ABSTRACT
By the early 1960s, a clear connection was being established at senior levels within the Labour Party between the changes in British society, noted in the previous chapter, and the consequent need to revitalise and rejuvenate Labour’s membership. In this context, ‘modernisation’ was not solely about updating or revising Labour’s policies – vital though this was, as well as sometimes divisive within the party – but also about modernising the party’s image vis-à-vis the electorate. Following the 1959 defeat, it was widely acknowledged by Labour strategists that the party needed to adopt a more diverse range of parliamentary candidates, so that these more closely reflected an apparently more middle-class, professional society. With a steady diminution in the number of manual workers employed in heavy industry, and a concomitant increase in the number of administrators, technicians, scientists and sundry other white-collar workers, it was emphasised that ‘if we are truly to remain a national movement of all “workers by hand and brain”, the new modes of work and social feeling must be reflected in the composition of our membership’. Failure to ensure this would not only mean that Labour’s membership and candidates might not prove electorally appealing to the burgeoning white-collar socio-occupational strata, but also that ‘their special viewpoints will be muffled for lack of advocates within the Labour Party’ (Labour Party Archives, RD.194/January 1962). This perspective echoed the findings of a survey conducted for the party, following the 1959 defeat, by Mark Abrams, and published (with Richard Rose) in Must Labour Lose? (Abrams and Rose, 1960). One of the key findings was that
Labour Party supporters see the Conservatives as exercising a much greater attraction for ambitious people, middle class people, young people, office workers, and scientists. . . . The image of the Labour Party, held by both its supporters and its non-supporters, is one which is increasingly obsolete in terms of contemporary Britain.
