POLI20532 Course Outline 1112 - School of Social Sciences

POLI20532: Course Guide 2011-12
WEEK 6
How useful is Eric Hobsbawm's concept of a 'forward march of
Labour'? What had become of it by the 1970s?
6.1 Questions
1. Was there ever a ‘forward march of Labour’? If so, when and why did it come to
halt? Was it primarily a reflection of post-war social change? Or should it be seen in terms
of ideological exhaustion?
2. Many have seen the Wilson-Callaghan governments of 1974-9 as a breaking-point for
post-war Labourism and the wider post-war settlement. Was this true? What were the key
issues facing British government and why were they so intractable?
3. Why was industrial relations such a major issue in British politics in the 1970s? And
why did Labour believe that it was better able to work with the unions than Heath had been?
What went wrong?
4. By 1979, 84% per cent of respondents in Gallup polls agreed that the trade unions
had too much power. Were they right?
6.2 Essential readings
Eric Hobsbawm ‘The forward march of Labour halted?’ (1978)
http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/ind
ex_frame.htm..
Colin Hay
‘The winter of discontent thirty years on’, Political
Quarterly, 80, 4, 2009, 545-552 (with roundtable
discussion 553-61)
6.3 General texts and alternative readings
Kenneth Morgan Britain Since 1945, chs 10-11.
David Childs Britain Since 1945, ch. 8
Leo Panitch and Colin Leys The End of Parliamentary Socialism. From New
Left to New Labour, 1997, ch. 2 ‘Origins of the party
crisis’, copies in HD
David Howell British Social Democracy, 1980 edn., ch. 10
Alastair J. Reid
‘Labour and the trade unions’ in Tanner et al.
Labour’s First Century, pp. 221-47.
M. Artis et al ‘Social democracy in hard times: the economic
record of the Labour government 1974-1979’,
Twentieth Century British Century, 3, 1 (1992), 32-58.
Robert Taylor
Trade Unions in British Politics, 1993. (‘Conclusion:
Governments and Trade Unions Since 1945’, on
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