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This book considers the most electorally successful political party in Spain, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) which was in government for two of the three decades since it won office under Felipe González in 1982. Providing rich historical background, the book's main focus is on the period since General Franco's death in 1975 and charts Spain's modernisation under the PSOE, with a particular focus on the role played by European integration in this process. Covering events including the 2011 general election, the book is one of the most up-to-date works available in English and will be of great interest to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of Spanish and European studies.
9 The French Socialist Party (2008–13): not revolutionaries, not luminaries, just ‘normal’ guys amidst the tempest Christophe Bouillaud Introduction With François Hollande’s election to the presidency on 6 May 2012, the Parti socialiste (PS) seized national power after ten years in opposition in the middle of an economic crisis presented by French media as being by far the worst the western world has known since the Great Crisis of the 1930s. Seizing power in such a desperate situation was not something new for the French socialists. In 1936, the direct
This book explores the role of the far left in British history from the mid-1950s until the present. It highlights the impact made by the far left on British politics and society. The book first looks at particular strands of the far left in Britain since the 1950s. It then looks at various issues and social movements such as Trotskyism, anti-revisionism and anarchism, that the left engaged (or did not engage) with, such as women's liberation, gay liberation, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and anti-fascism. The book focuses on how the wider British left, in the Labour Party and amongst the intelligentsia, encountered Trotskyism between the 1930s and 1960s. The Socialist Party (SP) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) traditions have proven to be the most durable and high profile of all of Britain's competing Trotskyist tendencies. Their opponents in the International Marxist Group and the Socialist Labour League/Workers' Revolutionary Party (SLL/WRP) each met limited success and influence in the labour movement and wider social movements. The SWP and Militant/SP outlived the 'official' Communist Party of Great Britain and from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day have continued to influence labour movement and wider politics, albeit episodically. The book is concerned with providing an overview of their development, dating from the end of the Second World War to the onset of the 2009 economic crisis.
The Portuguese Revolution of 1974-1975 was a critical juncture in the second half of the European twentieth century. It was the first in a series of authoritarian collapses that would bring the whole of western and central Europe into liberal democracy, and the so-called Revolution of the Carnations was also many other things. This book is the first in-depth study of the widest urban movement of the European post-war period, an event that shook the balance of Cold War politics by threatening the possibility of revolution in Western Europe. The Socialist Party (PS) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) set about dismantling the idea that there had popular movement embodying the possibility of different society. A significant policy shift in the field of housing lay the foundations for a change in the relations and meanings of urban citizenship. Popular mobilisation over the summer and autumn of 1974 was key in undermining a project of limited liberalisation and strengthening the hand of those in Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and civilian parties. After the April 1975 elections, the conflicting claims between revolutionary and electoral legitimacy, between the street and the ballot box, created an increasingly polarised atmosphere, and claims of imminent coups and plots were discussed. The Lisbon urban social movement did not disappear on 25 November 1975. Exploring the origins, trajectory and demise of the urban movement in Lisbon has been a way to question and revisit the role of popular collective actors in Portugal's revolution and transition to democracy.
5 Montredon to Mitterrand: socialism, syndicalism and the south (1976–84) The bullets that cut down Emile Pouytès and Commander Le Goff at Montredon were a very tragic and very human blow to the fragile unity of the winegrowers’ movement. The deaths challenged the CRAV’s legitimacy and its modes of operation. In the decade after 1976, the compact between winegrowers, local elites and the Socialist party in the Midi slowly disintegrated as a new development strategy supplanted the Défense movement’s rebellious appeal.1 The government and local officials set out
impacts were twofold. Initially the left of centre Socialist Party (PS), which was in government at the time, was blamed for the crisis and lost public support, in favour of a centre right pro-austerity coalition. Yet, four years later, discontent had grown and the electoral results in October 2015 enabled a convergence between centre left and radical left parties for the first time in the recent history of Portuguese democracy. This enabled the PS to govern – a government often named geringonça , or ‘contraption’, initially an ironic designation that was to become an
4 Marching separately, seldom together The political history of two principal trends in British Trotskyism, 1945–2009 Phil Burton-Cartledge Marching separately, seldom together The Socialist Party (SP) (formerly the Militant Tendency) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) traditions have proven to be the most durable and high profile of all of Britain’s competing Trotskyist tendencies. Their opponents in the International Marxist Group and the Socialist Labour League/Workers’ Revolutionary Party (SLL/WRP) each met limited success and influence in the labour
in 1932 stood at 296,507 and its vote 1,040,673 (Thermanius 1933: 192, 194). This would give a member–voter ratio of approximately 1–3. 4. The Social Democrats’ readiness to forge cross-class alliances The electoral rise of Scandinavian social democracy was facilitated by the co-operation it entered into with the non-socialist parties to achieve universal suffrage, whilst its electoral expansion – as well as consolidation as a ruling party – in the 1930s was facilitated by renewed co-operation with the nonsocialists, particularly the Agrarians, with a view to
tax evaders were as heroic as the resistance groups during the German occupation in World War II and that people suffering from tax disease ought to consult a tax doctor, just as they consult a dentist if they have toothache. (Quoted in Harmel and Svåsand 1993: 82) When not adopted as a candidate by any of the non-socialist parties, Glistrup had announced the decision to found his own party in a restaurant in Copen hagen on 22 August 1972. The party’s name and records were bought for a fairly nominal sum from its former leader, who had been attempting to form a
through parliamentary action, rather than by revolution, as the basis for a socialist party. He believed that Marx’s predictions of revolution were simply wrong. Working-class movements, such as trade unions, offered a means to achieve real gains for workers without revolution or some form of ‘proletarian dictatorship’. Despite Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws the SDP’s vote continued to grow, thus showing that a democratic means