The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman

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Richard Crossman's three volumes of Ministerial Diaries provided a unique and historical view of Cabinet government at work in a twentieth-century democracy. They also became the subject of a legal cause célèbre, which was to have significant effect on future interpretations of the British Constitution.

But, by the time he began recording his million-and-a-half words as a Cabinet Minister, following the return of a Labour Government in 1964, Crossman had established already the diarist's habit with no fewer than twelve years' practice recording weekly the parliamentary scene as he saw it from the Opposition backbenches. In lighter mood, then, these diaries record the conduct of the Labour Party after its fall from office in October 1951 at the end of six years as the most zealously reforming government the country had ever known.

Crossman describes with humour and insight the constant battle of those twelve years — between the leaders and the rank-and-file, left and right, trade unionists and 'intellectuals'. The Party argued endlessly about personalities as well as over policy. The issues that provoked the fiercest rows were not always those of national importance, such as defence, German rearmament, Suez and the H-bomb; as much ferocity could be, and was, aroused by Labour's internal search for the right road to socialism — particularly over nationalization and revising the Party constitution.