Labours Old and New: The Parliamentary Right of the British Labour Party 1970-79 and the Roots of New Labour (Critical Labour Movement Studies)

This study attempts to understand the complex transition from so-called "Old Right" to "New Right" or "New Labour," and locates some of the roots of the latter in the complexity, tensions, and fragmentation of the former during the "lean" years of social democracy in the 1970s. The analysis addresses both the short- and long-term implications of the emerging ideological, organizational, and political complexity and divisions of the parliamentary Labour right and Labour revisionism, previously concealed within the loosely adhesive post-war framework of Keynesian reformist social democracy. It establishes the extent to which "New" Labour is a legatee of at least some elements of the disparate and discordant Labour right and tensions of social democratic revisionism in the 1970s.