United Kingdom

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Conservative Decline and the Rise of New Labour

Thatcher’s Conservative successor as prime minister, John Major, inherited a badly divided party, a country that had grown tired of Conservative rule, and a major dispute over the European Community, which was moving toward greater integration. In 1991 the major European powers agreed on the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union (EU) and took the next steps toward the establishment of a single economic union. The treaty tied the exchange rates of European currencies together and proposed to create a single, unified currency, the euro, in 1999. It was proposed that monetary policy follow the lines that had already been adopted by Britain. However, other aspects of the EU’s social and economic policy were bitterly opposed by Thatcherite Conservatives as being too favorable toward labor and too expensive for the government.

Major worked hard to keep his own party together and to maintain the loyalty of key ministers. There was widespread expectation that Labour would return to power in 1992, but Major surprised the pollsters and many in his own party when the Conservatives won reelection. However, voters soon lost confidence in the Conservatives. In the following year the government’s approval rating sank to just 18 percent despite strong economic growth and a new peace initiative in Northern Ireland. Major secured parliamentary acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty by threatening his own party defectors with new elections. In 1995 Major took the calculated risk of resigning as chairman of the party. He ran again for the position, hoping to solidify his control of the Conservatives by showing that he was the only candidate with enough support to lead the party. Major was reelected, but a third of the party voted against him. The Conservatives were now fragmented beyond repair.

The loss of the 1992 elections had a profound impact on the Labour Party. For nearly a decade, Labour had been attempting to moderate its policies and distance itself from ties to the unions. It developed a new platform that would build upon Britain’s economic recovery, but that would also allow a more equitable distribution of the new wealth that was being created.

In 1994 the Labour Party elected Tony Blair, a young lawyer, as its leader. Under the title New Labour, Blair insisted that his party abandon its nearly century-old commitment to creating a socialist state. Blair benefited immediately from a series of scandals involving Conservative ministers and Members of Parliament. The public spectacle surrounding Prince Charles and Princess Diana, whose marital infidelities were openly discussed on national television and who were finally divorced in 1996, also hurt the Conservatives, who were strong supporters of the monarchy. Despite the continued economic boom—by 1996 inflation had nearly disappeared, unemployment was the lowest in Europe, and growth the highest—Labour led the Conservatives in polls by a significant margin.

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Labour’s Return to Power

The general elections of 1997 gave the Labour Party the greatest landslide victory of the century and its largest-ever majority of 179 seats in the Parliament. The Conservative Party suffered its worst electoral defeat of the century, and John Major resigned as party leader. As the United Kingdom’s youngest prime minister since the 19th century, Blair seemed to speak for a new generation and a new Britain.

Blair attempted to maintain his centrist approach to government against the demands of the traditional Labour constituencies for social justice and the redistribution of wealth. In a bold beginning, he made the Bank of England independent of government. This move was designed to prevent monetary policy from being affected by political issues. In addition, he supported Parliament’s decision to reconstitute the ancient parliaments of Scotland and Wales, giving them more regional control and political independence.

Blair also worked closely with Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern to revive the stalled peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. In April 1998 a new peace accord was signed that had strong backing from the British and Irish governments. Known as the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement, the accord authorized the creation of a semiautonomous assembly for Northern Ireland to replace direct rule of the province by the United Kingdom. The accord won overwhelming endorsement from voters in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and in December 1999 the United Kingdom formally transferred power to the new provincial assembly. However, an impasse between Catholic and Protestant groups over the pace of the Irish Republican Army’s disarmament forced the United Kingdom to suspend the assembly in February 2000. Provincial rule was restored in May, but the disarmament issue remained unresolved and a source of persistent political tension.

Under Blair, the United Kingdom continued to play an active role in the European Union (EU). However, Britain’s strong economy and monetary policy provided little incentive to accept the unified European currency, the euro. Blair’s government backed away from its commitment to a complete economic union with the other EU countries because of the cost. In addition, the economic union had always been unpopular with many Britons. In early 1998 Blair announced a wait-and-see attitude toward monetary integration, an attitude that he maintained even as 11 EU countries officially adopted the euro in 1999.

In another move to modernize and streamline the government, in November 1999 Blair made good on a campaign promise to strip many of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords of their right to sit and vote in Parliament. The House of Lords Act eliminated all but 92 of the more than 750 seats held by hereditary members of Parliament’s upper house.

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Labour’s Second Term

The Labour Party won its second consecutive landslide victory in the June 2001 general elections, gaining the largest majority ever held by a British party in its second term. The elections were an enormous victory for the Labour Party and the centrist policies of Blair, who won a second term as prime minister.

Soon after the elections the impasse over the pace of IRA disarmament again threatened to derail the peace process in Northern Ireland. The British government briefly suspended the provincial assembly on two more occasions in mid-2001 to prevent the government’s collapse. Blair welcomed an announcement by the IRA in October that it had begun to disarm, as did key Protestant leaders, and the assembly resumed operations the following month. However, continued conflict among Northern Ireland’s political parties led the British government to reimpose direct rule of the province in 2002. Following the suspension, Blair and Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern renewed negotiations in an effort to restore operations of the provincial assembly.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Blair proclaimed that the United Kingdom would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States in the effort to root out global terrorism. More than 100 British citizens were among the thousands of people who died in the attacks. Blair began an intensive round of diplomatic negotiations that took him to many European capitals and to a host of Muslim countries—including Egypt, Oman, and Pakistan—to build international support for action against the terrorists. In October the United Kingdom sent British forces to participate in the U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which was accused of harboring terrorists. Additional British troops were deployed to Afghanistan in December 2001 and March 2002.

As the conflict in Afghanistan subsided, the Labour government maintained its strong support for U.S foreign policy, including the U.S.-led war against the government of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Blair—following the lead of U.S. president George W. Bush—accused Hussein of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and of posing a serious threat to regional and global security, and he offered to contribute British military forces to a preemptive U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Blair’s position put him at odds with the leaders of many European countries, including France and Germany, who preferred to work through the United Nations (UN) to ensure Iraq’s disarmament. Blair also faced intense opposition from many Britons, including members of the Labour Party, who opposed military action against Iraq. In March 2003 British forces joined the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, despite a failure to secure a UN resolution explicitly sanctioning the action. The subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq opened Blair to criticism that he had led the United Kingdom to war on the basis of unreliable intelligence. See U.S.-Iraq War.

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Labour’s Third Term

Blair called a general election in May 2005. The Labour Party won its first-ever third consecutive victory, giving Blair a third term as prime minister. Labour won 356 seats, giving it a solid but much reduced majority in the 646-seat House of Commons. Analysts said Labour’s slimmer majority reflected voter discontent with Blair’s decision to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The Liberal Democrats, who opposed Britain’s involvement in the war, increased their representation in the House of Commons, winning 62 seats. The Conservatives, who waged an aggressive campaign, picked up 33 seats, bringing their total to 197.

On July 7, 2005, four bomb explosions struck London during the morning rush hour. The bombings targeted trains in the subway system known as the tube and a double-decker bus. The bombings appeared to be a coordinated attack, with three of them detonating almost simultaneously and the fourth nearly an hour later. Prime Minister Blair said it was clear the bombings were a terrorist attack timed to coincide with the opening of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Scotland. The bombings killed 56 people and wounded about 700 others.

London’s Metropolitan Police Force, commonly known as Scotland Yard, conducted an investigation that soon identified four British Muslim men as the suspected bombers. They were among those killed in the attacks. Three of the suspects were British nationals of Pakistani descent from West Yorkshire. Pakistani officials confirmed the men had visited Pakistan in 2004, but any connection between the visits and the bombers’ motivations remained unclear. The fourth suspect was a Jamaican-born resident from Buckinghamshire. Exactly two weeks after the July 7 bombings, London’s transportation system became the target of a second coordinated attempt to set off explosive devices. However, the bombs failed to explode, and there were no casualties.

Blair stepped down as prime minister in June 2007, and the Labour Party chose Gordon Brown as Blair’s successor. Blair’s resignation came at a time when Labour popularity was at a low ebb, in part because of the ongoing war in Iraq, in part because of unmet promises to reform and improve healthcare and education, and in part because of party scandals, including accusations that peerages were awarded in return for large contributions to the party. As chancellor of the exchequer in Blair’s government, Brown was noted for his prudent economic management under which Britain had enjoyed a decade of economic growth.

Blair enjoyed a final success before leaving office. In May 2007 longtime foes took office in a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland as self-rule was restored to the troubled region. Ian Paisley, leader of the predominantly Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, was sworn in as Northern Ireland’s first minister. Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander and chief negotiator for the largely Roman Catholic Sinn Fein, became deputy first minister. In 1998 Blair, along with Ireland’s prime minister Bertie Ahern, had brokered the peace accord that led to the power-sharing government. See also Northern Ireland Conflict.

Fifty years of Labour Party dominance ended in Scotland when the separatist Scottish Nationalist Party narrowly defeated Labour in 2007 parliamentary elections. One of the party’s main goals was to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, but its narrow margin of victory made such a decisive step unlikely in the near future.

The History section of this article was contributed by Mark Kishlansky. The remainder of the article was contributed by Henry G. Weisser.

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