Questions of war were not central to the founding of the Labour Party, yet questions of war - specifically, under what circumstances the party would support the dispatch of British military forces to fight abroad - have divided and damaged the party throughout its history more deeply than any other single issue.

The Labour Party, War and International Relations, 1945-2006 opens by identifying and examining the factors that have influenced the party's thinking about war, before considering the post-1945 Cold War context and analyzing a range of cases:

• the...