The Failure of a Dream: The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II

by Gidon Cohen

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 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.


1. Introduction
2. The Split
3. Membership and Organisation
4. Electoral Arenas
5. Divided We Internal Politics
6. Intellectuals, Ideas and Policy
7. Communism and the National Unemployed Workers' Movement
8. The Labour and the Unions
9. Pacifism, Wars and the Internationals
10. Conclusion

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2007