Labour Party

The Labour Party was one of the two dominant political parties (the other being the Conservative Party) in the United Kingdom during the 20th (TV: Victory of the Daleks) and 21st centuries. (TV: Aliens of London, The Sound of Drums) Several of its leaders had held the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, including Clement Attlee (AUDIO: Living History) Harold Wilson, (AUDIO: State of Emergency) James Callaghan, (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure) and Tony Blair. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) Former Labour party member Harriet Jones also became prime minister when leading another party. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Stolen Earth) Attlee also held the office of Deputy Prime Minister during World War II. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

History

Amy Pond noted that Winston Churchill was a member of the Labour Party, Liberal Party and the Conservative Party during his career. (WC: Amy's History Hunt) Clement Attlee defeated him in the general election which followed World War II. (AUDIO: Living History, Churchill Victorious)

In October 1963, the Labour leader Harold Wilson made a speech in favour of science technology at a Scarborough conference of his party. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

In 1964, Labour won the UK general election and Wilson succeeded Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister. James Callaghan was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the immediate aftermath of the election, General Peters led a military coup against Wilson's government. However, it was defeated by the Intrusion Countermeasures Group. (AUDIO: State of Emergency)

In 1965, Richard Crossman was another member of the Labour government. He served as the Minister for Housing and Local Government. (AUDIO: The Concrete Cage)

In later years, Wilson's position seemed untenable after the failures of the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility in October 1969 and the Inferno Project in February 1970 were publicised by James Stevens in his "Bad Science" series of articles.

Wilson called a general election for June 1970. The Labour Party lost and the Conservative leader Edward Heath became Prime Minister. Political observers speculated that the publication of the book version of "Bad Science" had coincided not-so-incidentally with the election. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

By 1976, Labour was once again in government with Callaghan as Prime Minister. (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure) He served in that position until 1979, when he was succeeded by the Conservative Margaret Thatcher. (TV: Tooth and Claw)

On 9 June 1983, Labour lost the general election in a landslide to the ruling Conservative Party. (AUDIO: Rat Trap) The party was still out of office in 1987 while Thatcher remained Prime Minister. (TV: Father's Day)

Behind the scenes

New Statesman cover 7-13 November 2014

• The Labour Party was represented by the red-coloured Drone Dalek in one of the three alternate covers of the 3-9 April 2010 edition of the Radio Times, promoting the 2010 redesign of the Daleks, known in-universe as the New Dalek Paradigm, which was introduced in Victory of the Daleks.
• The New Statesman cover for 7-13 November 2014 had the tagline "Is it too late for Ed Miliband to regenerate Labour?". The cover art included Tony Blair, Harold Wilson, Ed Miliband, Neil Kinnock, and Gordon Brown as the Fifth, Third, Eleventh, Ninth, and Fourth Doctors, respectively.
• According to the BBC Classic Doctor Who website, in the early 1970s, the Liberal Jeremy Thorpe formed a coalition government after Tory and Socialist policies towards alien life drew people towards the Liberal and fringe parties.
• While Amy's History Hunt lists Labour as one of the parties Winston Churchill was at one point a member of, in real life he was never a Labour member. He did, however, work with Labour during the wartime coalition.
• In 2019, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was gifted a copy of Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor by Nabil Shaban, who played the character Sil.