Advanced search
Refine search
- NLR
- Sidecar
History in One Dimension
“Britain in 1914 was as near to revolution as it has ever been in the 20th century. A dispirited government, barely united and effetely led, groped its way between right-wing rebellion backed by military force in Ulster, and a militant syndicalist Labour movement freed from respectable leadership. Three . . .” read more
Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism
“In a voice choking with anger, Edward Thompson has denounced the historical and theoretical work on British society developed in this review. In twenty years of public life, no other group or individual has earned the kind of unprovoked attack he has launched over some fifty pages of . . .” read more
The Trap of an Incomes Policy
“When the Labour Party came to power last year, it was widely believed in the Labour movement that this was the beginning of a long period of socialist construction. Planning would replace the anarchy of the market and Britain would be forced to the left, both by the . . .” read more
Education: Programmes and Men
“British education is from a rational point of view grotesque, from a moral one intolerable, and from a human one tragic. Few would deny its stark inadequacy. Predictably, the Labour Party has at no time offered a global challenge to the present system. It has at most stood . . .” read more
Labour Imperialism
“Unique among governments of the Left, the Labour Government has done more than fail its friends: it has even disappointed its enemies. Disillusion over its foreign policy is almost universal. The liberal opponents of socialism have been criticizing its inert conservatism for some time; now even the pillars . . .” read more
The Labour Aristocracy
“Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson, in their articles recently published in nlr, have identified the third quarter of the 19th century as the period in which ‘corporativism’ gained its fatal grip on the British working class. The socialist revival of the 1880’s was an aberration which quickly . . .” read more
London and the Revolutionaries
“In a valedictory tribute to the first International in 1874, Engels considered that it had belonged to the period of the Second Empire, ‘when the oppression throughout Europe prescribed unity and abstention from all internal controversy for the labour movement, then just awakening. It was the moment when . . .” read more
The Resurgence of the Labour Party
“After 13 years, the biggest and most influential socialist party in the West has returned to power. What are the likely consequences of this event, in Britain and on the international scene? It is obvious to anyone who has followed at all closely the internal battles and evolution . . .” read more
Labouring Men
“Eric Hobsbawm’s latest book is unlikely to have the general appeal of The Age of Revolution. There are few generalizations; elaborate synthesis is not its purpose. Common themes remain implicit rather than stated. Each essay remains a discrete entity, the connections must be made by the reader. Again, . . .” read more
Condition of the Novel (Britain)
“I shall only speak for five minutes, since I am not sufficiently clever or educated to do so for longer. This is not just modesty though it may seem like that. I should add perhaps that several times during this conference it has occurred to me that if . . .” read more
The Left in the Fifties
“For a decade in Britain, under Conservative rule, there was a recognizable and active Left. Now at last there is a Labour Government. But there is no longer, in the same sense, a Left. This paradox must be the starting-point of any consideration of the tasks confronting socialists . . .” read more
Streaming and its Supporters
“In its 1960 Primary and secondary schools in England and Wales the Ministry of Education said this: ‘So far as possible children of the same age are assigned to the same class but, where numbers in an age-group are big enough to make up two or more classes, . . .” read more
Draft Proposal for Socialist Centres
“Surely when it was faced with a tacitly hostile Establishment in Whitehall and an actively hostile press in Fleet Street it (the Labour Government 1945–51) should have felt the need for a politically conscious and educated rank and file, such as was beginning to emerge in the . . .” read more
Workers University
“Surely when it was faced with a tacitly hostile Establishment in Whitehall and an actively hostile press in Fleet Street it (the Labour Government 1945–51) should have felt the need for a politically conscious and educated rank and file, such as was beginning to emerge in the . . .” read more
The Nature of the Labour Party (Part II)
“What is the main justification of Labourism, put forward by socialists at its birth and still advanced by its apologists? What is the cry that rings out at every Labour Party Conference, to repress all serious dissent and maintain the incredible system intact? That Labourism attains the unity . . .” read more
Divide and Conquer
“For three years, Britain lived in the shadow of one dominant fact: the bankruptcy of Conservatism. This was more than a political fact. It was social, cultural, personal: the end of a way of life, a distinctive conception of the world, the end of the peculiar type . . .” read more
The Nature of the Labour Party (Part I)
“The British Labour Party is obviously one of the greatest political forces of the capitalist world. With its six million and more members, it is by far the largest of social-democratic parties. The twelve million votes cast in its favour at the last General Election were the votes . . .” read more
The Limits of the Welfare State
“Social welfare or the social services, operating through agencies, institutions and programs outside the private market, are becoming more difficult to define in any society with any precision. As societies become more complex and specialized, so do systems of social welfare. Functionally, they reflect and respond to the . . .” read more
Critique of Wilsonism
“The relatively stable equilibrium, which defined British politics and society for a decade, has now broken down. The crisis of the traditional English hegemonic class, under whose rule British capitalism has in recent years so visibly declined, threatens the long supremacy of the Conservative Party. It would be . . .” read more
The Poisoned Apple
“It’s a saddening comment on our methods of financing research that a very important book about education should be essentially an after-thought to a public health survey. In his introduction to Dr J. W. B. Douglas’s book, The Home and the School, Professor Glass says, ‘The investigation . . . .” read more
The Confed Package
“The behaviour of the National Incomes Commission is beginning to reveal a somewhat subtle intelligence, which needs marking by the Labour Movement. This distinctly backhanded compliment is not intended as a form of thanks for the very substantial increase in university salaries of whichnic has rather unexpectedly . . .” read more
Southern Rhodesia
“Whenever there has been an attempt to raise the problem of the racist régime in Southern Rhodesia—whether in the United Nations, the House of Commons or elsewhere—the British Government has always sought to protect the régime by pleading first that it is a matter which concerns London . . .” read more
Reply to Anthony Wedgwood Benn
“It is a pity that I did not project the organizational work of the Society and its bureaus into the 1990’s and 1960’s (apart from the incorrect reference to pamphlets), thus giving the impression which, Anthony Wedgwood Benn has taken up, that my comments on page 81 covered . . .” read more
Hugh Gaitskell
“He had scarcely drawn his last breath, when the halo was stuck above his head. It was like some preposterous historical mistake. Who would have believed Hugh Gaitskell fit for such an exalted place in the national pantheon? Who, dredging through the speeches and few writings of this . . .” read more
Shop Stewards and Workers' Control
“The growing debate on the question of workers’ control seems to have reached an impasse for many socialists. Doctrinally, the progress made in recent years is considerable, but the problem of a strategy for the implementation of even the first and pioneer stages remains obscure.” read more
AEU Elections
“The whole course of the next Labour Government may be very considerably affected by the outcome of two trade union elections which are to take place at the beginning of July. The million-strong engineers’ union, the aeu, is choosing its two chief officers, secretary and president.” read more
Conscription
“The demand for an increase in the manpower and equipment of Western conventional forces in the European sector is now strong. Macnamara has been demanding that all nato countries should increase their conventional contribution in order to raise the nuclear threshold and provide the basis for a . . .” read more
Pensions, Equality and Socialism
“Discussions and proposals about pensions seem to increase in number and complexity. But for socialists the criterion by which the effectiveness of any set of proposals is to be judged would, at first sight, appear to be a simple one. Our society is characterized by gross inequalities in . . .” read more
An Economic Policy for Labour
“This article is written on certain assumptions. Explicitly these are that Labour comes to power in the latter half of 1964, and that it does not before the election add significantly to the sketch of its economic programme in Signposts for the Sixties and in recent speeches by . . .” read more
Origins of the Present Crisis
“Two commanding facts confront socialists in Britain today, dominating this moment of our history. British society is in the throes of a profound, pervasive but cryptic crisis, undramatic in appearance, but ubiquitous in its reverberations. As its immediate result, a Labour government seems imminent. So much everyone agrees. . . .” read more
Robbins and Newsom
“The inclusive nature of the British class structure ensures that all new status situations with potential elite positions are quickly absorbed into the system. In the past, this has usually meant a modification of the educational channels of access to the ruling class, which has been justified by . . .” read more
The British Political Elite
“Class-divided societies have almost always been governed politically by a small minority. In general, this chosen few is a small group even in relation to the ‘ruling class’ itself, in the Marxist sense, the class which possesses or controls the economic wealth of society through the institutions of . . .” read more
Who Buries Whom?
“Six months ago, the Spectator prematurely ran an obituary of New Left Review. . . . Fittingly, the Spectator’s recent metamorphosis, after a period of declining sales, has seen the funeral of its distinctive brand of fellow-travelling Conservatism, petty-radical demagogy, and Cold War cultural klatsch. The times have . . .” read more
Workers' Control
“Whenever the Labour movement is able to abandon the defensive postures which have regrettably come to seem ‘normal’ during long stretches of its history, and whenever, then, it begins to step over the borders of its allotted prerogatives, one begins to hear again the noise of argument about . . .” read more
Imperialist 'Anti-Imperialism'
“Paul Johnson’s article in The New Statesman of December 13th threatens to destroy, with a torrent of unemotional logic, the illusions that we cherish: illusions about ‘peace’, about ‘socialism’ and about ‘imperialism’. Let us look at the ‘realities’ of ‘imperialism’ with Johnson. He illuminates us twice. First, about . . .” read more