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

虽然工党左翼的重点研究和更广泛的历史集中在20世纪80年代初左翼权力的顶峰，但其后来的分裂和边缘化尚未得到充分探讨，超出了最具党派色彩的描述，往往被完全忽视，有利于渐进的“现代化”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。本博士学位将致力于弥补这一明显的文献空白，以充分探索工党左翼从1988年到2015年所谓的政治和组织孤立的“荒野年”。虽然这将有助于人们对了解杰里米·科尔宾等人物的“起源”越来越感兴趣，但这一时期的工党左翼本身就具有重要意义，因为它研究了边缘化政治运动中不断变化的策略和思想。虽然受到政治和组织隔离文化的影响，但有证据表明，“荒野年”不仅仅是一段政治冬眠期。虽然与媒体和领导层隔绝，但工党左翼仍然是一支充满活力、经常创新的知识分子和激进分子力量，随着工党内部动态和现代英国更广泛的背景不断发展和变化。我的研究将旨在研究这种活动，以及工党左翼如何不仅能够作为一个小型政治网络生存下来，而且还能实现一些成功抵抗的关键时刻。本研究还将探讨左翼不仅与领导和政府的关系，甚至与政党本身的关系，特别是关于左翼是否可以通过一个新的社会主义党在工党内部或外部继续存在的频繁辩论。与此同时，意识形态创新领域不仅涉及国家的高级政治问题，而且还涉及个人身份，如性别和种族，跨国团结以及区域，城镇或选区一级的地方网络建设。对“空间”和地方团结作用的关注将特别说明关键的政治行动者和组织在这一时期如何保持活跃，并有助于为最近不断增长的英国现代史学术兴趣领域做出贡献。社会主义运动小组的角色将作为一个说明性的案例研究，与其他内部和外部左翼团体（如草根联盟和指南针）的意识形态和竞选工作一起，被边缘化的议员是如何组织起来的。这些研究不仅将通过不同的书面资料提供对各自群体不断变化的策略的丰富见解，而且还将阐明如何与通常不同的政治群体形成团结网络。了解这些团体是如何组织和竞选的，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吸取过去的经验以及先前存在的思想、网络和战略。我的研究将利用这一时期的个人记录、日记和回忆录，以及广泛的档案研究，特别是NEC会议纪要，尼尔·金诺克和伯尼·格兰特等关键人物的档案，以及对内部选举和投票结果的研究，我相信这将证明该党不断变化的内部动态具有启发意义。我的目标是通过对那个时期左翼杰出人物的口述历史采访来补充这一点，包括马克·塞登、尼尔·劳森、乔恩·克鲁达斯和利兹·戴维斯。对这些迄今为止未被探索的、可能更坦率的个人观点的考察，提供了对现代英国左派无与伦比的理解，以及对记忆在塑造对工党经常争议的历史的理解中的重要性的探索。

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.