Historians of political history are fascinated by the rise and fall of political parties and, for twentieth-century Britain, most obviously the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberal Party. The following monograph analyses the dynamic shifts in this history across 25 years.

Keith Laybourn is the Diamond Jubilee Professor at the University of Huddersfield within the Division of History, where he has previously been Professor of Modern British History. He is also President of the Society for the Study of Labour History.

Introduction; 1. The Independent Labour Party and the Great War 1914-1918; 2. Should we stay or should we go? The Independent Labour Party and its new role 1918-1922; 3. Clifford Allen, the 'Red Clydesiders' and Socialism in Our Time, 1922-1928; 4. Conflict with the Labour Party and the Labour Government, and Disaffiliation, c 1928-1932: Reasoned debate or emotional suicide?; 5. 'The ILP flea': The rapid demise and factionalism of the Independent Labour Party in the early and mid-1930s; 6. A Mass of Contradictions? Internationals, Communism, the Labour Party and war; 7. Voices from the ranks, making the most of both moment and form: a distillation of the essence of the cultural and political life of ILP branches, federations, divisions, and their members, 1914-1939; Conclusion; Epilogue; Appendices; Bibliography; Index