ABSTRACT
Spokesmen for the Conservative Party proudly proclaim the heritage and pedigree of their party. The Labour Party has and needs a strong sense of its own past and of the past of the Labour movement which produced and sustains it. This sense of its past is so central to its ethos that it plays a crucial role in defining what the party is about to those in it. Labour’s project is the most sensitive and hotly contested issue in its ideology. The history of the British Labour movement from the late nineteenth century had shown how division over doctrine could ruin a party. The Social Democratic Federation had suffered schism, and schism rendered it ineffective. Since Labour’s ethos emanates from a specific past one may ask what the implications of this tie are for the party. Labour is more closely tied to its trade unionists than any other major party in any major country.
