The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97

Christopher Massey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526144447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

Offering a vital recasting of the modernisation of the Labour Party, this book sheds new light on the Party's years in the wilderness between 1979 and 1997. Christopher Massey traces the major organisational changes across these eighteen years, arguing that Labour's organisational modernisation fundamentally altered its internal structures, policy-making pathways and constitution.Beginning with the situation inherited by Labour's leadership in the early 1980s, Massey traces Neil Kinnock's quest for a stable majority on the party's ruling National Executive Committee between 1983 and 1987. From this position, the book examines four major organisational changes: the Policy Review (1987–92), One Member, One Vote (1992–94), Clause IV (1995–96), and Partnership in Power (1996–97).Making extensive use of previously unseen archival materials, including the journals of the party's former General Secretary, Lord Tom Sawyer, and primary interviews with Labour leaders, General Secretaries, former Members of Parliament and Party staff, this book is essential reading for those wishing to understand the modernisation of the Labour Party.

1

Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the Labour left establish and assert their supremacy within the Labour Party machine. The constitutional and policy changes pushed through in this era ultimately led to a reaction by Labour’s right, centre and soft-left in the mid-1980s and catalysed Labour’s modernisation. Thus, the history of how Labour came to be dominated by its left wing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is vital to the understanding of the modernisation process from the mid-1980s onwards.

From 1979 to 1981, Labour’s left grew to dominate CLPs and the NEC and began to find favour amongst the trade union bloc vote at the party’s annual conference. Through these advances, the left were able to pursue both constitutional and policy reform within the party. The former was typified by three key left-wing demands in this period: the mandatory reselection of MPs, the election of the party leader by a wider franchise, and the control of future manifestos by the NEC and not the party leader. Regarding policy, the left steered the party towards unilateral nuclear disarmament, widespread nationalisation and away from the European Economic Community.

The changes to both internal party mechanisms and party policy in the period before 1983 became the driving force and justification, after this period, for the party’s modernisation. Following the defection of twenty-eight Labour MPs to the newly founded Social Democratic Party in 1981, the trade unions, after the Peace of Bishop’s Stortford in 1982, and the Labour soft-left – who broke with the hard-left in 1986 – formed an alliance around the party leadership in the mid-1980s to reverse the changes instituted in the 1979–83 period. The modifications introduced to the party’s machinery, and the damage done by years of constant infighting, however, had a profound impact on Labour’s electability through the 1980s and early 1990s. In effect, Labour’s modernisation was a direct reaction to the constitutional and policy changes introduced by the hard-left between 1979 and 1981.

Reasons for change

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Labour left grew increasingly frustrated by the actions of their parliamentary leadership. In particular, the left felt betrayed by the 1974–79 Labour Government, particularly its positive attitude towards Europe, the abandonment of an interventionist industrial policy, and the austerity programme introduced in 1975–76.¹ Grassroots pressure began to build during the lifetime of Harold Wilson’s, and particularly Jim Callaghan’s, governments for changes to the party constitution that would enable the left to not only have control of policy documents, but also of the selection of Labour MPs and the election of the leader of the party. Before the left’s successful pursuit of these changes in the 1970s, Labour’s organisational structures had remained largely unchanged from those set down in the party’s 1918 constitution.²

Foremost in the demand for changes to Labour’s constitution (and policy outlook) was the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). The CLPD was founded in 1973. Although other groups came to the fore later in the decade, broadly termed the ‘outside’ or ‘New’ left, the CLPD took up the fight for mandatory reselection from its foundation, but held little significance within the party until the late 1970s. The organisation’s creation was catalysed by Harold Wilson’s veto of the NEC’s approved policy for a Labour government to pursue the nationalisation of the country’s twenty-five leading companies. Wilson’s rejection of Labour’s Programme 1973 led to a watering down of the party’s nationalisation proposals in the 1974 manifesto and triggered the CLPD into demanding radical changes to Labour’s constitution to give more powers to the NEC and the wider party.³

The CLPD’s initial Statement of Aims included a clause that Labour conference decisions ‘should be binding on the Parliamentary Labour Party’.⁴ Yet, the document contained no overt reference, at this stage, to mandatory reselection or changing the franchise for electing the party leader, two of the CLPD’s major campaigns in the late 1970s. At the CLPD’s first public meeting, held at Labour’s 1973 Annual Conference, however, the attendees demonstrated an overwhelming interest in mandatory reselection.⁵ Consequently, as the 1970s progressed, the CLPD made a conscious decision to focus exclusively on constitutional reform and intra-party democracy, thus avoiding explicit – and potentially fractious – discussions on party policy. This was a pragmatic decision: by promoting constitutional reform as the organisation’s central aim, CLPD hoped that ‘party members and trade unionists holding very different views on policy issues could unite in support of this vital democratic reform’.⁶ A further reason for the left’s pursuit of constitutional reform was the cumbersome system for deselecting Labour MPs in place before 1979. Contentious deselections throughout the 1970s: Dick Taverne in Lincoln in 1972, Edward Griffiths in Sheffield Brightside in 1974 and Reg Prentice in Newham North East in 1975, brought the deselection of MPs into public focus. The controversies caused by these deselections, and crucially – for the left – the party leadership’s and media support for those who were deselected, led calls for the mandatory reselection of all MPs to grow ever louder.

The left was able to substantially increase the pressure for reform following Labour’s defeat in 1979. They argued that Callaghan’s ‘abandonment’ of socialism and his confrontation with the trade unions had caused the party to lose office. As such, fundamental revisions, it was believed, were needed to Labour’s constitution to ensure that future party leaders and MPs would be bound by the decisions of the annual conference and the NEC, and would be accountable to their local members. The first such change to find a successful path through Labour’s machinery was the mandatory reselection of MPs.

Mandatory reselection

Before the 1979 election, CLPs had the power to sack their MP by passing a motion of no confidence, but this process was fraught with difficulty as the MP retained the right of appeal to the NEC in such cases. Labour had traditionally held the view that an MP’s loyalty was to the national party and not his or her local constituency party. Mandatory reselection sought to change this procedure and demanded that MPs face a mandatory reselection conference, where they could be opposed by other party members in their seat, before every general election.

The demand for mandatory reselection of MPs was first thrust on the political agenda in 1972 following the long-drawn-out campaign of Lincoln CLP to deselect their pro-European MP, Dick Taverne.⁷ The CLP expressed no confidence in Taverne in November 1971, but by December, had voted to take no further action. The constituency passed a further no confidence motion in June 1972.⁸ The CLP’s move against Taverne provoked him to resign as an MP and to fight a subsequent by-election as a Democratic Labour candidate, against the Labour Party. The embarrassment caused to Labour by Taverne’s victory at the 1973 Lincoln by-election, popularised calls for mandatory reselection. Two resolutions on mandatory reselection reached the annual party conference agenda for the first time in 1972, but on the advice of the NEC, these resolutions were remitted.⁹ A further resolution on mandatory reselection was submitted to the Labour Party’s 1973 Annual Conference, but this was again remitted to be considered by an NEC review over the next year.¹⁰ The review engaged with 2,700 activists and 570 constituency parties around the country and published its ‘Report on Re-Organisation of Party Structure’ in 1974.¹¹ However, this broad report asserted: ‘there shall be no change from the present procedure for the selection of a prospective parliamentary candidate’.¹²

At the 1974 Conference, Ken Coates of Rushcliffe CLP moved an amendment to the party’s constitution which demanded that ‘every constituency party shall hold a selection conference at least once in the lifetime of every parliament’.¹³ Ian Mikardo, replying for the NEC, asked delegates to reject Coates’s amendment, remarking that the party’s constitution already included provisions for removing a sitting Labour MP. He argued that removing a sitting MP ‘should not be easy; divorce should never be easy, because divorce is a last resort’.¹⁴ Coates’s amendment fell by 3.26 million to 2.044 million votes.¹⁵ Despite this setback the left achieved a significant victory at the 1974 Conference with the adoption of the Mikardo Doctrine.¹⁶ Mikardo declared that the Executive would only intervene in deselection cases when local parties had not followed the correct procedures, regardless of the political allegiance of the MP concerned, asserting: ‘Our only function as NEC is to determine whether the procedure has been carried out.’¹⁷ In retrospect, Mikardo claimed that his Doctrine, ‘opened the door to the reselection process’.¹⁸ The Doctrine, according to Eric Shaw, was the most important ‘example of the retraction of central control’ in this period.¹⁹ The change aimed to release CLPs from national party intervention and attempted to establish better relationships between MPs and their constituencies as a half-way house towards mandatory reselection.

After the 1974 Conference defeat, three major problems faced the proponents of mandatory reselection: a lack of demonstrable support, the bloc voting system, and the party’s ‘three-year rule’ which prohibited the change being debated again until 1977. The latter issue was a constitutional problem. The standing orders of the party constitution declared that ‘when the Annual Party Conference has, by resolution, made a declaration of a general Policy or Principle, no Resolution or Motion concerning such a Policy or Principle shall appear on the Agenda for a period of three-years’.²⁰ This forbade further discussion of mandatory reselection until 1977, although the CLPD advised CLPs to ignore this rule and to continue to submit resolutions on reselection to the annual conference.

On the first issue, the lack of demonstrable support, the major issue was the lack of resolutions – a barometer of constituency concern about a topic or policy – submitted to conference calling for the constitutional change. In 1974, only one request for mandatory reselection was submitted by Ken Coates and this was done outside the CLPD’s structure. To get the issue another hearing at annual conference, particularly with the problems posed by the three-year rule, the CLPD needed to prove that mandatory reselection was a major issue for party members through the number of resolutions submitted to conference on the topic. Thus, the CLPD increased the pressure for mandatory reselection by using ‘model resolutions’. This resulted in CLPD-sponsored resolutions to the conference being printed and sent to every CLP for debate. The motions circulated by the CLPD highlighted new issues to local Labour parties such as mand...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Preface and acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83
• 2 The realignment of the left, 1983–87
• 3 The Policy Review, 1987–92
• 4 One Member, One Vote, 1992–94
• 5 Clause IV, 1994–95
• 6 Partnership in Power, 1995–97
• Conclusion: The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index