Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock

The British Labour movement has always venerated the collective ideal: solidarity, mass endeavour, the common good. Yet paradoxically, it draws constant inspiration from the ideas and achievements of key individuals; it needs and reveres the charismatic figures of both past and present. From Hardie to Bevan to Kinnock, Benn and Scargill, Labour's progress or decline has always been bound up with its major personalities and the concept of leadership. In this book, Morgan provides a reassessment of these leaders and lieutenants throughout the nine decades of Labour's stormy history. In a gallery of vivid portraits, each based on original material and some also on personal acquaintance, he presents the parliamentary leaders, trade union officials, intellectuals, machine apparatchiks, prophets, planners and pioneers of four main chronological periods. "Labour People" aims to provide a new framework for understanding the history, ideas, strengths and limitations of the British Labour movement in the 20th century.