The Militant Tendency In The British Labour Party Is Not Purged.

Not to mention that a more hard left Labor probably could've risen during the Depression(I said could have. Some conditions probably would've had to change, but still.) More importantly, later on, its radical message may be able to propel it to new heights by being an appealing alternative for the poor.
 

Thande

Donor
Whilst I won't claim Labour would have won in 1983 without the Falklands, it certainly wasn't just the 'Longest Suicide Note in history' (part of vote losing content was Labours apparent appeasement of the Falklands issue) which led to the landslide in 1983. Without the war, Labour would have made a much stronger showing.

I don't agree. If you look at the opinion polling, the Falklands War basically made the Tories' poll ratings shoot through the roof and crippled the Alliance's until then soaring poll ratings, but did almost nothing to Labour's (in fact they went up for a while during the war). I tend to think without the war we'd have seen some sort of extremely messy hung parliament with everyone struggling to put together a government.
 
Not to mention that a more hard left Labor probably could've risen during the Depression(I said could have. Some conditions probably would've had to change, but still.) More importantly, later on, its radical message may be able to propel it to new heights by being an appealing alternative for the poor.

The First World War, and the economic slump in the UK that followed led to the rise of the Labour party and created a brief three party system, before they effectively replaced the Lib Dems.

If they hadn't torn themselves apart due to the depression, and almost destroyed the party, it's possible.
 
I don't agree. If you look at the opinion polling, the Falklands War basically made the Tories' poll ratings shoot through the roof and crippled the Alliance's until then soaring poll ratings, but did almost nothing to Labour's (in fact they went up for a while during the war). I tend to think without the war we'd have seen some sort of extremely messy hung parliament with everyone struggling to put together a government.

Of course nothing much has to happen to Labour as long as the Tories lose a significant proportion of their vote to the Alliance. I agree with your Hung Parliament conclusion though, possibly with the Alliance coming a narrow first in vote share but third in seats.
 

Thande

Donor
Of course nothing much has to happen to Labour as long as the Tories lose a significant proportion of their vote to the Alliance. I agree with your Hung Parliament conclusion though, possibly with the Alliance coming a narrow first in vote share but third in seats.

Yes indeed, that is plausible. I'm toying with the idea of an Alliance victory TL ("victory" in inverted commas) but they would face a massive uphill struggle due to FPTP even if they somehow kept their absurdly high poll ratings from 1981.

To put a bit more focus on Labour and the war, I think what you said earlier was not necessarily untrue but you need to bear in mind that the idea of Labour's supposed appeasement/opposition came about AFTER the war; during the war, at least in the early part, Foot backed the task force. Bizarrely, but with early-80s Labour's typical ability to shoot itself in the foot, the criticism of the war by people like Benn and Healey did not start UNTIL the war had become massively popular and a big vote-winner for the Tories.
 
Yes indeed, that is plausible. I'm toying with the idea of an Alliance victory TL ("victory" in inverted commas) but they would face a massive uphill struggle due to FPTP even if they somehow kept their absurdly high poll ratings from 1981.

Their handful of seats essentially makes it impossible for them to win a majority or even be the largest party, it's at least possible for them to gain a 100 or so seats in my opinion however, and have their choice of coalition. In Labours case they may have to change their leader of possibly accept Roy Jenkins as Prime Minister for a coalition, but it's likely they'd go with the Conservatives anyway providing that they offer the right amount of compromises and possibly remove Thatcher for someone more moderate.

Of course, the Alliance just needs to win the number of seats the Liberal Democrats have currently to create a hung parliament.

To put a bit more focus on Labour and the war, I think what you said earlier was not necessarily untrue but you need to bear in mind that the idea of Labour's supposed appeasement/opposition came about AFTER the war; during the war, at least in the early part, Foot backed the task force. Bizarrely, but with early-80s Labour's typical ability to shoot itself in the foot, the criticism of the war by people like Benn and Healey did not start UNTIL the war had become massively popular and a big vote-winner for the Tories.

Very true, although I believe it would have benefited Thatcher regardless, providing it's a similar victory to OTL.
 
I think that the hard-left building up much of a popular appeal in 1980s Britain is unlikely- not ASB, but pretty unlikely. The majority of voters in 1983 saw most of Britain's problems as being caused by hard-left ideology in the form of the extremist trade union movement of the period.

I'm not talking about 1980's Britain. What I'm saying is that the bubbles start to burst much later on, the Labour Party could have a revival of sorts.
 
The First World War, and the economic slump in the UK that followed led to the rise of the Labour party and created a brief three party system, before they effectively replaced the Lib Dems.

If they hadn't torn themselves apart due to the depression, and almost destroyed the party, it's possible.
Yet this is the same electorate that voted for the dull, boring, conservative National government en masse.

In the 20s people started voting for the Labour Party because it starting becoming respectable, because they distanced themselves from revolutionary upheaval and rebranded themselves as gradualist, moderate socialists (and even then it was a struggle - one of the reasons for the Conservative victory in 1924 was because of scaremongering that Labour would nationalise Post Office Savings Accounts). If Labour remains far left then it remains on the fringe - and that is all the more true for the 1980s when most people are wealthier and have more to lose.

By and large the British people just don't vote for radical parties. Thatcher never presented herself as a radical - she said that she was doing what was necessary to put Britain back on its feet - and in any case her ideology was not nearly as alien to most people as that of the hard left.
 
FletcherofSaltoon,
Many thanks for your compliment and fine words on my OP! Actually a fellow Irish man who was a Trot at the time of the expulsions and was duely purged from the British labour party, though not from the one in the ROI which had a much smaller militant wing purged, has now come to the conclusion that the Labour party in Britain was correct!
 
By and large the British people just don't vote for radical parties. Thatcher never presented herself as a radical - she said that she was doing what was necessary to put Britain back on its feet - and in any case her ideology was not nearly as alien to most people as that of the hard left.

I think this is the major point here to be considered. Plus, the Thatcher government really wasn't a total repudiation of the post-war consensus. Public spending on things like the NHS rose every year under the Thatcher premiership.

A lot of the modern perception of Thatcherism as being a total break from what came before is, IMHO, the result of a massively successful spin campaign pursued initially by the Thatcher government itself, and then by politicians of all parties for their own individual benefit. Of all the parties nowadays, it's ironically the Conservatives who probably suffer the most from this perception.
 

Thande

Donor
A lot of the modern perception of Thatcherism as being a total break from what came before is, IMHO, the result of a massively successful spin campaign pursued initially by the Thatcher government itself, and then by politicians of all parties for their own individual benefit. Of all the parties nowadays, it's ironically the Conservatives who probably suffer the most from this perception.

Indeed. Reading Thatcher's biography, she spent a crazy amount of time micromanaging nationally-owned public services like the BMC, you just can't picture someone like Tony Blair being personally involved with that level of public ownership.
 
Indeed. Reading Thatcher's biography, she spent a crazy amount of time micromanaging nationally-owned public services like the BMC, you just can't picture someone like Tony Blair being personally involved with that level of public ownership.

I think that sort of behaviour could partly be from Thatcher's personal nature- she comes across to me at least as, in essence, something of a busybody 1950s housewife.
 
It seems then that the Tories, given the right cirumstances here, ecome for some time the 'natural party of government'. That would change eventually, but when, and to what effect?
 
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