1980 Labour Party (UK) leadership election 1980 Labour Party (UK) leadership election The 1980 Labour Party leadership election was held following the resignation of James Callaghan. Callaghan had been Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979 and had stayed on as leader of the Labour Party for eighteen months in order to oversee an orderly transition to his favoured successor, Denis Healey over his own deputy Michael Foot. However, during this period the party had become bogged down in internal arguments about its procedures and future direction. Initially, the candidates were thought likely to be Denis Healey, Peter Shore and John Silkin, but Michael Foot was persuaded
Labour Leader able to publish a weekly newspaper. A Conservative politician, Cyril Wilson Black, successfully prosecuted the paper for libel after it described him as a racist. In 1975 the ILP decided to dissolve itself into the Labour Party, renaming its paper as the "Labour Leader" once again and moving back to monthly publication. Relaunched with a claim to be "Labour's Independent Monthly", it was published by Independent Labour Publications until 1986. Labour Leader The Labour Leader was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later renamed New Leader and Socialist Leader, before finally taking the name