Introduction

Abstract

The British Labour party has not exactly been neglected by historians. However, while history is about the past, it is essentially a product of the time in which it is written. Accordingly, interpretations of the party’s history have varied dramatically over the years, not just in the light of the evidence available and the personal and professional predilections of the historian involved, but also with reference to the state of the Labour party itself at the time in which the historian was writing. This book is no exception, and cannot claim, in that (or indeed any other) sense, to be any ‘better’ than what has gone before. What it attempts to do, however, is synthesize the current historiography, and to provide a view from the perspective of the mid-1990s on the history of the party as it approaches its centenary in the year 2000.