Conclusion

Viewed against its historical background, Tony Blair’s successful bid in 1995 to rewrite Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution may with justification be regarded as the culmination of a revisionist project within the Party—concerned both with demoting public ownership and with endorsing the market economy—that was initiated in the 1950s. In a wider sense, too, Blair’s achievement may be seen from that perspective as the symbolic fulfilment of the desire of Labour revisionists and their successors clearly to establish the Party’s identity in the mainstream of European social democracy.