The Labour Party, Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939-1951

The Second World War was a watershed moment in foreign policy for the Labour Party in Britain. This book traces how the British democratic left set about the task of defining the principles of a radically new international system for the post-war world. The author shows how the experience of total war fundamentally reshaped the left's attitudes toward national identity and international policy.
Breaking with the traditional accounts that place Cold War tensions at the centre of the Attlee government's activities in the immediate postwar years, R. M. Douglas's book provides an entirely new framework for reassessing British foreign policy and left-wing concepts of national identity during the most turbulent mement of Britain's modern history.

R.M. Douglas is Assistant Professor of History, Colgate University, New York. He was awarded a PhD in History by Brown University in 1996. He is the author of Feminist Freikorps: The British Voluntary Women Police, 1914-1940 (1999) and Imperialism on Trial: International Oversight of Colonial Rule in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming)

Introduction1. 'Half a League Onward': The Labour Critique of the Nation-State, 1900-392. Dictatorship of the Secretariat: Transport House and the Rise of 'Muscular' Internationalism3. Internationalism or Anti-Nationalism?: Backbench and Beckroom Visions of World Order, 1939-454. Trustees for Humanity: Ministerial Planning for International Government, 1940-455. Utopia Deferred: The Attlee Adminitration and the United Nations, 1945-516. An Offer They Couldn't Refuse: Labour Internationalism and Colonial Trusteeship7. Socialism in One Country: The Failure of Labour Europeanism Conclusion