In Search of a Third Way: The British Left and Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s

• In Event: Yugoslav Configurations I: Close Encounters of the Third Way: Memory of Yugoslav Transnational Solidarity with the International Left

Abstract

The fateful events of 1956, namely, the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez Crisis, accelerated a search on the European left for a third way between East and West. Yugoslavia’s international position as a non-aligned state and its domestic institutionalisation of labour participation in economic decision-making made it a significant reference point for discussions about the way forward on the European left. This paper will explore the British left’s encounters with Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s. Relying on materials mined from the archives of the British Labour Party, Communist Party, the Trades Union Congress, the New Left and Trotskyist groups, as well as a variety of Yugoslav-era archives, as well as contemporary publications, this paper will ask how far and in what ways Yugoslavia inspired alternative conceptualisations of foreign and domestic policies in a variety of spheres on the British left.

Author

• Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, U of Glasgow (UK)