Once More Moving On: Social Movements, Political Representation and the Left

Abstract

A paradox highlights the problem facing the radical left in Britain today. Historically the British working class movement has been one of Europe's strongest: the earliest, the most densely organised, one of the most militant and associated throughout its history with a rich variety of wider democratic movements and co-operative experiments. Yet the British state has remained one of the most undemocratic in Europe, retaining close protective bonds with the financial heart of British capitalism. It is as if some resilient, invisible membrane has separated the labour and other democratic social movements from unsettling the real centres of economic power in Britain. No doubt the membrane has many constituents but one is certainly the highly mediated, indirect way in which extra-parliamentary radicalism is represented - but in effect diffused - by the Labour Party. The membrane is held in place by the majoritarian, first-past-the-post electoral system which makes it very difficult for minorities on the left, reflecting radical social forces, to thrive and gain a voice of their own.