WHAT THE LABOUR PARTY HAS DONE FOR BRITAIN

Brief précis of ‘What Labour has done for Britain’

By: Steve Moss

• FIRST Published: July 26, 2010

It is important to recall that the Labour Party in Britain developed from the trade union movements of the 19th and 20th centuries and that the first Labour Government, albeit a minority one, was elected in 1924.

However the early Labour administrations of  Ramsay MacDonald and  Clement Attlee were arguably considerably different in design and policies, from those of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown “New Labour” Governments which only recently lost office in 2010.

The MacDonald terms are seen as failures by many observers but MacDonald was the leader at the time of the “Great Depression” and history may judge him more harshly than he truly deserves, whereas a MORI poll in 2004 voted Labour’s Attlee as the best PM of the Twentieth century.

None-the-less, all of the Labour Governments are subject to criticism including the Harold Wilson Governments and more recently that of Tony Blair which started so well and with so much optimism but ended in disarray and disappointment.

What has Labour done for the British people?

Arguably, since Labour became a force in UK politics, Great Britain has fallen from grace as a world power. However, it can be argued that the working man, whom Labour originally claimed to represent, has a much improved lifestyle. 
Certainly under Attlee, the Health Service was introduced through his Health Secretary, Aneurin Bevan. Many would consider that this was their greatest achievement.

Also the Atlee Government of the late forties began a programme of Nationalisation and by 1951, approximately 20% of the British economy had been taken out of private ownership. It should be noted however that most of this has since been privatised again predominantly during the Margaret Thatcher (Conservative) years

Harold Wilson was the Labour Prime Minister in the sixties when England won the soccer World Cup!

But on a more serious note, many observers felt his leadership was dogged by Industrial disputes and unrest and the infamous devaluation of the pound. James Callaghan followed as Labour Prime Minister after the resignation of Wilson in 1976 but he lost to Margaret Thatcher of the Conservative Party at the General election of 1979. 

The Blair and Brown years (“New Labour”) commenced in 1997 but Labour was ousted from power in May 2010. During this time, Blair had taken Britain into an unpopular and possibly illegal war in Iraq and Britain’s debt had grown to monstrous proportions. This debt is now ranging between 903 billion pounds and  4 trillion pounds depending on which reports you read.  Gordon Brown, whilst Chancellor under Blair, and also later as Prime Minister, was criticised for growing this debt and for needlessly selling off Britain’s gold reserves when the price was extremely low.

The new Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government of Cameron & Clegg must be hoping they’ll do better!