Introduction

The Labour Party is a party of values, but often not of ideas. That is to say that those in the Labour Party have a set of unarticulated values which shape their approach to politics. But these values often remain little more than intuitive. They have, to borrow our terminology from Henry Drucker, an ethos but not a doctrine.1 Often these values shape not only the approach of individuals within the Labour Party, but also the Party as a whole. At crucial times in the history of the Party, this ethos, defined by Lesjek Kolakowski as ‘an obstinate will to erode by inches the conditions which produce avoidable suffering’,2 combined with a desire to achieve power, has been enough to see the Party through.