If I was going to do my PhD straight after my current Masters, I would probably do it on this topic. Did a lot of research recently to see what was in the field (alongside dips into the archives myself) and I think the issue of Labour’s shifts on Israel has been mischaracterised. At least, I think it wasn’t as clear a break as it’s made out to be.
I think Morrison’s comments about how “Zionists make good colonisers” sum up what many right-wing Labour figures (Ernie Bevin excluded) thought about Israel - the ‘it was a colonial project and that wasn’t a bad thing’ approach. After that, I’m less sure of Labour right positioning but I can tell you that the Labour left’s Zionism was a bit all over the place and less consistent than some might think. Anthony Greenwood, for example, was the first Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and had established himself as a principled defender of Jews, both in Britain and abroad (if anyone wants a good laugh, read what fascists in Hampstead called him in the mid-Forties for saying Jewish refugees should be settled in the borough). He was also more of the dovish persuasion than many other members of Labour Friends of Israel, and so privately lamented that Moshe Sharett had been deposed and that the Israelis were too unreasonable with Egypt’s Nasser. You’d think the premier Zionist (or close enough) of the Labour left would have been less open-minded about the primacy of peace in the Middle East - as opposed to the single-minded furtherance of Israel’s expansionist objectives - but he was not at all the caricature that people paint of the Zionist tendency of the Labour Party.