Labnet: Book ann.: When the Labor Party Dreams

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

From: Labourhistory.net 


Title: When the Labor Party Dreams
Subtitle: Book ann: Australian Scholarly Press
URL: http://labourhistory.net/news/i0904_5.php

Geoff Robinson, 'When the Labor Party Dreams: Class, politics and policy
in New South Wales 1930-32', Australian Scholarly Press, Melbourne,
2008.

My first book 'When the Labor Party Dreams; Class, politics and policy
in New South 1930-32' has recently been published by Australian
Scholarly Press. It examines one of the most dramatic periods in
Australian labour politics the 18 month state government of Labor
premier Jack Lang in New South Wales from November 1930 to May 1932. The
book goes beyond the preoccupation of much previous scholarship with
Lang's own charismatic person to consider how labour governed. I situate
the emergence of labour radicalism in the context of the 1914-18 war,
1920s class struggles and 1930s capitalist crisis but I also show how
the expression of this radicalism at the political level was necessarily
confined by political structures, in particular Labor's quest for an
electoral majority in a society in which the core unionised working
class remained an electoral minority and one in which working-class
electors were economically dependent on capitalists. I examine how
public policy was formed
  by the interaction of Labor ministers, labour activists and state
bureaucrats. For the first time in Australia I employ ecological
regression to estimate the electoral behaviour of different classes and
suggest that previous scholars have underestimated the role of
working-class electors for the right. I consider what lessons this
experience of labour governance in a time of capitalist crisis holds for
the contemporary labour movement.

'When the Labor Party Dreams' is available from Amazon and from:
Australian Scholarly Press
P.O. Box 299
Kew 3101
Victoria
AUSTRALIA
http://www.scholarly.info/purchase.htm

Dr Geoffrey Robinson
Lecturer in History & Politics
Faculty of Arts & Education
Deakin University
Pigdons Rd
Geelong
VIC 3217
Tel: +61 3 5227 1452
Fax: +61 3 5227 3380
Email: geoffrey.robinson at deakin.edu.au
Web: http://geoffrobinson.info
CRICOS Provider Code 00113B