Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership
Author: Andrew Scott Crines
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN: 9781443831598

Michael Footâ (TM)s political career can simplistically be characterised by cataclysmic failures within the period between 1979 and 1983, culminating in Labourâ (TM)s substantial electoral defeat. Developments within political discourse have since sought to perpetuate this characterisation by utilising the defeat as a justification for the subsequent modernisations. However, this analysis does not entirely appreciate the significance of Footâ (TM)s leadership. This book argues that far from being a disaster, Footâ (TM)s leadership in fact contributed to the survival of the Labour Party. Footâ (TM)s political education, political evolution, and experiences between him joining the Party in 1935 and the end of his ministerial career in 1979 enabled him to emerge as the unity candidate in opposition to the divisive potential of a Denis Healey or Tony Benn leadership. Footâ (TM)s support base included moderate social democrats and moderate left-wing MPâ (TM)s as well as centrists who opposed radicals from both sides. This subverts the orthodox assumption of Footâ (TM)s election being indicative of a sudden and simplistic left-wing domination after 1979. This book will be of particular interest to those seeking to develop their knowledge of Michael Foot, the Labour Party and their ideological diversity.

Michael Foot

Michael Foot
Author: Kenneth O. Morgan
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN: 9780007178278

The authorised - but not uncritical - life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, now in his nineties, who is also an eminent man of letters.

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership
Author: Andrew Scott Crines
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2011-07-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1443832391

Michael Foot’s political career can simplistically be characterised by cataclysmic failures within the period between 1979 and 1983, culminating in Labour’s substantial electoral defeat. Developments within political discourse have since sought to perpetuate this characterisation by utilising the defeat as a justification for the subsequent modernisations. However, this analysis does not entirely appreciate the significance of Foot’s leadership. This book argues that far from being a disaster, Foot’s leadership in fact contributed to the survival of the Labour Party. Foot’s political education, political evolution, and experiences between him joining the Party in 1935 and the end of his ministerial career in 1979 enabled him to emerge as the unity candidate in opposition to the divisive potential of a Denis Healey or Tony Benn leadership. Foot’s support base included moderate social democrats and moderate left-wing MP’s as well as centrists who opposed radicals from both sides. This subverts the orthodox assumption of Foot’s election being indicative of a sudden and simplistic left-wing domination after 1979. This book will be of particular interest to those seeking to develop their knowledge of Michael Foot, the Labour Party and their ideological diversity.

Aneurin Bevan: A Biography

Aneurin Bevan: A Biography
Author: Michael Foot
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0571280854

Michael Foot's two-volume biography of Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan (1897-1960) - arguably Britain's greatest socialist, indelibly associated with the founding of the National Health Service - is one of the major political biographies of the last century. It is the life of an inspirational politician, written by one who knew and unabashedly admired him. Volume II, first published in 1973, begins with Bevan's role in the founding of a comprehensive National Health Service - this while he was also tasked with addressing the country's severe post-war housing shortage. It takes in his 1951 resignation from the cabinet in protest at the introduction of prescription charges, and his subsequent leadership of a 'Bevanite' Labour left; his publication in 1952 of In Place of Fear; his service as Shadow Foreign Secretary during the Suez crisis in 1956; his controversial reversal of opposition to nuclear weapons in 1957; and his death from cancer in 1960.

Peter Shore

Peter Shore
Author: Kevin Hickson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN: 9781785904738

The first academic biography of one of the leading thinkers of the Labour Party, Peter Shore.

Searching for Socialism

Searching for Socialism
Author: Leo Panitch
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1788738527

A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn’s rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn’s roots in the Bennite Labour New Left’s long struggle to transcend the limits of “parliamentary socialism” and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party. Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn’s leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.

The Modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979-97

The Modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979-97
Author: Christopher Massey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2020-07-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781526144423

This book presents new, cross-disciplinary research on leprosy in medieval Europe, focusing on questions of identity. It reveals complex responses to the disease, challenging earlier views that medieval sufferers were uniformly stigmatised. The social, religious and cultural impacts are explored, as are post-medieval perspectives.

Guilty Men

Guilty Men
Author: Cato
Publisher: Penguin Uk
Total Pages: 123
Release: 1998
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780141180984

A polemic against Chamberlain, MacDonald, and Baldwin whom the author Cato, a pseudonym for Michael Foot, Frank Owen, and Peter Howard, regarded as having brought the country to the brink of disaster through their policy of appeasement. First published in 1940

One Party After Another

One Party After Another
Author: Michael Crick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2022-02-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1471192318

'Enormously readable...excellent' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A superb piece of thorough journalism' David Aaronovitch, The Times Nigel Farage is arguably one of the most influential British politicians of the 21st century. His campaign to take the UK out of the EU began as a minority and extreme point of view, but in June 2016 it became the official policy of the nation after a divisive referendum. In Michael Crick's brilliant new biography, One Party After Another, we find out how he did it, despite never once managing to get elected to Parliament. Farage left public school at the age of 16 to go and work in the City, but in the 1990s he was drawn into politics, joining UKIP. Ironically, it was the electoral system for the European Parliament that gave him access to a platform, and he was elected an MEP in 1999. His everyman persona, combined with a natural ability as a maverick and outspoken performer on TV, ensured that he garnered plenty of media attention. His message resonated in ways that rattled the major parties - especially the Conservatives - and suddenly the UK's membership of the EU was up for debate. Controversy was never far away, with accusations of racism against the party and various scandals. But, having helped secure the referendum, Farage was largely sidelined by the successful official Brexit campaign. When Parliament struggled to find a way to leave, Farage created the Brexit Party to ensure Britain did eventually leave the EU early in 2020. Crick's compelling new study takes the reader into the heart of Farage's story, assessing his methods, uncovering remarkable hidden details and builds to an unmissable portrait of one of the most controversial characters in modern British politics.