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Why London is Labour A History of
Metropolitan Politics, 1900-2020
Michael Tichelar
Routledge Studies in
British Politics Abingdon: Routledge,
2021. Hardcover. xx+309 p. ISBN 978-0367175238. £120
Reviewed by Roland
Quinault Institute of
Historical Research, University of London
The title of this book
gives a misleading impression that it is a polemical and partisan study. It is,
however, a scholarly, thorough and balanced account. Some of the ground has
been covered by other historians, including Owen Hatherley’s recent study, Red Metropolis : Socialism and the
Government of London. But Tichelar’s survey is based on original research
and makes use of an extensive range of sources, many not previously used. It
deserves a wide readership. Tichelar begins by
pointing out that before the First World War, the Labour movement in London only
secured an effective presence in the Metropolis by closely co-operating with
radical Liberals in a Progressive Alliance. That was an effective reforming
force in the 1890s and early Edwardian era. London was slow to develop an
independent Labour Party, partly because Liberal associations were more ready
than in parts of the North to accept working class candidates. In some East End
constituencies, moreover, the Conservatives attracted working-class support by
their opposition to alien immigration. At the 1906 general election Labour
candidates were only able to secure two marginal London constituencies: Deptford
and Woolwich. The London Labour Party was not established until 1914. The First World War,
however, led to an improvement in Labour’s position in London, which contrasted
with the divisions and decline of the Liberal Party. The war led to increased
government involvement with the economy and society and thus boosted support
for Labour’s advocacy of nationalisation and social welfare policies. But
support for industrial militancy was limited in London and it was Herbert
Morrison’s pacific brand of municipal socialism, which flourished in the 1930s
and in the decade after the Second World War. It was only in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that London became closely
associated with Left-wing militancy. The key event in that respect was the
capture of the Greater London Council by Ken Livingstone and the New Left in
1981. Labour’s success in the capital came despite the de-industrialisation of
London’s economy and the decline of the trade unions and the traditional
working classes. Its continued strength in London reflected middle-class
support for social liberalism at home and non-interventionism abroad. In the
twenty-first century Labour has benefitted from the growth of the BAME
population in London, which is now a majority in many parts of the capital. Tichelar ends his survey
by concluding that in the future, as in the past, Labour again needs to ally
with various interest groups, both in and out of London, in order to retain its
hegemony in the metropolis. He says little, however, about how that process
might be achieved. Even if it is, it may not secure Labour hegemony in the
nation as a whole. We now have a Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson,
who made his reputation as the Mayor of London yet who has consolidated his
ascendancy by successfully courting Labour strongholds in the North. Now, as in
the past, London’s politics are intimately bound up with those of the nation as
a whole.
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