[PDF] British Labour And The Cold War eBook

Author : Peter Weiler
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 29,4 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780804714648

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A critical examination of the labour government and trades Union Congress in the immediate postwar period, this book argues that the Cold War was not just a traditional conflict between states but also an attempt to contain the growth of radical working-class movements at home and abroad. These radical movements, stimulated by the Second World War and its aftermath, seemed to policymakers within the Labour Party and the TUC to threaten British interests. The author contends that the Labour government never seriously considered following a socialist foreign policy, but instead sought to shape political developments throughout the world in ways most conductive to maintaining Britain's traditional economic and imperial interests. The government was able to follow established policies abroad and increasingly at home at least in part because British trade union leaders supported its attempts to prevent radicals and communists from coming to power in trade union movements inside Britain and throughout the world. In so doing, the trade union movement significantly extended its links with the state, in particular by cooperating with it in the sphere of foreign and colonial labour policy.

Author : Denis MacShane
Publisher :
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 18,41 MB
Release : 1992
Category : History
ISBN :

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This is the first major study of trade unions in the launch of the Cold War in the 1940s. Using unpublished archival material from Europe and the United States, MacShane challenges existing interpretations of international labor's role in the Cold War. He argues that European traditions and olitical differences were more important than American interventions in determining labor's attitudes to international problems after the Second World War.

Author : John Saville
Publisher : Verso
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 27,93 MB
Release : 1993-12-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780860914563

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Drawing on substantial new research, Saville focuses on the role of Ernest Bevin and his differences with Clement Attlee, particularly with regard to the Middle East. Countering the widely held view that Bevin sought accommodation with the Soviet Union, he reveals Labour's Foreign Secretary as a fervent ideologue, wholly in agreement with the deep-seated anti-Sovietism of his permanent officials.

Author : Darren G Lilleker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 50,96 MB
Release : 2004-11-26
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0857710168

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Who were the British MPs sympathetic to the Soviets - the 'crypto-communists' 'left-wing gadflys', the 'neo-Stalinist left' so derided by fellow politicians, journalists, historians and the public? These Labour MPs, fingered as 'Soviet spies' who developed links with post-war Russia, were seen as potentially anti-Western actors in the Cold War. Against the Cold War examines the careers and motives of MPs like Tom Driberg and Ian Mikardo who developed ideological links with the Soviet Union and whose ideas influenced Labour's left-wing. Although radical and sympathetic to Communist ideals, they remained principled socialists, and were ready to exercise Trotsky's 'right to alight'- to oppose and even abandon Soviet links for democratic socialism.

Author : Geraint Hughes
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 13,95 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 086193332X

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Review: "Harold Wilson's Cold War analyses the Labour government's efforts to promote East-West detente and to improve Anglo-Soviet relations from 1964 to 1970." "Geraint Hughes challenges the caricature of Harold Wilson's rigid subservience to America, and shows how, as Prime Minister, he proposed to develop closer contacts with the Soviet leadership, and to foster co-operation on arms control, conflict resolution in Vietnam, and East-West trade."--Jacket.

Author : John Callaghan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 24,3 MB
Release : 2007-04-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1134540167

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This book provides a penetrating new study of the Labour Party’s thinking on international relations, which probes the past, present and future of the party’s approach to the international stage. The foreign policy of the Labour Party is not only neglected in most histories of the party, it is also often considered in isolation from the party’s origins, evolution and major domestic preoccupations. Yet nothing has been more divisive and more controversial in Labour’s history than the party’s foreign and defence policies and their relationship to its domestic programme. Much more has turned on this than the generation of tempestuous conference debates. Labour’s credentials as a credible prospect for Governmental office were thought to depend on a responsible approach to foreign and defence policy. Its exclusion from office was often said to stem from a failure to meet this test, as in the 1950s. The composition of Labour Cabinets was powerfully influenced by foreign and defence considerations, as was the centralization of power and decision-making within Labour Governments. The domestic achievements and failures of these periods in office were inextricably connected to international questions. The Labour Party and Foreign Policy is recommended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in British politics and European history.

Author : James Klugmann
Publisher :
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 19,86 MB
Release : 1968
Category : History
ISBN :

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This is Volume Five of a comprehensive history of the British Communist Party in the twentieth century, and covers the period from 1951 to 1968. The cold war was at its most intense during this period, and it was also the time of the dramas of 1956 - Khruschev's critique of Stalin, the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis. Then in the 1960s the opening up of new possibilities for radicalism began, leading up to the events of May 1968. The impact of these events on the Party is extensively analysed, drawing on evidence from detailed archival research and many interviews with former activists. Topics covered include: the nature of the Party and its Soviet 'ecology'; its responses to the events of 1956; its involvement in anti-colonial struggles; its positions on international and economic issues and perspectives on class struggle; its relationship with the Labour Party and the trade unions; and the forces for change in the Party in the 1960s. Times change, and John Callaghan's book differs from previous volumes in this series in a number of ways - most obviously, in that it was written after the demise of the Soviet Union and the Party, and thus with much better access to archives and the views of former party members. In addition, it is organised thematically rather than chronologically, and is written from a more critical position than previous titles in the series. It shares with its predecessors, however, the idea that a history of the CPGB has some importance, not least for the light it casts on some of the key issues of the twentieth century.

Author : Paul Corthorn
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 15,80 MB
Release : 2007-10-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0857711113

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The legacy of Blair and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan continue to loom large for the Labour Party, whether in opposition or in government, giving rise to fierce debates over Labour's attitude and posture towards the wider world. This book considers the idea of Labour's international identity, examining how world events and Labour's response to them have helped to shape ideology, political culture and domestic agendas from the 1920s until the Iraq War. It provides a fascinating and original exploration of Labour both on the world stage and at home - from the influence of the Soviet Union on political thought in the interwar years to the international student revolts of the 1960s, and from media in the 1990s to Kosovo and New Labour Interventionism. This is essential reading for scholars of modern British politics, as well as anyone interested in the motivations and influences behind the Labour Party's actions on the world stage.