The Popular Front and the Progressive Tradition

This study explains why the British Labour Party''s left supported the unsuccessful campaign for the formation of a Popular Front of the Labour Liberal and Communist parties in the late 1930s. The support of the Labour left for the campaign has often been seen as a result of Communist manipulation but here Dr. Blaazer explains it by reassessing a sixty-year period in the progressive tradition in British politics. He argues that the left emerged from that tradition and that its support for a Popular Front was entirely consistent with the practice and ideas of British progressives.