ABSTRACT
How can we account for Labour’s transformation? Though the precise mix of factors was not the same in the fields of policy, organisation and strategy, in this chapter we propose to explore the underlying forces that contributed most substantially to the process. Most theories of party behaviour would interpret Labour’s metamorphosis into a more centrist, pragmatic, voteroriented and disciplined party as a functionally necessary response either to the pressure of evolutionary social trends or as the product of a party’s rational vote-maximising behaviour.1 However these theories tend, mistakenly, to assume that the political significance of environmental trends are self-evident and to assume that the key to the pursuit of an optimal vote-getting course is the ability of office-seeking leaders to overcome internal opposition from a more ideological or purposive-minded rank and file (see, for example, Strom, 1990; Schlesinger, 1984). The power resources it could command and the intensity of internal pressures and constraints it faced were indeed important factors determining the capacity of Labour’s leadership to procure change. But, as we shall see, the different components of the Party (whether left or right, leaders or rank and file) whose conduct is often explained by theoretical works in terms of simple motivational drives (Strom, 1990; Schlesinger, 1984) is more accurately understood as that of reflective beings who adjust their views, goals and conduct as they think about and react to events. So, too, were options always constrained by environmental forces, but equally it is misleading to treat them as independent causal agents which operate in an objective way; the extent to which the implications of these forces were selfevident and hence predetermined the Party’s response, varied
to a considerable degree, whilst the precise conclusions its leadership drew were always mediated by its frame of reference. As Ross has observed, ‘the nature of environmental challenge is never completely clear to partisan actors, since the evolution of the social world is always uncertain and open-ended, shaped in essential ways by the significance with which actors endow it in their various responses’ (Ross, 1992: 43-4). In the following discussion, we distinguish then between three types of determinants of change, external environmental factors (political and economic) the leadership’s frame of reference (the new strategic thinking) and internal Party considerations (the power structure, internal party alignments and party culture).
