Movement politics, the electoral machine, and the ‘masses’: lessons from the early Labour Party

Renewal - ISSN 0968-5211
Volume 24 Number 3 (2016)

Movement politics, the electoral machine, and the ‘masses’: lessons from the early Labour Party
Jon Lawrence pages -

Abstract

There is nothing new about the problem of reconciling the idea of the left as a radical movement enacting new ways of living, and the idea of the left as a vote-winning machine, aiming to take power and enact gradual social reform. Labour needs to learn, now, from the ways in which that difficult balance was delicately achieved in the party’s early years. And activists must heed another warning from history made doubly relevant by the fall-out from the referendum: to have disdain for ‘the masses’ will always be fatal for our political project.

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To cite this article
Jon Lawrence (2016) Movement politics, the electoral machine, and the ‘masses’: lessons from the early Labour Party, Renewal, 24(3), -

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