ABSTRACT
The Labour movement was taken aback by the election result and its unexpected outcome. The mythology of the Labour movement had not prepared it for the eventuality of the two 'bourgeois capitalist' parties urbanely standing aside to make way for a Labour Government they were alleged to be united in wanting to prevent. The obstacles to making Labour a truly national movement capable of sustaining a broadly-based alternative Government was considerable, and it would be premature to assume that the obstacles had all been overcome by the 1960's. Its organization was extremely cumbersome. The Parliamentary Labour Party, however, consisted solely of those persons within the movement who had contrived to get themselves adopted by a constituency party and then elected to Parliament. Labour's dependence on trade unionism was inescapable because without it it would have had little or no money, and because without a powerful sectional interest behind it a political party has no true basis.
