The London Socialist Historians newsletter No.69, Spring 2020 is now on-line. The newsletter is now part of socialist history itself, starting in 1997 just as Tony Blair and New Labour came to Office. The entire back archive is now on-line at the link below as is the current issue.
Thanks to John Burton who has designed and put together the newsletter for many years and to LSHG webmaster Christian Hogsbjerg who these days makes sure it appears on-line (a few hard copies are also produced!)
Labour leaders & labour history
The current Labour Leadership contest has raised an issue that is not raised that much, Labour leaders and there knowledge of labour history.
Rebecca Long Bailey raised the far from uncontroversial idea of progressive patriotism, something that has been discussed on the left since at least the Falklands War. She did give an historical example of the American Civil War but the history of British workers attitudes to it is not a simple one.
Keir Starmer wrote a piece for the Guardian about making a case for moral socialism without managing even a nod to Harold Wilson’s phrase that Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing (associated with the origins of War on Want). Starmer however also managed to tweet on the 165th anniversary of the birth of Eleanor Marx (16th January). His background makes it difficult to call his knowledge of labour history.
While Jeremy Corbyn, like Tony Benn, has an abiding interest in history he is not by any means an historian. One Labour leader who was definitely in that category was Tony Blair. A University librarian once told me that, before he was leader, Blair had to give a speech involving a mention of the Webbs. He had no idea who they were and turned up to borrow a book on them.
Blair however was the anti-history leader. If New Labour was to be really ‘new’ it could by definition keep on banging on about the past. Blair did go as far though as to unveil the statue of Harold Wilson outside Huddersfield station.
Wilson himself operated in the framework of a slightly different Labour politics. Not one to miss a Durham miners gala, or to call out Communists, or those like, trade unionist John Prescott, who he thought were.
As a socialist historian I think its useful for Labour leaders to know something of Labour and labour history. Perhaps being leader should require a test on the matter. Its probably too much to hope they’d learn from it but certainly a critical awareness of recent labour history and the way Labour has reacted to and handled electoral defeats in the past 50 years would not go amiss
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