionists in the gas workers’ dispute, leading to the formation of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labours. Later that same year came the London dock strike, which also saw the setting up of a new union. These disputes brought previously unorganised workers into the trade union movement, led by men who were both socialists and supported the demand for a new workers’ party.

By the 1893 TUC congress one of these leaders, Ben Tillett, was moving a motion calling for a separate fund to support independent labour candidates and an elected committee to administer these funds, with a worked-out process to select candidates who pledged to support the policies of the trade unions.

James MacDonald, later an early leader of the Labour Party, put forward an amendment, (passed by 137 votes to 97) calling for all candidates to “support the principle of collective ownership and control of all the means of production and distribution”. It was the first move in the creation of what would eventually become the Labour Party. But in the manoeuvrings of the congress, the Liberal Party members would ensure that this resolution became a dead letter. This was signalled in the defeat of a further resolution by Kier Hardie calling on labour members of parliament to sit in opposition to the Liberals.

The next few years was spent by the socialists and militant trade unionists attempting to put flesh on the bones of this resolution and by the obstruction of the Liberal Party trade unionists in blocking its effectiveness. A critical issue centred on finance; the Liberal Party trade unionists prevented the funds of the trade unions they controlled from being used to support working-class candidates who were standing independently of the Liberal Party. Unlike today when MPs make themselves rich by gaining a parliamentary seat, being an MP was a non-paying job. Only the rich could afford to sit in parliament, so it was necessary for trade unions to find the money, not only for the election campaign but to pay a salary to the candidate should they be elected. By holding up funds, the Liberal trade unionists could hold up the creation of a new workers’ party.

Equally the Liberals were able to curtail further debate within the TUC on this issue, defeating resolutions and proposals at the 1894, 1895 and 1896 congresses. Indeed in 1895, the congress president, councillor Jenkins, a Liberal and a delegate from the Shipwrights’ Society and also president of Cardiff trades council, used his opening speech to carry out a full-frontal attack on the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for standing candidates in the 1895 general election. He even attempted a slur that because standing independent labour candidates undermined Liberal Party votes, that the ILP was being funded by the Tory Party.

But the tide of history was about to turn against the Liberals in the trade union movement. The conflicts between labour and capital were intensifying as the economic upturn of the early 1890s took a dip towards the end of the decade. Additionally, British manufactures were experiencing sharpened competition from the expanding economies of the USA and Germany. As a squeeze on their profits developed, the bosses turned to recoup their losses by reducing wages and attacking the power of the trade union movement to defend their member’s interests. Although it was the Conservatives who were in power, having won the 1895 and subsequently the 1900 general elections, the Liberal Party was reluctant to commit themselves to reverse the attacks on the labour movement. Many Liberals Party members, also employers, were the very people carrying out some of these attacks.

At the same time over the decade of the 1890s in one local area after another, small but determined groups of socialists were beginning to influence the organised movement, enabling them in a few places to replace liberal trade unionists with socialist representatives. This activity by socialists on the ground combined with the numerical growth of the new trade unions, such as the gasworkers and dockers, helped transform the situation. This process, combined with the alienation of some of the more traditional unions from the stance of the Liberal Party in the late 1890s, began shifting the ground of support within the TUC.

The eventual formation of what would become the Labour Party was not automatic; rather there was a dialectic between the general economic forces creating a conflict between labour and capital, the old and new trade unions, and the conscious intervention of socialists acting as a catalyst of change. As the famous phrase of Karl Marx states, ‘man makes his own history, although not in circumstances of his own choosing’. But within this, it is necessary that he does indeed ‘make his own history’.

Historians often cite two legal judgements as being critical in the development of the Labour Party, the Taff Vale judgement of 1900-1901 and the Osborne judgement of 1909, both of which were strident attacks upon trade unions. But these judgements acted more to rapidly increase a trend which was already underway than to spark the creation of the Labour Party itself. The creation of the Labour Representation Committee had been agreed a year before the Taff Vale judgement at the 1899 TUC congress. This laid the foundation for what would become the Labour Party, and it brought to an end the period of the pre-birth of the new worker’s party.

The next two decades would see the growth and spread of the new party in working-class communities, reflected within trade unions, in local council elections and increasingly in parliamentary seats. But like the previous decade, success would not be automatic. The working-class voter was still embedded to the habits of the past and remained attached to the capitalist Liberal Party. Many of the old Liberal trade unionists were still influential. They would continue to claim that the Liberal Party remained the party for workers, citing as evidence the fact that large numbers of workers still voted for the Liberal Party, mistaking the habits of voting as a zodiac sign which determined the character of the party.

Looking back at this history of the Liberal Party, which by its policies and ideology supported the interests of capitalism, you might wonder how little has changed today. We see the Labour government and Labour-controlled councils acting like ruthless employers, affecting millions of public sector workers, who have endured low pay, significant pay cuts through below-inflation pay awards, alongside real and threatened job losses. Labour stands by as employers close down businesses and sack workers. Yet at the same time Labour gives away billions of pounds to prop up the banks. Their stated intent is restoring the profits of firms, and they ask the working class to pick up the bill. It is this context that poses once again the need for a party which can represent the interests of working people. In an irony of history the Labour Party, originally set-up to replace the Liberal Party, never a commited socialist party of revolutionary change, but only at times that of reform. It has now, some one-hundred years later itself become a Liberal-Capitalist party. Conscious socialists should now be looking to work with and build a party of the working-class, and look to achieve this achieve this objective.