BRITISH TRADE UNIONS, THE LABOUR PARTY AND NEW LABOUR

Abstract

This dissertation explores the relationship between the British trade unions and the Labour Party and the cyclical changes in the overall distribution of power that strains their historical relationship. Drawing from a plethora of political theories, an account of the fundamental aspects of New Labour's Third Way politics is developed as a perspective from which, New Labour's novelty-or absence of it - is gauged. This important issue is responsible for the polarisation that emerged and which constitutes the perennial hallmark of the relationship. This led to bleak diagnoses about the imminent divorce between the two wings of the labour movement. However, contradicting all prophecies of doom, this dissertation determines that the relationship is infinitely more subtle and at time rather symbiotic, because based on mutual compromises and negotiations within an adverse and global neoliberal environment.