There can hardly be a topic in the whole field of British labour history which has attracted less attention than the social democratic theory of the class struggle. Nor is this neglect at all surprising. It may even be disputable whether such a theory (understanding this as a scheme or system of ideas held as an explanation or account) in fact exists. In the course of the first section of this essay, I acknowledge that the theory may not constitute much of an answer. What does exist, I maintain, and what cannot be wished away, is the problem to which it is addressed. In developing my theme, therefore, the starting-point must be a definition of terms.

The social democratic label became fashionable in British politics during the 1970s, chiefly as a pejorative description of the section of the Labour party which could not display either left-wing or trade-union credentials. Even the apostles of revisionism in the party have been uneasy with the term. Anthony Crosland's reported definition that a social democrat was ‘somebody about to join the Tory Party’, shows that we are dealing with masked words. The force of his allusion to the procession of right-wing renegades in the late 1970s is undeniable. Yet if Crosland himself was not a social democrat, who was? There is no getting away from the fact that, historically, social democracy has not been easily adopted into the language of British politics.