Ralph Miliband on the prospects for a Labour Election victory(1963)
Ralph Miliband the father of David and Ed was the author of an incisive critique of the first 60 years of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Socialism, published in 1960.
In 1963 he wrote piece on the prospects for a Labour Election victory- Labour won by four seats at the 1964 Election.
Miliband’s is one of a number of long unavailable pieces by writers on the left including Eric Hobsbawm and Raymond Williams, which are published in the current issue of New Left Review.
As an Editorial introduction notes Keir Starmer does not have the leadership skills of a Wilson or a Blair (and NLR in 1963 was optimistic about how left-wing Wilson was) but Miliband’s analysis seems strikingly familiar in 2023.
Part of the introductory paragraph reads:
If the electoral consultation were held today they would be massacred, if in the autumn or next spring, the prediction has it, they would be soundly beaten and Labour, after more than twelve years in opposition, would find itself in Government again, with a substantial Parliamentary majority. Not that this signifies a mass conversion to Labour, still less to socialism. In effect, the indications are that Labour has gained rather little new and positive support, rather the Conservatives have lost a great deal of ground in the past year or so- enough, that is, to signal the passage from defeat to victory.
Miliband goes on to note:
In 1951.. it was increasingly difficult to see any significant differences from the Conservative opposition whether in domestic or foreign policy…Most of its energy was devoted to fighting not the Conservatives but those within its own ranks arguing for a different political line…The lesson Labour’s leaders drew from repeated defeat was not that they had not been bold enough, but they had been too much so..
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