The World of the Revisionist

It began in 1952 with the New Fabian Essays. It continued in 1956 with The Future of Socialism. By 1958 it was history: ‘The "revisionist" period is over; that is, the business of giving the Labour Party a policy attuned to mid-twentieth-century conditions is more or less complete.’1 In the darkness that had followed the 1952 defeat there had been socialists who had preached a return to the old faith of class and property. By 1958 they had been routed: the ‘pristine semi-Marxist analysis of capitalism has given way to a subtle revisionist theory of the post-capitalist society’, Crosland announced in 1958, and the result was, relevance having triumphed over tradition, that ‘revisionism … holds the field’.2 It is easy with hindsight to accuse Crosland in 1958 of having been too quick to close the book: as Bryan Gould has correctly observed, ‘there are never any final battles in politics’.3 It cannot be denied, however, that major battles were fought in those historic Opposition years that were marked by the electoral defeats of 1951 (Conservative majority 26) and 1955 (Conservative majority 67) that led to the debacle of 1959 (Conservative majority 107) but eventually to the turning of the tide in 1964 (Labour majority 4). Major battles were fought - and the Gaitskellites emerged with the conviction that theirs was a victory that would last.