Archives

In August 1931 the Labour prime minister, Ramsay
MacDonald, crossed the floor of the
Commons with a handful of supporters to join with the
Tories and Liberals in forming a
National Government. This event was considered one of the
greatest betrayals in the
history of the Labour Party. More than sixty-five years later,
voices have once again been
raised about the need for a radical realignment of British
politics and the formation of
some kind of coalition. "If Blair is the Ramsay
MacDonald of the Nineties,"
warns the Observer, "he could be getting his National
Government in early as
well." (24/9/95). Tony Benn has also recently drawn
parallells between today and the
period of 1929-31 and the formation of the National
Government.

The recent rebellion against the Lbour government’s
decission to cut single parent benefit
and the growing disquiet about proposals to cut benefits
for the sick and disabled have
brought the welfare to work programme into sharp focus.
Mick Brooks looks at what is all
about, adn asks the important question: can it create real
jobs or is just another way of
massaging the statistics and reducing the social security
budget?

Labour has scored an historic landslide victory in the 1997 general election. The scale
of the Tory defeat is unparalleled in modern history. In the words of former Tory cabinet
minister, Douglas Hurd, "this is a meltdown." In fact meltdown is probably a
vast underestimation of the hole the Tories now find themselves in. Only the Duke of
Wellington has presided over a worse defeat for the Tories – and that was in 1832!

The Tories have finally been driven from office! Humiliated, they have scuttled from
power. It was an earth-shattering defeat that will open a new round of bitter civil war
over who will succeed John Major. Every worker who has lost their job, every young person
who has been denied a future, all those who have been driven into the ground for the past
18 years will be over the moon. The demise of the Tory government is being celebrated from
one end of the country to the other.