Clause IV

The original version of Clause IV was drafted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in November 1917,[1] and adopted by the party in 1918.

[3] The Manchester Guardian heralded it as showing "the Birth of a Socialist Party", stating that: The changes of machinery are not revolutionary, but they are significant.

[4] In December 1944, the Labour Party adopted a policy of "public ownership"[5] and won a clear endorsement for its policies – the destruction of the "evil giants" of want, ignorance, squalour, disease and idleness (identified by William Beveridge in the Beveridge Report)[6]– in the post-war election victory of 1945 which brought Clement Attlee to power.

Further industries swiftly followed: civil aviation in 1946, and railways and telecommunications in 1947, along with the creation of the National Coal Board, which was responsible for supplying 90% of the UK's energy needs.

1946 also saw the establishment of the National Health Service, which came into force in July 1948; railways, canals, road haulage and electricity were all also nationalised in 1948.

[10] Blair put forward a case for re-defining socialism in terms of a set of values which were constant, while the policies needed to achieve them would have to account for a changing society.

[3]This version of Clause IV currently appears[update] on the back of individual Labour Party membership cards today.

Presentationally, the abandonment of the socialist principles of the original Clause IV represented a break with Labour's past and, specifically, a break with its 1983 Manifesto (dubbed "the longest suicide note in history", by Gerald Kaufman, one of the party's MPs),[11] in which greater state ownership was proposed.