The Structure of Democratic Socialist Ideology in Britain

This paper examines socialist ideology in Britain in terms of the beliefs and attitudes of two samples, a sample of Labour Members of Parliament and a sample of Parliamentary Labour candidates. Ideology is defined as a structured set of attitudes having a wide range and reasonable internal coherence. The paper shows that the attitudes of respondents with respect to a set of controversial issues in the Labour party, are structured coherently enough to constitute an ideology, and the structure is very similar for both samples. When measuring ideology along a left-right continuum it appears candidates are more left wing than Members of Parliament, and several hypotheses which might account for this are tested with a multiple regression model. It appears that background characteristics are very poor predictors of ideology, and an explanation of ideological differences is provided in terms of contemporary political events in British society, and the early political experiences of respondents.