• DOI:10.1080/13619460008581603
• Corpus ID: 154861968

‘Wilsonism’ reconsidered: Labour party revisionism 1952–64

@article{Favretto2000WilsonismRL,
  title={‘Wilsonism’ reconsidered: Labour party revisionism 1952–64},
  author={Ilaria Favretto},
  journal={Contemporary British History},
  year={2000},
  volume={14},
  pages={54 - 80}
}

• Ilaria Favretto
• Published 1 December 2000
• History
• Contemporary British History

The focus of this article is on Labour's revisionism in the years 1952–1964; its scope is a reassessment of the intellectual debate preceding the Wilson years and of some consolidated assumptions on the theoretical premises which lay behind Labour's return to power in 1964. The main argument is that ‘Wilsonism’, understood as a set of policies, was something more than a number of rhetorical devices developed to put an end to internal party power‐struggles, and, as it is usually presented, the result of a compromise between Croslandite revisionism and traditionalism; in fact, the ‘modern socialism’ championed by the Centre‐Left Technocratic Group, which rallied around Wilson, profoundly differed both from the kind of Keynesian socialism of centre‐right revisionists and the traditional socialism of the ‘Old Left’ (Bevanites).