ABSTRACT
After losing the 1979 general election the Labour party entered its worst crisis since the split of 1931. The electoral record was particularly depressing: Labour lost four successive general elections-in 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992. In the 1983 election the party won a lower proportion of the popular vote than at any time since 1918. It also experienced a struggle for identity, threatened alternately by internal conflict and by external encroachment from the parties of the centre. Even the long-term sociological signs seemed unfavourable, with a declining working class and population movements that favoured the Conservatives.
