The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Growing out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century, the Labour Party has been described as a big tent, encompassing a diversity of ideological trends from strongly socialist to moderately social democratic.
Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931. Labour later served in the wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan.
The Labour Party was last in government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Links To Peel
Peel had been a traditional Labour supporter and was critical of especially Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 1997, Peel wrote a piece about his support for the Labour Party in The Guardian published on 16th April 1997, before the General Election, where he described himself as Old Labour, with views similar to left wing Labour politician Tony Benn:
"I shall vote Labour as I always have done. I would suppose I stand more on the Tony Benn side of things, since these things seem to be, well not sectarian exactly, but divided up. I'm definitely at the Tony Benn end of the spectrum. I've always voted Labour but shall we say I've never backed a winner. I live in a rural Suffolk constituency. I fear that I am very Old Labour. New Labour's very slick and glossy, like a lot of things these days."
Peel's public sympathies with left wingers included Bill Shankly, Liverpool's football manager, who made the comment that "The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That's how I see football, that's how I see life", which Peel would sometimes wear a red t-shirt with that quotation on television; Dave Nellist, who was expelled from the Labour Party after his support for the far left Militant tendency, where on his 07 December 1991 show, Peel proclaimed that 'David Nellist would get my vote if I lived in his constituency' and Labour politician Clare Short who supported the legalisation of cannabis in the UK which Peel mentioned her in the Guardian article:
"I am not a doper myself though I used to be in my hippie days, but even so I was very disappointed when Clare Short was slapped down for suggesting that we could have a proper, civilised debate about drugs. We live in a society where nobody dares say what we actually think. I'd love to see someone really sticking their heels in and standing up for a point of principle."
Peel later in the piece explained his father's support of the Conservative Party and how he wouldn't understand why his son supported Labour:
"My dad was a lifelong Tory voter - he wouldn't understand me voting Labour at all but the Tory party he supported is a completely different party from the one we've got now. The Tory party he voted for would probably be more left wing than the present Labour Party. They at least did understand that people needed looking after, even if it was only so they could work on their farms and so on."
Peel was supportive of Tony Blair's Labour victory in the 1997 General Election and had once campaign briefly for Labour MP John Prescott [1], but later expressed his disappointment with the government, especially Home Minister Jack Straw's decision not to reopen the inquiry into the deaths of Liverpool fans at Hillsborough and Blair's support for George W. Bush's Iraq war, where he answered a question from a student at a student union on what he would do, if he was in the same room with Bush:
"I'm a bit of a hippy and a peace loving man.....I'd cut the bastard's head off!" [2]
After Peel's death in 2004, many politicians in the House Of Commons from a range of parties paid tribute to the DJ by submitting Early Day Motions in praise of his contribution to British music and culture.
Shows Played
This is a list of recorded material from Labour politicians played on Peel's shows:
1993
- 04 June 1993: Derek Enright M.P.: ‘Eleanor Rigby in Latin (CD – The Exotic Beatles Part 1)’ (Exotica Records)
- 26 June 1993 (BFBS): Derek Enright M.P.: ‘Eleanor Rigby in Latin (CD – The Exotic Beatles Part 1)’ (Exotica Records)
- 09 July 1993: Derek Enright M.P.: ‘Eleanor Rigby in Latin (CD – The Exotic Beatles Part 1)’ (Exotica Records)
- 22 October 1993: Rupa Huq as one of the Foreign Language Announcers on Peel's show
- 30 October 1993: Rupa Huq as one of the Foreign Language Announcers on Peel's show