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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE QUESTION OF DECENTRALIZATION IS ONE WHICH THE British Labour Party has always found difficult to handle because of its inheritance of contradictory traditions in relation to the British state. Labour's roots in anti-authoritarian radicalism and in the British periphery make it sympathetic to decentralist demands and this has been reinforced by the need to compete electorally for support in the periphery. However, to gain power at Westminster it needs more than peripheral support; it needs to capture power at the centre and, in order to benefit the periphery, to strengthen the power of the centre. Ideologically, the party also possesses a socialist tradition which preaches the indivisibility of working-class interests and deplores nationalism and separatism.
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5 Hansard, 103, 13 January 1976, c. 291–2.
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7 The Scottish TUC had been established in 1897 but declined after the amalgamation of most of the individual Scottish unions and only developed a significant role during the 1960s. The Wales TUC, founded in 1973, rapidly sought, with some success, to acquire the status and influence of its Scottish counterpart.
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13 Report of the 1978 Annual Conference, Cardiff, Labour Party Wales, 1978.
14 J. Bulpitt, ‘Conservatism, Unionism and the Problem of Territorial Management’, paper given to Political Studies Association Work Group on United Kingdom Politics, University of Warwick, 1978.
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