If Slim’s 14th was the ‘Forgotten Army’ of the second world war, then the trade union Right and its sponsored MPs are surely the ‘Forgotten Army’ of Labour’s civil war of the 1970s and 1980s. They were ‘old Labour’, but not in the sense which the term has taken on in recent years to mean the hard Left: indeed, this largely working-class group constituted the Bennites’ staunchest opponents. The old Labour Right tended to be patriotic and conservative on social issues, whilst remaining firmly wedded to the welfare state. This wing of Labour was allied to (but culturally had little in common with) those middle-class ‘revisionist’ intellectuals who are the true spiritual forebears of Blairism. Yet were it not for their holding action during the hard Left’s surge after Labour lost office in 1979, the party would have been irretrievably damaged. To mix military metaphors, this beleaguered band held the fort till the Kinnockite and Blairite cavalry arrived.
Dean Godson
Labour’s forgotten army
issue 27 March 2004
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