Manchester University Press Labour and the Left in the 1980s

Why did the British Labour Party and the wider left fail to defeat Thatcherism in the 1980s? Has the time come to view the 1980s left in new ways? This pioneering volume is the first to explore progressive politics in the decade that profoundly shaped the way we live today. This was the era of Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Tony Benn, the Militant Tendency, the miners’ strike, The Boys from the Blackstuff and tabloid attacks on the 'loony left'. The political failures of this period led Labour to spend the years from 1979 to 1997 in the political wilderness and forced the party to remake itself in the form of Tony Blair's New Labour. However, this volume argues that the 1980s was in fact a very creative time for the left, which championed feminism, racial equality, environmentalism and gay rights. Causes that were once associated with the counter-culture became mainstream. If the right won the economic arguments, the left helped set the social and moral agenda of the twenty-first century. Leading scholars illuminate the conflicts over ideas, leadership and political identity as neo-liberalism challenged the social democratic order. The book contains a foreword by iconic political activist Peter Tatchell, who reflects on the struggles of those years and their relevance for politics today. Labour and the left in the 1980s will be read by all interested in modern British politics and history and by anyone concerned with the future of progressive ways of living.