Members

Founder and Retired member

• Dr Robert W. Dyson

Publication details

Cohen, Gidon (2007). The Failure of a Dream: The Independent Labour Party from disaffiliation to World War II. London: Tauris Academic Studies.

• Publication type: Books: authored
• ISSN/ISBN: 9781845113001
• Keywords: British politics, Left, 1930's.
• View online: Online version
• Durham research online: DRO record

Author(s) from Durham

• Dr Gidon Cohen

Abstract

The Independent Labour Party began the 1930s as a
significant force in dispute with the Labour Party proper.
In 1932, as these conflicts led to a split, the party had
more MPs in Scotland than the larger organisation and a
membership five times that of the British Communist
Party. In the first major study of the Independent Labour
Party after disaffiliation from the mainstream party in
1932, Gidon Cohen draws on archival material from
Moscow and newly released police and secret service
papers as well as other major British archives. In doing so
he explores the culture and politics of an organisation
which he argues, contrary to received scholarship,
remained an important component of the British left
throughout the 1930s.

Centre for the History of Political Thought