A Sealed Tomb: The Labour Left's 'Wilderness Years', 1988-2015

虽然对工党左派的重点研究和更广泛的历史都集中在20世纪80年代初左派权力的顶峰，但其后来的分裂和边缘化尚未得到充分的探讨，超出了最高度的党派账户，往往完全被忽视，而有利于逐步“现代化”的叙事历史。特别是，后一种解释塑造了工党的大众记忆，以及工党的大部分历史编纂。这个哲学博士将致力于弥补文学中的这一明显差距，以充分探索工党左派从1988年到2015年所谓的政治和组织孤立的“荒野岁月”。虽然这将有助于人们越来越感兴趣地了解杰里米·科尔宾等人物的“起源”，但这一时期的工党左派本身就具有重要意义，因为它是对边缘化政治运动中不断变化的战略和思想的研究。虽然受到政治和组织孤立文化的影响，但有证据表明，“荒野岁月”不仅仅是一段政治冬眠期。虽然与媒体的关注和领导层隔绝，但工党左翼仍然是一股充满活力、经常创新的知识分子和活动家力量，随着党的内部动力和现代英国的更广泛背景沿着不断发展和变化。我的研究将旨在研究这一活动，以及工党左翼如何不仅能够作为一个小的政治网络生存，而且还实现了一些成功抵抗的关键时刻。本研究还将探讨左派不仅与领导层和政府，甚至与党本身的关系，特别是关于左派是否可以通过一个新的社会党在工党内部或外部继续存在的频繁辩论。与此同时，意识形态创新的领域不仅涉及国家的高度政治问题，还涉及性别、种族等个人认同、跨国团结以及地区、城镇或选区层面的地方网络建设。重点放在“空间”和地方团结的作用将证明特别说明如何关键的政治行为体和组织仍然活跃在这一时期，并有助于促进学术兴趣在现代英国历史的一个最近不断增长的领域。社会主义运动小组的作用将作为一个说明性的案例研究如何边缘化的国会议员组织自己，以及其他内部和外部左翼团体，如基层联盟和指南针的意识形态和竞选工作。这些研究不仅将通过各种书面资料丰富地了解各个群体不断变化的战略，而且还将阐明往往不同的政治群体如何形成团结网络。了解这些团体如何组织和竞选，以及他们如何看待自己的政治战略和目标，也将有助于分析后来的工党左翼如何借鉴过去的经验以及先前存在的想法，网络和战略。我的研究将借鉴这一时期的个人账户，日记和回忆录，沿着广泛的档案研究，特别是NEC会议记录，尼尔·金诺克和伯尼·格兰特等关键人物的档案，沿着对内部选举和投票结果的研究，我相信这将证明党不断变化的内部动态。我的目标是补充这一点与口述历史采访的杰出人物的左从该时期，包括马克塞登，尼尔劳森，乔恩克鲁达斯和利兹戴维斯。对这些迄今未被探索的、可能更坦率的个人视角的考察，提供了对现代英国左翼的无与伦比的理解，以及对记忆在塑造对工党经常有争议的历史的理解方面的重要性的探索。

While focused studies and broader histories of the Labour Left have focused on the zenith of the Left's power in the early 1980s, its later fragmentation and marginalisation has yet to be fully explored beyond the most highly partisan of accounts, often ignored completely in favour of narrative histories of gradual "modernisation". In particular, this latter interpretation has shaped both the popular memory of the Labour Party, and much of Labour's historiography. This DPhil will aim to redress this conspicuous gap in the literature to fully explore Labour Left's so-called "wilderness years" of political and organisational isolation from 1988 to 2015. While this will aid growing interest in understanding the "origins" of figures such as Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Left in this period is significant in its own right as a study of changing strategies and ideas within a marginalised political movement. While subjected to a culture of political and organisational isolation, evidence suggests the "wilderness years" was more than a period of political hibernation. While isolated both from media attention and the leadership, the Labour Left remained a dynamic and often innovative intellectual and activist force, which continued to develop and change along with the party's internal dynamics, and the wider context of modern Britain. My research will aim to examine this activity, and how the Labour Left was not only able to survive as a small political network, but also achieve some key moments of successful resistance. This study will also explore the Left's relation not only to the leadership and government, but even the party itself, in particular the frequent debates over whether the Left could continue within Labour or outside of it through a new Socialist Party. Meanwhile, areas of ideological innovation will not only concern the high-political issues of the state but also concerns of personal identity such as gender and race, and trans-national solidarities as well as the construction of local networks at regional, town, or constituency-level. A focus on the role of "space" and local solidarities will prove particularly illustrative on how key political actors and organisations remained active during this period and help to contribute to a recently growing area of scholarly interest in modern British history. The role of the Socialist Campaign Group will act as an illustrative case study of how marginalised MPs organised themselves, alongside the ideological and campaigning work of other internal and external left-wing groups such as the Grassroots Alliance and Compass. Such studies will not only provide a rich insight into the changing strategies of the respective groups through diverse written sources, but also illuminate how networks of solidarity were formed with often disparate political groups. Understanding both how these groups organised and campaigned as well as how they perceived their own political strategies and goals will also prove illuminating in analysing how the later Labour Left drew on past experiences as well as pre-existing ideas, networks and strategies. My research will draw both on the personal accounts, diaries and memoirs of the period along with extensive archival research, particularly NEC minutes, the archives of key individuals such as Neil Kinnock and Bernie Grant, along with research into the results of internal elections and votes, which I believe will prove illuminating of the party's changing internal-dynamics. I aim to supplement this with oral history interviews with prominent figures of the Left from the period, including Mark Seddon, Neal Lawson, Jon Cruddas and Liz Davies. An examination of these hitherto unexplored and potentially more candid personal perspective of the period offer an unrivalled understanding of the modern British Left, as well as an exploration of the importance of memory in shaping understandings of Labour's frequently contested history.