Labour Party (thing)

The present British Labour Party was formed in 1900 from various groups involved in the Labour Movement, such as the Trade Unions and the Fabian Society. It was pretty much the first Labour Party in the world and was based on Democratic Socialist beliefs. Labour Parties were soon formed in most of Britain's colonies, for example Canada, and more recently in countries such as Israel: all are based on the model of the British party.

The party's main beliefs are outlined by the following points:

• The party believes in representative government and working through the present constitution and institutions, as opposed to being revolutionary Socialists.
  
• A commitment to a Welfare State.
  
• In order to promote greater equality, there is an attempt to redistribute wealth.
  
• Lastly, but probably most essentially left wing, there should be a relatively large amount of state control of the economy. This is in both the sense that the state manipulates controls such as interest rates and in the sense that a certain proportion of employment is by the state. Hence, there is a desire to nationalise some industry while acknowledging that most of the economy should be market controlled.

In the 1983 General Election the Labour party, under the control of nearly its most far left members (Lead by Michael Foot), endured a very bad defeat. They then began 'reforming', and these reforms lead eventually to Tony Blair's massive election victory in 1997. The reforms (especially Blair's) meant moving more and more to the right of the political spectrum and are symbolised by the changing of Clause IV of the party's constitution. This is the part that declared a commitment to state ownership of industry, and its replacement with some other widely meaningless waffle indicates that the last point in the above list definately does not apply to 'new Labour'. 'New' is the oldest word in politics Tony Benn, 2001