ABSTRACT
The Labour party has had a long and troubled relationship with the field of defence policy, exacerbated by the course of events that have confronted Britain during its lifetime. Post-1945, the Labour Party, and the Labour movement as a whole, have had to confront a range of issues relating to the defence of the United Kingdom, and the projection of its military power overseas. These faults reflect and reinforce the divisions within the party, yet the debates over defence also demonstrate what the party perceives as being its common heritage – that of being an internationalist party. This chapter argues that the debate over defence within the Labour Party is principally a debate over what it means to be internationalist in terms of the apparatus and application of military power. In doing so, it takes after scholars such as Vickers. 1 It also adopts the argument made by Brivati in the first edition of this volume – that Labour’s divisions on the meaning of internationalism do not always neatly reflect the divisions that are explored elsewhere in this volume. 2
