Volume 24, Number 17 · October 27, 1977
The Shadow of the Great Betrayal
By Noel Annan
Ramsay MacDonald
by David Marquand
Rowman and Littlefield, 903 pp., $25.00
A British political party has no chance of success if its leadership appears to be weak. The Liberals after Gladstone's retirement, the Tories under Balfour, the Labour Party under Gaitskell, harassed as he was by an ever-growing alliance of left-wingers and fellow travelers, all languished in the wilderness because too many of the faithful felt unable to rally with enthusiasm behind the leadership. Yet in the Labour movement loyalty to the leadership, based as it was on the knowledge that unquestioning solidarity alone brought results in trade union disputes, became part of the mythology of the party. Despite the contending groups in 1900 when the party began to form, despite the bitter struggle between the syndicalist and revolutionary wing and the social democratic groups between 1911 and 1926 (the year of the General Strike), appeals at party conferences to loyalty prevented the party from splintering if only because the delegates knew that the British electoral system does not reward politicians who put unyielding adherence to principles before the compromises which hold all large parties together.
Review, 2711 words
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