Labour Party (UK)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Labour Party was founded in 1900, born out of the trade union movement and the socialist societies of the 19th century. At its birth, it had no seats in government, no prime minister, and almost no presence in the national conversation. Within a quarter century it would form its first government. Within half a century it would build the National Health Service and reshape British society from the ground up. How does a political movement go from representing miners and factory workers to reshaping an entire country? And how does such a party survive its own civil wars, electoral catastrophes, and ideological revolutions long enough to do it more than once? Those are the questions this documentary will try to answer.

• 2. Trade Unions and the Vote

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  Hundreds of thousands of British workers gained voting rights under laws passed in 1867 and 1884, and it was that newly enfranchised working class that gave the labour movement its political opportunity. The trade unions that flourished across the industrial districts had their own networks and their own traditions, including the Methodist revival methods their leaders used to rally membership. Several small socialist organisations competed for influence over this base. The most consequential was the Fabian Society, an organisation of middle-class reformers who believed change should come through persuasion and policy rather than revolution. Keir Hardie worked to bridge the gaps between the unions and left-wing groups, including his own small Independent Labour Party. The 1901 Taff Vale legal decision, which effectively made most strikes illegal, gave that coalition its most urgent reason to unite. Without representation in Parliament, there was no way to reverse the ruling. The Trades Union Congress called a national conference in 1900 to create just such a vehicle, and from that meeting came the Labour Representation Committee, with Ramsay MacDonald as its secretary.

• 3. First Steps in Parliament

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  The Labour Representation Committee struck a secret deal with the Liberal Party before the 1906 general election: the two parties would not stand against each other. Voters rewarded the Liberals with a landslide, delivering 397 seats out of 664. The LRC won 29. Modest as that sounds, it was enough to rename themselves the Labour Party and elect Keir Hardie, narrowly, as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The first national conference, held in Belfast in 1907, wrestled immediately with a tension that would never fully disappear: where should final authority over party policy actually rest? In the annual conference? In Parliament? In the trade unions? Rather than resolve the question, the conference established a "conscience clause" allowing diversity of opinion inside the party. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act dramatically expanded the electorate, enfranchising all men and most women. That same year, Clause IV was added to Labour's constitution, committing the party to common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, began to collapse, and Labour took its place as the main opposition to the Conservatives.

• 4. MacDonald's Governments and the Great Betrayal

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  Ramsay MacDonald formed Labour's first government in 1924 after the Conservatives called for high tariffs and both Labour and the Liberals wanted free trade. It lasted ten months, with limited domestic reach. The Wheatley Housing Act expanded public housing, and MacDonald achieved more in foreign policy, helping broker the Dawes Plan to resolve German reparations. Four days before the 1924 election, the fake Zinoviev Letter appeared, supposedly a message from Moscow calling on British workers to rise up. The resulting anti-Communist backlash cost Labour seats even as its share of the popular vote rose. MacDonald returned to office after the 1929 election, when Labour for the first time became the largest party in the House of Commons with 287 seats. Then came the Great Depression. Unemployment doubled to 2.5 million by late 1930. Tax revenue fell. The deficit grew. MacDonald and his Chancellor Philip Snowden argued that the only path to an emergency loan from New York banks was to cut unemployment benefits by 10%. Most of the cabinet refused. On the 23rd of August, MacDonald went to King George V and resigned. The monarch, unexpectedly, insisted that MacDonald stay and form an all-party national government with the Conservatives. MacDonald agreed. The Labour Party felt profoundly betrayed and expelled both MacDonald and Snowden. In the 1931 election, Labour's vote fell from 8.0 million to 6.3 million and its seats collapsed from 287 to just 52, most of them in coal mining districts.

• 5. War, Welfare, and the NHS

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  Herbert Morrison led Labour to control of the London County Council for the first time in 1934, a bright note in an otherwise bleak period. By 1937, Labour had largely abandoned its pacifist position and came to oppose Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany, driven mainly by Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton. Labour entered the wartime coalition in May 1940, holding roughly a third of the seats, with Clement Attlee serving as Deputy Prime Minister and handling domestic affairs while Churchill was away. The Beveridge Report of 1942, written by the Liberal economist William Beveridge, laid out a vision of full employment and a comprehensive welfare state. Upon its publication it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. All major parties pledged to implement it, but the electorate trusted Labour most to follow through. When the coalition broke up in May 1945, the 1945 general election gave Labour 12 million votes, 50 percent of the total, and 393 seats. The government that followed was described as the most radical in British history. It nationalised the Bank of England, coal mining, steel, electricity, gas, and inland transport including railways. It built the welfare state from "cradle to grave" and created the National Health Service, providing publicly funded medical treatment for all. The Treasury leaned heavily on a 1946 American loan of 3.75 billion dollars at two percent interest, and on 2.694 billion dollars in Marshall Plan funds, as postwar austerity and rebuilding costs strained the economy. Labour also granted independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, and to Burma and Ceylon the following year. Ernest Bevin's diplomacy pushed Washington toward the anti-Communist coalition that launched the Cold War in 1947 and established NATO in 1949.

• 6. Decades of Division

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  Labour lost the 1951 election to Churchill's Conservatives despite receiving 13.9 million votes, the highest total the party had ever achieved. The innovations of the Attlee years were broadly accepted by the Conservatives and became part of the post-war consensus. The years in opposition, however, brought an ideological civil war between followers of Aneurin Bevan on the left and Hugh Gaitskell on the right. Gaitskell tried and failed to remove Clause IV from the party constitution after Labour's third consecutive defeat in the 1959 general election. He died suddenly in 1963, clearing the way for Harold Wilson. Under Wilson, Labour returned to government with a four-seat majority in 1964, then expanded to a majority of 96 in 1966. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins oversaw a sweeping set of social reforms: abolition of the death penalty, legalisation of abortion, loosening restrictions on homosexuality, abolition of theatre censorship, and legislation outlawing racial discrimination. The 1973 oil crisis dragged down both parties. Wilson won the February 1974 election with minority support from the Ulster Unionists, then called a second election in October and won a slim majority of three. Wilson suddenly announced his retirement in March 1976, and James Callaghan was elected leader, becoming Prime Minister on the 5th of April 1976. Callaghan governed through the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978-79, a period of major industrial disputes and widespread strikes. Minor parties joined the Conservatives to pass a no-confidence motion on the 28th of March 1979. The 1979 defeat began 18 years in opposition for Labour, the longest in its history.

• 7. New Labour's Rise and Fall

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  Argentina's invasion of a British possession in the Falklands War in spring 1982 transformed British politics and helped the Conservatives to a landslide in 1983. Labour's 1983 manifesto, titled "The New Hope for Britain", called for extensive nationalisation, centralised economic planning, unilateral nuclear disarmament, and withdrawal from the European Community. Political opponents mocked it as the "longest suicide note in history". A group of centrist MPs known as the "Gang of Four" quit the party to form the Social Democratic Party. Neil Kinnock replaced Michael Foot after the 1983 defeat, expelled the Trotskyist Militant tendency, and began modernising the party. John Smith succeeded Kinnock after the disappointing 1992 result, in which the Conservatives won despite Labour leading in the polls. Smith died suddenly in May 1994, and Tony Blair became leader. Blair removed Clause IV in 1995, ended block voting by union leaders, and built a political philosophy around Anthony Giddens' Third Way, attempting to synthesise capitalism and socialism. The 1997 general election gave Labour a parliamentary majority of 179, the largest in the party's history, and at the time the largest swing to a political party since 1945. Among Blair's early acts were introducing the national minimum wage, devolving power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and creating the Greater London Authority with its own elected mayor. In 2003, tax credits were introduced as government supplements for low-wage workers. Blair's support for the Iraq War severely damaged his political standing; the UN Secretary-General considered the war illegal. Labour won a third term in 2005 with a reduced majority of 66 and a popular vote of 35.2 percent. Gordon Brown replaced Blair in 2007 and coordinated the UK's response to the 2008 financial crisis. Party membership fell to 156,205 by the end of 2009, less than 40 percent of the 405,000 peak reached in 1997. Labour lost the 2010 election with 29.0 percent of the vote.

• 8. Corbyn, Starmer, and the 2024 Landslide

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  Ed Miliband led Labour into the 2015 election and lost 40 of its 41 Scottish seats to the Scottish National Party. His resignation opened a leadership contest in which Jeremy Corbyn, a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, received nominations from just 36 MPs, one more than the minimum required to stand. He was elected leader with 60 percent of the vote. One year after his victory, membership had grown to more than 500,000, making Labour the largest political party in Western Europe. Tensions over Brexit fractured the parliamentary party; after the 2016 referendum, 21 members of the Shadow Cabinet resigned, and Corbyn lost a no-confidence vote among Labour MPs by 172-40. He survived a subsequent membership vote with 62 percent support. The 2019 election saw Labour win its lowest number of seats since 1935. In 2020, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission found the party responsible for three Equality Act breaches relating to antisemitism. Keir Starmer was elected leader on the 4th of April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. He suspended Corbyn in October 2020 over Corbyn's response to the EHRC report, and Corbyn was formally expelled in 2024 after announcing his intention to stand as an independent candidate. Starmer repositioned Labour toward the political centre and set out five governing missions in 2023, covering economic growth, health, clean energy, crime, and education. In the 2024 general election, Labour won a majority of 174 with 33.7 percent of the popular vote, ending fourteen years of Conservative government. Starmer became Prime Minister on the 5th of July 2024, succeeding Rishi Sunak. Rachel Reeves was appointed Chancellor, the first woman to hold the office. The 2024 State Opening of Parliament outlined 39 pieces of legislation, including bills to renationalise the railways and devolve powers to areas of England. In February 2026, the Green Party gained the Gorton and Denton seat from Labour, a constituency Labour had held since 1931; BBC elections analyst John Curtice described the result as "seismic".