When history major Jack Ciavolella began searching for a senior thesis topic, he did what many students do: he turned to Wikipedia. But unlike most students, he kept finding himself drawn back to the same unresolved question. Why did the British Labour Party, the natural opposition to one of the most polarizing prime ministers in modern history, fail to win a general election for 18 consecutive years?

“Margaret Thatcher is an incredibly divisive figure, to put it mildly,” says Ciavolella, who also minors in political science and international relations. “In a two-party system, the opposition should benefit enormously from a controversial prime minister. What I wanted to understand is why the Labour Party failed three times to undo something that was extraordinarily unpopular.”

That question became the foundation of his honors paper, which examines the Labour Party’s political collapse and slow rehabilitation between 1979 and 1992. It is a period that begins with Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power and ends just before Tony Blair’s transformation of the party into what became known as New Labour.

A Focus on the Opposition

Ciavolella was deliberate in framing his research to minimize focus on Thatcher herself. Existing scholarship on her economic policies, her handling of unemployment and inflation, and her influence on British prestige is excellent, he says, so his project takes a different approach.

“The Labour Party is kind of seen as this backward, flailing entity, hopelessly adrift in the face of Thatcher,” he says. “I wanted to ask: what is actually happening within the party? What is happening around them that causes the British public to shun them for that many years?”

The thesis is organized into three sections. The first traces Labour’s history from its origins through the catastrophic 1983 general election, in which the party had disastrous results. The second section examines the turbulent years between 1983 and 1987, when the party attempted to recover while facing a crippling miners’ strike and battles over local government spending. The third and final section analyzes Labour’s policy review after 1987, in which party leaders began the difficult work of dismantling commitments to sweeping nationalization, unilateral nuclear disarmament, and withdrawal from the European Community.

“The third section is about the birth of New Labour,” Ciavolella explains. “It’s basically how the party yanks itself out of old-school Clement Attlee-type socialism and into Tony Blair’s social democracy.” Attlee was prime minister from 1945 to 1951 and is credited for his government's welfare state reforms, creation of the NHS, continuation of the Britain’s relationship with the United States and involvement in NATO.

From London to New York in Pursuit of Primary Sources

Ciavolella’s research extends well beyond secondary literature. Recognizing that many of the Labour Party’s internal publications from the 1980s are not widely held in American libraries, he arranged his study-abroad semester in England to coincide with an archival research trip to London.

“I figured that while I was there, I might as well go have a look at the party publications at the British Library,” he says. “A lot of the sources I needed, specifically all the party publications between 1979 and 1992, simply aren’t in America.”

The trip came with an unexpected complication. The British Library was on strike on both weekends he had reserved for archival work. The paradox of a labor researcher being blocked by striking workers struck him immediately. 

“The irony is not lost on me, believe me,” he laughs.

He was ultimately able to examine two of the five key policy documents he sought in London — “Democratic Socialist Aims and Values” and “Social Justice and Economic Efficiency,” both published in early 1989. The most important document — “Meet the Challenge, Make the Change,” a comprehensive report on why voters had rejected Labour’s 1987 platform — eluded him in London. He found it instead in New York.

“I made a weekend out of it and went to the New York Public Library to have a look it,” he says. “I took a lot of notes and using these primary sources, which are really key, I'm figuring them into the third chapter, outlining where does the policy shift, and it is a pretty seismic one.”

Disunity as the ‘Millstone’

Through his research, Ciavolella’s finding cut across conventional narratives about Thatcher’s dominance. While policy failures played a role — the 1983 Labour manifesto’s calls for mass nationalization, nuclear disarmament, and European withdrawal proved deeply unpopular — internal division, he argues, was the more persistent liability.

“When pollsters asked British voters why they weren’t voting Labour, the answer above everything else was disunity.” he says. “I feel like that is a millstone around Labour’s neck. They’re always fighting with each other.”

He draws on Gallup polling data held in Lehigh’s own library, a volume compiling British surveys from 1937 to 2000, to support his analysis. His thesis acknowledges two competing interpretations: that Labour moved too slowly to respond to public opinion, or that it moved too erratically and lost its ideological core. Ciavolella finds merit in both.

A Path Toward Labour Law

Ciavolella’s interest in this period is not purely historical. He will enroll at Dickinson School of Law in the fall, with a focus on labor law, and he sees direct lines between the British policies he has studied and the questions that will define his legal career.

“The labor union itself is a massively important piece of economic history in America, and in the 1980s its power was dramatically reduced,” he says. “In Britain, trade unions were an integral part of the Labour Party. In the 1980s, 40 percent of all votes for the party leadership came from trade unions themselves. And yet the party was failing them time after time as Thatcher tore them to pieces.”

He notes that the dismantling of union power in Britain during this period was more sweeping than anything seen in the US, and that understanding it offers insight into ongoing debates about organized labor on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The dismantling that you see in Britain is a lot deeper than you’d see here in America,” he says. “I wanted to investigate what happened there.”