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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 183 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 183, February 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Chris Bambery’s article on the history of the Tory Party (January SR) does a great service to those on the left used to focusing on the crisis of the Labour Party. The Tory Party likes to present itself as a non-changing monolith. But as Bambery shows it has been forced to adapt its ruling class politics and with each adaptation comes uncertainty.
However, I think Chris rather misses the impact of the working class struggle on ruling class politics. The Liberal Party may have held sway from 1841 to 1874 as he suggests, but I doubt if ‘Britain’s trade unions loyally backed the Liberals’. Indeed the Liberal Party had to be relaunched in 1859 on a new basis, partly to take account of the pressure of newly organised sections of the working class.
Even so, working class support was not automatic. It was a Tory administration that passed the 1867 Reform Act, after an illegal mass workers’ protest in Hyde Park on 6 May 1867. It was a Tory administration too which, in 1875, repealed the hated Master and Servant laws, again as a result of pressure from organised workers.
The point being that whether it is a ruling class party in office or a capitalist workers’ party like Labour, independent working class action can force changes that were not previously on the agenda. And of course that is only the beginning.
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Keith Flett |
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