This article offers a comprehensive survey of relations between the labour movement, socialists and official eugenic opinion from the late Victorian era to the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, it discusses both how the left regarded eugenics and the attempts by the Eugenics Society to gather support from this tendency. Although some socialists wished to utilize eugenics and some eugenists were friendly to labour, it is concluded that only peripheral labour organizations were truly attracted to the doctrine. The article provides a much more nuanced account than does the weight of past scholarship.
This article treats three themes: how Labour planned and fought the 1929 election, to whom it appealed and the results. It draws upon the MacDonald Papers, National Executive Committee minutes, the Daily Herald, London News, Labour sources in book form, electoral materials and secondary sources. It discusses the party's tactics and strategy for progress, funding and influences on its campaign. Such influences included the 1927 Trade Union Act, the Cheltenham agreement (1927) with the Co‐operative Party and the appearance of the Liberal counter‐cyclical economics proposals. The article argues that Labour's perceived base was wider than expected. Women and the rural classes, including farmers, were emphasized as target groups. Labour thought the key to a majority lay in the countryside. An investigation of the results from 1929 seems to imply this was not strictly the case, but there was a number of such constituencies which Labour was close to gaining. The Liberal revival helped Labour in the rural areas. Central planning was a light touch in 1929. It did, however, involve setting the framework for the campaign and making policy on all of the matters referred to above.
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