Jack Straw

Split Personalities

Breaking the Mould?

By

Martin Robertson 192pp £8.95; £2.95 paper order from our bookshop

The Labour Party has given so many own-goals to the SDP this last twelve months that it is sometimes too easy to forget that the roots of the conflict go back far beyond the Wembley Conference in January and the Limehouse Declaration the next day. One-man one-vote, Tony Benn, mandatory reselection, and other Jesuitical niceties of Labour’s internal arguments may have been the occasion for the launch of the new party (and what a wonderful occasion, save for those of us on the other side), but they were certainly not its cause.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • From the Archive: Martyn Bedford on Ian McEwan's 'Atonement' ,
    • In 'Silenced Voices' reports the ongoing story of the human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been… ,
    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    Follow Us