Origin Story

• The Labour Party – Part Three – One Battle After Another

  Welcome to the third and final part of the story of the Labour Party, from Keir Hardie to Keir Starmer. Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979 initiates Labour’s longest period in opposition and its deepest identity crisis: Bennites to the left, SDP defectors to the right. After Michael Foot leads Labour to its worst vote share since 1918, Neil Kinnock takes on the long and painful job of rebuilding the party in the face of Thatcherism. Following another two defeats, the task of modernisation passes to John Smith but his sudden death enables Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to go even further, determined to transform the party and erase the trauma of 1983. Labour’s spectacular 1997 landslide seems to confirm the agenda of New Labour and the nebulous political project known as the Third Way. But its many achievements are limited by its caution, duelling egos and ideological vagueness. Is Labour still a socialist party in any meaningful way or has it disowned too much of its heritage? By the time Brown becomes PM in 2007, New Labour is exhausted and rudderless. History repeats itself: another heavy defeat, another pivot to the left. When Jeremy Corbyn replaces Ed Miliband, the left is in charge for the first time in 80 years — the revenge of the Bennites — but Labour’s fortunes are hostage to the chaos of Brexit. An impressive advance in 2017 turns into a crushing humiliation in 2019. New leader Keir Starmer mounts a speedy recovery but soon finds himself desperately unpopular: accused of squandering a remarkable comeback by lacking vision and waging an unprecedented war against the left. With new challengers to the left and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK threatening to form the most right-wing government in British history, the stakes are once again existentially high. How did Thatcherism cast Labour into the wilderness? How did Neil Kinnock make the party viable again? Did Tony Blair ever develop a coherent theory of progressive politics? Could Jeremy Corbyn ever have succeeded? Why do Labour’s left and right keep making the same mistakes? What can Labour’s history tell us about Keir Starmer’s current problems? And is it still a party of democratic socialism? • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list Histories • Andy Beckett – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies (2024) • Jon Cruddas – A Century of Labour (2024) • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey – Centrism: The Story of an Idea (2024) • Simon Hannah – A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left: Second Edition (2022) • Owen Jones – This Land: The Struggle for the Left (2020) • David Marquand – The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair: Second Edition (1999) • John O’Farrell – Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter (1998) • Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire - Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn (2020) • Martin Pugh – Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (2010) • Andrew Rawnsley – Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour (2001) ... Reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• The Labour Party – Part Two – War and Peace

  Welcome back to Origin Story season eight: The Story of Socialism. This week, we continue the tale of the UK Labour Party, from Keir Hardie to Keir Starmer. It’s 1940 and Clement Attlee’s Labour has joined the wartime coalition with Winston Churchill’s Tories, making it seem for the first time like a natural party of government and paving the way for its surprise 1945 landslide. Despite enormous obstacles at home and abroad, Attlee’s ageing all-stars lay the foundations of post-war Britain, from the NHS to NATO. How did they pull it off? Losing office in 1951 kicks off the wilderness years. Civil war rages between followers of the left-wing titan Nye Bevan and the revisionist Hugh Gaitskell as Labour struggles to find a purpose in a decade of growing affluence and relative consensus. A new socialism of liberty and equality battles with the old socialism of nationalisation while fresh divisions open up over Europe and the Cold War. After 13 years, the shrewd unifier Harold Wilson leads Labour back to power and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins leads a liberalising revolution in British life. But is social democracy still socialism? If 1970 is an unexpected defeat, then 1974 is an unexpected victory —and a very mixed blessing. Wilson and his successor James Callaghan preside over five years of crisis and precarity as the post-war consensus cracks and crumbles. The born-again socialist Tony Benn and the liberal Europhile Roy Jenkins represent two poles of an increasingly fractious party. When Margaret Thatcher sweeps to power in 1979, Labour returns to the wilderness and faces its worst identity crisis yet. Why was the Second World War the making of the Labour Party? Who, or what, killed the post-war consensus? How did Labour governments navigate one crisis after another? How did its theory of socialism evolve to meet a changing electorate? And why does every Labour government leave the left disappointed? • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list Histories and Biographies • Andy Beckett – When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) • Andy Beckett – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies (2024) • John Bew – Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2016) • John Campbell – Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life (2015) • Jon Cruddas – A Century of Labour (2024) • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey – Centrism: The Story of an Idea (2024) • Michael Foot – Aneurin Bevan: A Biography: Volume Two: 1945-1960 (1966) • Simon Hannah – A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left: Second Edition (2022) • Jam Tomorrow podcast, written and presented by Ros Taylor (2023-24) • Roy Jenkins – A Life at the Centre (1992) • David Marquand – The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair: Second Edition (1999) • Ben Pimlott – Harold Wilson (1993) • Martin Pugh – Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (2010) • Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson (2019) • Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn (2021) • Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (1996) • Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party: Fourth Edition (2015) ... reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• The Labour Party – Part One – A Very British Socialism

  Welcome back to Origin Story season eight: The Story of Socialism. This week, in the year of its 125th anniversary, we begin the tale of the UK Labour Party, from Keir Hardie to Keir Starmer. “The British Labour Party is an expression of the Socialist movement adapted to British conditions,” wrote Clement Attlee. But British socialism meant different things to different people. When the Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1900, its socialism was a tense alliance of Marxists and liberals, hard-nosed trade unionists and Fabian intellectuals, puritans and hedonists, pragmatists and romantics. From the start, they were arguing about everything from alcohol to war. It was the job of two remarkable Scotsmen to keep it united: the eccentric idealist Keir Hardie and the canny, charismatic Ramsay MacDonald. The social upheaval of the First World War turned Labour into a mass party which supplanted the Liberals as the main opposition to the Tories and took office for the first time in 1924. MacDonald’s minority government lasted for just over eight months but it proved that Labour could be a respectable party of government and not reckless “wild men” under the spell of Moscow. MacDonald returned to Number 10 in 1929 but his second government was capsized by the Wall Street Crash and ended two years later in rupture, betrayal and trauma. While some Labour MPs joined MacDonald’s National Government, most lost their seats, leaving the surviving leadership troika of George Lansbury, Clement Attlee and Stafford Cripps to rebuild the party amid the turmoil of the Great Depression and rising fascism. The challenge was existential. In 1935, Lansbury was felled by his untimely pacifism and Attlee took the job that nobody predicted he would hold for the next 20 years. We conclude, as tradition dictates, on the eve of the Second World War: the cataclysm that will be the making of the Labour Party. Why did British socialism break from Marx? What different traditions did Labour pull together and how did Hardie and MacDonald make them cohere? How did MacDonald go from hero to villain? Has the Labour Party always been at war with itself? And — pub quiz! — which four Labour leaders had the first name James? • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • See Origin Story LIVE at The Tabernacle on November the 13th. Buy tickets here. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list Histories and Biographies • John Bew – Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2016) • Jon Cruddas – A Century of Labour (2024) • Simon Hannah – A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left: Second Edition (2022) • Bob Holman – Keir Hardie: Labour’s Greatest Hero? (2010) • David Marquand – The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair: Second Edition (1999) • Henry Pelling – The Origins of the Labour Party 1880-1900: Second Edition (1965) • Martin Pugh – Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (2010) • Donald Sassoon – One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (1996) • Andrew Thorpe – A History of the British Labour Party: Fourth Edition (2015) • David Torrance – The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain’s First Labour Government (2024) ... reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – Part Three – Terror

  • See Origin Story LIVE at The Tabernacle on Thur Nov 13. ⁠Buy tickets here. Welcome to the third and final part of the story of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin: Terror. It’s 1929 and the age of Stalin has begun. His mission to revolutionise the Soviet economy succeeds at the price of millions of lives: kulaks are murdered en masse while Ukrainians starve in the man-made famine known as the Holodomor. In 1936 he commences the purge known as the Great Terror, which radiates out from the highest levels of the Communist Party to ravage the entire country. Nobody is safe in Stalin’s nightmare state. While communists abroad excuse or actively endorse Stalin’s atrocities, some socialists and ex-communists recognise that this is the antithesis of what socialism should be and sound the alarm. Stalin has no fiercer critic than Trotsky, but his former rival flounders in exile and meets a sticky end. The USSR’s international reputation is complicated by the rise of Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War. Is Stalin Hitler’s worst enemy, his gullible enabler or his unlikely friend? Turns out it’s all three. Stalin’s murderous paranoia fails him just once: he ignores warnings that Hitler will break the Nazi-Soviet Pact and launch an invasion in 1941. The war claims as many as 27 million Soviet lives. Victorious, Stalin sets about strangling hopes of post-war liberalisation and taking control of Eastern Europe — the Cold War begins. Trapped in his cult of personality and endless suspicions, he seems set to launch a new, antisemitic purge in 1953 until death mercifully intervenes. He leaves behind a powerful but traumatised country, a very long way from the hopes of 1917. How much of what the USSR became can be pinned on Stalin’s disastrous personality? What was it like to live and die under his regime? What was the relationship between economics and mass murder? How did the Second World War transform Stalin? How similar were Stalinism and Nazism, the two faces of totalitarianism? And why did so many western communists become accomplices to terror? • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list • Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002) • Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (2003) • Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (2012) • Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2017) • Franz Borkenau, The Communist International (1938) • Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment: Fortieth Anniversary Edition (2008, first published 1968) • The Death of Stalin, co-written and directed by Armando Iannucci (2017) • Ian Dunt, How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for Its Survival (2020) • Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) • Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (2007) • Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism (1977) • Christopher Hitchens, Arguably: Essays (2011) • Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2008) • Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (2017) • Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1940) • Dorian Lynskey, The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s • Nineteen Eighty-Four (2019) • Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (1938) • Mr Jones, written by Andrea Chalupa and directed by Agnieszka Holland (2019) • George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) • George Orwell, ‘The Freedom of the Press’ (1945, first published 1972) • Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (2000) ... Reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – Part Two – Power

  • See Origin Story LIVE at The Tabernacle, London on Thur Nov 13. ⁠Buy tickets here. Welcome back to Origin Story: The Story of Socialism as we resume the story of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin in part two: Power. It’s 1917. The Bolsheviks have seized control of Russia, the world’s first socialist state, but they’re a small party in a very big country, besieged by enemies at home and abroad. No sooner has it extricated itself from the First World War than Russia is plunged into an existentially perilous civil war between the Reds and the Tsarist Whites and, well, everybody else.  The war accelerates Russia's transformation into a dictatorship, with one-party rule, a secret police force and a ruthless disregard for human life. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 confirms that the dictatorship of the proletariat will brook no dissent. Meanwhile in Germany, revolutionary hopes are crushed with the murder of German communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. As other communist uprisings also fail, Trotsky’s dream of world revolution fades and Stalin’s vision of “socialism in one country” prevails. As Lenin’s health collapses, a succession battle between Stalin, Trotsky and other leading Bolsheviks begins that will last for most of the decade. It ends in 1929 with Stalin triumphant, Trotsky in exile, the dead Lenin a kind of deity, and the USSR’s age of terror ready to begin. Could the progress of the revolution have been different without the brutal chaos of the Civil War or was tyranny always part of the plan? How did Stalin outwit his rivals to take over from Lenin, and how did Trotsky blow it? Why didn’t communist revolutions succeed anywhere else but Russia? How was the new regime perceived by socialists around the world? And did Rosa Luxemburg, more than anyone, represent the humane, democratic socialism that might have been? • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list • Franz Borkenau, The Communist International (1938) • Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921 (1954) • Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (1959) • Ian Dunt, How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for Its Survival (2020) • Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) • Elzbieta Ettinger, Rosa Luxemburg: A Life (1988) • Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) • Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (2017) • Dorian Lynskey, The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (2019) • Reds, co-written and directed by Warren Beatty (1981) • Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) • Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (2000) • Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (2004) • Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (2009) • Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Study of Bolshevism (1939) • Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism: Against Kautsky (1920) • Dimitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (1994) • H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows (1920) • Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1921) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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