Ralph Miliband
Encyclopedia
Ralph Miliband born Adolphe Miliband, was a Belgian-born British
sociologist known as a prominent Marxist
thinker. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with Edward Palmer Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm
and Perry Anderson
.
Miliband was born in Belgium, to working class Polish-Jewish
immigrants, but fled to Britain in 1940 to avoid persecution after Nazi Germany
invaded. Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics
, he became involved in left-wing politics, and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism
at the grave of Karl Marx
. After serving in the Royal Navy
during the Second World War, he gained British citizenship and settled down in London in 1946.
During the 1960s, he arose as a prominent member of the New Left
movement in Britain, which was critical of established Stalinist governments in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. He published several noted books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism (1961) and Marxism and Politics (1977).
Both his sons, David
and Ed Miliband
went on to become senior members of the Labour Party following their father's death, with the latter defeating the former to be elected party leader in 2010.
, Poland. In the early 1920s, they had been amongst those Polish Jews who migrated westward, to Brussels in Belgium. It was here that Miliband's parents first met and married. His father, Sam, was a skilled craftsman who made leather goods, whilst his mother Renia travelled around selling women's hats. She was embarrassed by having to work in this profession, hiding it from her neighbours, but required the extra income due to the economic troubles of the Great Depression
during the 1930s. Renia spoke Polish fluently, but her husband had only had a very basic education, and as such probably only spoke Yiddish, but he taught himself French by reading newspapers.
On 7 January 1924 Ralph was born as Adolph Miliband in Brussels, the city he subsequently grew up in. In May 1940, following the outbreak of World War II
, the armies of Nazi Germany
invaded Belgium, and the Miliband family, being Jewish, decided to flee the country from the anti-Semitic
Nazi authorities. They missed the train to Paris
in France, and although Adolph - who was then sixteen - wanted to walk to the border, the family recognised that his younger sister Anne-Marie, who was only twelve, was too young for the journey. It was decided that whilst Renia and Anne-Marie would stay in Brussels, Sam and Ralph would go ahead and make the journey to Paris, but during the trek, Sam decided to change the plan, and went with his son to Ostend
, where they caught the last boat to Britain. They arrived there on 19 May 1940.
, and instead began calling himself Ralph. He and his father gained work in the Chiswick
area removing furniture from those houses bombed in the Blitz
, and after six weeks were able to send news to Renia and Anne-Marie that they were in London and not Paris as they had previously planned. Discovering that the Jews of Belgium were being rounded up by the Nazis (to be sent to extermination camps in the Holocaust), Renia and Anne-Marie managed to escape to a rural farm, where they were hidden by a French family until after the end of the year, when they were reunited with Sam and Ralph. He wrote in his diary shortly after arriving in England: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world...When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general and for the French in particular...England first. This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire
would be the worst possible humiliation".
Learning to speak English, Ralph gained a place at Acton Technical College (now Brunel University
) in west London with the help of the International Commission for Refugees in January 1941. After completing his course there, he gained the help of the Belgian government-in-exile to study at the London School of Economics
(LSE). He had become interested in Marxism
and revolutionary socialism, and visited the grave of Marxism's founder Karl Marx
in Highgate Cemetery
in north London, to swear an oath to "the worker's cause". Meanwhile, with the constant aerial bombing of London by the Luftwaffe
, LSE was evacuated to the premises of the University of Cambridge
. At the time, LSE was run by the socialist economist Harold Laski
. Miliband studied under Laski, and considered him to be a political influence over him.
After three years' service in the Royal Navy during the war, Miliband resumed his studies at the LSE and graduated with a First in 1947. After obtaining a Leverhulme research scholarship to continue studies at the LSE, Miliband taught at the Roosevelt College (now Roosevelt University
) in Chicago
. He became a naturalised British subject on 28 September 1948. In 1949 he was offered the post of an Assistant Lectureship in Political Science at the LSE.
during the 1950s, alongside the likes of E. P. Thompson
and John Saville
, with whom he launched the New Reasoner
and the New Left Review
. He also set up the Socialist Register
with Saville in 1964 and was influenced by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills
, of whom he was a friend. He left the LSE in 1972, having found himself torn by the controversies which had beleaguered the institution over the preceding few years, to take up the post of Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds
. The time at Leeds was an unhappy period for Miliband, and he subsequently chose to assume several posts in Canada
and the USA.
In 1961, Miliband published Parliamentary Socialism, which examined the role that the Labour Party
played in British politics and society. Paul Blackledge would later claim that it was "arguably Miliband's finest work". In the mid-1960s, Miliband ended his membership of the Labour Party, and began arguing that socialists in Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuienly revolutionary socialist in its positions.
Miliband was passionately opposed to the American war in Vietnam
. In 1967 he wrote in the Socialist Register that "the US has over...a period of years been engaged...in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, the maiming of many more" and that the United States' "catalogue of horrors" against the Vietnamese people
was being done "in the name of an enormous lie".
In the same article, he attacked Harold Wilson
for his defence of the United States' action in Vietnam, describing it as being the "most shameful chapter in the history of the Labour Party". He went on to say that the US Government "made no secret of the political and diplomatic importance it attached to the unwavering support of a British Labour Government".
In 1985 he published the essay "The New Revisionism in Britain". Writing some two and a half decades later Paul Blackledge argued that this essay "should be required reading for anyone interested in fighting for socialism".
He is buried in Highgate Cemetery
close to Karl Marx
.
to characterising him as floating "between the best of the academic left and revolutionary left".
Miliband's ideas were an influence on other revolutionary socialists, including those of his friend, the Pakistani-British historian and activist Tariq Ali
.
was elected Labour MP for South Shields
in 2001. From 2006 to 2010 he served in the cabinet, latterly (from 2007) as Foreign Secretary
. His younger son, Ed
, was elected a Labour MP for the Doncaster North
seat in 2005. From 2007 to 2008 he served as Minister for the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office and drafted Labour's manifesto for the 2010 general election. In October 2008 Ed was promoted to the position of Secretary of the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). On 25 September 2010, he became the 20th leader of the Labour Party after a leadership contest
in which both David and Ed had run.
Writing in the journal International Socialism, Paul Blackledge remarked that it was "more than a little ironic" that the Miliband brothers were in positions of power in the Labour Party considering that their father was the author of Parliamentary Socialism (1961), a powerful critique of that party and its policies.
The journalist Andy McSmith of The Independent
, in comparing the lives of Ralph with David and Ed, noted that the elder figure had a "nobility and a drama" that was lacking in their "steady, pragmatic political careers".
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
sociologist known as a prominent Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
thinker. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with Edward Palmer Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
and Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
.
Miliband was born in Belgium, to working class Polish-Jewish
History of the Jews in Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
immigrants, but fled to Britain in 1940 to avoid persecution after Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
invaded. Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, he became involved in left-wing politics, and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
at the grave of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. After serving in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
during the Second World War, he gained British citizenship and settled down in London in 1946.
During the 1960s, he arose as a prominent member of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
movement in Britain, which was critical of established Stalinist governments in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. He published several noted books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism (1961) and Marxism and Politics (1977).
Both his sons, David
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband...
and Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband
Edward Samuel Miliband is a British Labour Party politician, currently the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition...
went on to become senior members of the Labour Party following their father's death, with the latter defeating the former to be elected party leader in 2010.
Early life: 1924–1940
Miliband's parents had grown up in the impoverished Jewish quarter of WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland. In the early 1920s, they had been amongst those Polish Jews who migrated westward, to Brussels in Belgium. It was here that Miliband's parents first met and married. His father, Sam, was a skilled craftsman who made leather goods, whilst his mother Renia travelled around selling women's hats. She was embarrassed by having to work in this profession, hiding it from her neighbours, but required the extra income due to the economic troubles of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
during the 1930s. Renia spoke Polish fluently, but her husband had only had a very basic education, and as such probably only spoke Yiddish, but he taught himself French by reading newspapers.
On 7 January 1924 Ralph was born as Adolph Miliband in Brussels, the city he subsequently grew up in. In May 1940, following the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the armies of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
invaded Belgium, and the Miliband family, being Jewish, decided to flee the country from the anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
Nazi authorities. They missed the train to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in France, and although Adolph - who was then sixteen - wanted to walk to the border, the family recognised that his younger sister Anne-Marie, who was only twelve, was too young for the journey. It was decided that whilst Renia and Anne-Marie would stay in Brussels, Sam and Ralph would go ahead and make the journey to Paris, but during the trek, Sam decided to change the plan, and went with his son to Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
, where they caught the last boat to Britain. They arrived there on 19 May 1940.
Move to Britain: 1940–1959
In London, Miliband abandoned the name Adolph due to its connection with Nazi leader Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and instead began calling himself Ralph. He and his father gained work in the Chiswick
Chiswick
Chiswick is a large suburb of west London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is located on a meander of the River Thames, west of Charing Cross and is one of 35 major centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, with...
area removing furniture from those houses bombed in the Blitz
Blitz
-Armed conflict:*The Blitz, the German aerial attacks on Britain in WWII. The name Blitz was subsequently applied to many individual bombing campaigns or attacks.*Blitzkrieg, the "lightning war", a strategy of World War 2 Germany-People:...
, and after six weeks were able to send news to Renia and Anne-Marie that they were in London and not Paris as they had previously planned. Discovering that the Jews of Belgium were being rounded up by the Nazis (to be sent to extermination camps in the Holocaust), Renia and Anne-Marie managed to escape to a rural farm, where they were hidden by a French family until after the end of the year, when they were reunited with Sam and Ralph. He wrote in his diary shortly after arriving in England: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world...When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general and for the French in particular...England first. This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
would be the worst possible humiliation".
Learning to speak English, Ralph gained a place at Acton Technical College (now Brunel University
Brunel University
Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....
) in west London with the help of the International Commission for Refugees in January 1941. After completing his course there, he gained the help of the Belgian government-in-exile to study at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
(LSE). He had become interested in Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and revolutionary socialism, and visited the grave of Marxism's founder Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
in Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
in north London, to swear an oath to "the worker's cause". Meanwhile, with the constant aerial bombing of London by the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
, LSE was evacuated to the premises of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. At the time, LSE was run by the socialist economist Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
. Miliband studied under Laski, and considered him to be a political influence over him.
After three years' service in the Royal Navy during the war, Miliband resumed his studies at the LSE and graduated with a First in 1947. After obtaining a Leverhulme research scholarship to continue studies at the LSE, Miliband taught at the Roosevelt College (now Roosevelt University
Roosevelt University
Roosevelt University is a coeducational, private university with campuses in Chicago, Illinois and Schaumburg, Illinois. Founded in 1945, the university is named in honor of both former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The university's curriculum is based on...
) in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. He became a naturalised British subject on 28 September 1948. In 1949 he was offered the post of an Assistant Lectureship in Political Science at the LSE.
New Left: 1960–1994
Miliband was on the British New LeftNew Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
during the 1950s, alongside the likes of E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
and John Saville
John Saville
John Saville was a Greek-British Marxist historian, long associated with Hull University. He was one of the most influential writers on British Labour History in the second half of the twentieth century.- Life and career :...
, with whom he launched the New Reasoner
New Reasoner
During the crisis of the 1950s within the Communist Party of Great Britain , John Saville and E.P. Thompson created a journal of dissident Communism named the Reasoner. They took the title from an early 19th century publication, created by John Bone, which had been an attempt at renewing and...
and the New Left Review
New Left Review
New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
. He also set up the Socialist Register
Socialist Register
Socialist Register is an annual journal. It was founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville. They had criticisms of the New Left Review after Perry Anderson assumed leadership of the NLR. Miliband and Saville sought to bring about a journal in the orientation of The New Reasoner....
with Saville in 1964 and was influenced by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills
Charles Wright Mills was an American sociologist. Mills is best remembered for his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination in which he lays out a view of the proper relationship between biography and history, theory and method in sociological scholarship...
, of whom he was a friend. He left the LSE in 1972, having found himself torn by the controversies which had beleaguered the institution over the preceding few years, to take up the post of Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
. The time at Leeds was an unhappy period for Miliband, and he subsequently chose to assume several posts in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the USA.
In 1961, Miliband published Parliamentary Socialism, which examined the role that the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
played in British politics and society. Paul Blackledge would later claim that it was "arguably Miliband's finest work". In the mid-1960s, Miliband ended his membership of the Labour Party, and began arguing that socialists in Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuienly revolutionary socialist in its positions.
Miliband was passionately opposed to the American war in Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. In 1967 he wrote in the Socialist Register that "the US has over...a period of years been engaged...in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, the maiming of many more" and that the United States' "catalogue of horrors" against the Vietnamese people
Vietnamese people
The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...
was being done "in the name of an enormous lie".
In the same article, he attacked Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
for his defence of the United States' action in Vietnam, describing it as being the "most shameful chapter in the history of the Labour Party". He went on to say that the US Government "made no secret of the political and diplomatic importance it attached to the unwavering support of a British Labour Government".
In 1985 he published the essay "The New Revisionism in Britain". Writing some two and a half decades later Paul Blackledge argued that this essay "should be required reading for anyone interested in fighting for socialism".
He is buried in Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
close to Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
.
Political ideas
Miliband's ability to merge theoretical discussion of Marxism with practical action in trying to promote revolutionary socialism led Duncan HallasDuncan Hallas
Duncan Hallas , was a prominent member of the Trotskyist movement and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in Great Britain.-Biography:...
to characterising him as floating "between the best of the academic left and revolutionary left".
Miliband's ideas were an influence on other revolutionary socialists, including those of his friend, the Pakistani-British historian and activist Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
.
Personal life
In 1961, Ralph married Polish-born Marion Kozak, one of his former students at the LSE. They had two sons, David in 1965 and Edward in 1969.David and Ed Miliband
His elder son, DavidDavid Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband...
was elected Labour MP for South Shields
South Shields (UK Parliament constituency)
South Shields is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.-Boundaries:...
in 2001. From 2006 to 2010 he served in the cabinet, latterly (from 2007) as Foreign Secretary
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a senior member of Her Majesty's Government heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and regarded as one of the Great Offices of State...
. His younger son, Ed
Ed Miliband
Edward Samuel Miliband is a British Labour Party politician, currently the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition...
, was elected a Labour MP for the Doncaster North
Doncaster North (UK Parliament constituency)
- Sources :* Election results from 1992 to the present* Election results from 1945 to the present* The website of Ed Miliband...
seat in 2005. From 2007 to 2008 he served as Minister for the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office and drafted Labour's manifesto for the 2010 general election. In October 2008 Ed was promoted to the position of Secretary of the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). On 25 September 2010, he became the 20th leader of the Labour Party after a leadership contest
Labour Party (UK) leadership election, 2010
The 2010 Labour Party leadership election was triggered by a general election which resulted in a hung parliament. On 10 May, Gordon Brown resigned as Leader of the Labour Party. The following day, he stepped down as Prime Minister....
in which both David and Ed had run.
Writing in the journal International Socialism, Paul Blackledge remarked that it was "more than a little ironic" that the Miliband brothers were in positions of power in the Labour Party considering that their father was the author of Parliamentary Socialism (1961), a powerful critique of that party and its policies.
The journalist Andy McSmith of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, in comparing the lives of Ralph with David and Ed, noted that the elder figure had a "nobility and a drama" that was lacking in their "steady, pragmatic political careers".
Further reading
- Barrow, C., Burnham, P., Wetherly, P. eds. Class, Power and State in Capitalist Society: Essays on Ralph Miliband (London: Palgrave)
- Newman, Michael. Ralph Miliband and the Politics of the New Left (Merlin Press, 2002)
- Aronowitz, Stanley, and Peter Bratsis. Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered (University of Minnesota Press, 2002)