The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: From Attlee to Corbyn
Martin R Beveridge
Merlin Press £14.99

IT IS easy to forget in more pessimistic moments — and Keir Starmer is banking on us doing so — that despite Labour’s recent forced march back towards the right, since 2015 the party has been living through one of the most ideologically fecund revivals in its history.

While the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn by his successor and parliamentary partners in crime sowed the disunity that Labour’s right then employed as the chicken-and-egg narrative to unseat him, the former leader achieved something remarkable.

Corbyn was able to restore social democratic ideals and ethical socialist principles, invigorated by the participatory enthusiasm of 21st-century social movements, to the heart of Labour’s identity — something Starmer has been singularly unwilling to build upon.

This was energising, forging a “new politics” according to author Martin Beveridge that sought radical change through “an exciting array of new and old democratic forms,” and helps to explain the strong fraternal bond that formed between Corbyn and the membership.

And in case we find ourselves confusing electability with ideological integrity, as the right is wont to, it had a stunning, concrete outcome at the polls: Labour’s achievement in the 2017 election, when its 12.9 million votes signalled the remarkable possibilities of this new politics for Britain.

As Beveridge shows, the originality of the ideas advanced by socialist thinkers supporting the Corbyn left — in areas from worker ownership and public banks to land trusts and municipal energy companies — is thrown into sharper relief by understanding the history of the beliefs that motivated earlier generations within the Labour movement.

This book, then, is primarily a history of the diverse ways the “socialist ideal” has been understood since the 1930s, when depictions of working-class life formed a backdrop to Labour’s emergent agenda. 

Efforts since to resolve ambiguity over policy and practice have translated into a succession of ideological conflicts that have redefined the idea of socialism.

The author begins with influential notions about the day-to-day struggles of workers expressed in the interwar novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, then traces the complex and often contradictory understanding of “socialism” within the party thereafter.

From Attlee to Corbyn, he demonstrates that — in a key difference with Marxist thought — the “socialist ideal” within Labour has not developed out of its own internal logic but has been reshaped through social struggles and historical events absorbed into its political culture.

As a result, this book is a good tonic for socialists feeling gloomy about Labour’s future, under its current leadership or beyond, because it reminds them of the rich, radical traditions to which they belong that have never disappeared and are endlessly being revived.