The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 19 51-64

The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 19 51-64
Author: L. Black
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2002-12-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230288243

Exploring relationships between politics, the people and social change, this book assesses the fortunes mainly of Labour, but also of the Communist Party and the New Left in postwar Britain. Using concepts like political culture, it looks at the left's articulation of 'affluence': consumerism, youth culture, America, TV, advertising and its disappointment at the people under the impact of such changes. It also examines party organization, socialist thinking and the use of new communication techniques like TV, advertising and opinion polling.

New Labour's Pasts

New Labour's Pasts
Author: James E. Cronin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2016-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317873912

Where other books are either highly partisan dismissals or appreciations of the Third Way, or dull sociological accounts, this book gets behind the clichés in order to show just what is left of Labour party ideology and what the future may hold. New Labour has changed the face of Britain. Culture, class, education, health, the arts, leisure, the economy have all seen seismic shifts since the 1997 election that raised Blair to power. The Labour that rules has distanced itself from the failed Labour of the 70s and 80s, but the core remains. Labour remains gripped by its own past - unable and unwilling to shed its ties to the old Labour party, but determined to avoid the mistakes of which lead to four electoral defeats between 1979 and 1992. Cronin covers the full history of the party from its post war triumph through decades of shambolic leadership against ruthless and organised opposition to the resurgent New Labour of the 90s that finally took Britain into the new millennium.

Redefining British Politics

Redefining British Politics
Author: L. Black
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230250475

A history of 1950s and 1960s British political culture, Redefining British Politics interrogates ideas, movements and identities bordering social and political change: consumer organisations; campaigns about TV, morality and culture; Young Conservatism; and how party politics used media like TV and was represented in popular culture.

The Labour Governments 1964-70, Volume 1

The Labour Governments 1964-70, Volume 1
Author: Steven Fielding
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719043642

This book looks at how the British Labour Party came to terms with the 1960's 'cultural revolution', specifically changes to: the class structure, place of women, black immigration, the generation gap and calls for direct political participation.

Rethinking Labour's Past

Rethinking Labour's Past
Author: Nathan Yeowell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0755640187

The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn is charting a new direction. Here, Nathan Yeowell has brought together a remarkable array of contributors to provide expert insight into twentieth-century British history and Labour politics – and how they might shape thinking about Labour's future. Reframing the span of Labour history and its effects on contemporary British politics, the book provides fresh thinking and analysis of various traditions, themes and individuals. These include the shifting significance of 1945, the need for more grounded interpretations of Tony Blair's legacy, and the enduring importance of place, identity and aspiration to the evolution of the party. Contributions from leading historians such as Patrick Diamond, Steven Fielding, Ben Jackson, Glen O' Hara and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite are supplemented by those with experience of Labour electoral politics, such as Rachel Reeves and Nick Thomas-Symonds. The result is an intellectually rich and politically relevant roadmap for Labour's future.

The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019

The British Labour Party in Opposition and Power 1979-2019
Author: Patrick Diamond
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2021-01-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317595378

This book provides a novel account of the Labour Party’s years in opposition and power since 1979, examining how New Labour fought to reinvent post-war social democracy, reshaping its core political ideas. It charts Labour’s sporadic recovery from political disaster in the 1980s, successfully making the arduous journey from opposition to power with the rise (and ultimately fall) of the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Forty years on from the 1979 debacle, Labour has found itself on the edge of oblivion once again. Defeated in 2010, it entered a further cycle of degeneration and decline. Like social democratic parties across Europe, Labour failed to identify a fresh ideological rationale in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews and unpublished papers, the book focuses on decisive points of transformational change in the party’s development raising a perennial concern of present-day debate – namely whether Labour is a party capable of transforming the ideological weather, shaping a new paradigm in British politics, or whether it is a party that should be content to govern within parameters established by its Conservative opponents. This text will be of interest to the general reader as well as scholars and students of British politics, British political party history, and the history of the British Labour Party since 1918.

An Affluent Society?

An Affluent Society?
Author: Lawrence Black
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351959174

During an election speech in 1957 the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, famously remarked that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. Although taken out of context, this phrase soon came to epitomize the sense of increased affluence and social progress that was prevalent in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, despite the recognition that Britain had moved away from an era of rationing and scarcity, to a new age of choice and plenty, there was simultaneously a parallel feeling that the nation was in decline and being economically outstripped by its international competitors. Whilst the study of Britain's postwar history is a well-trodden path, and the paradox of absolute growth versus relative decline much debated, it is here approached in a fresh and rewarding way. Rather than highlighting economic and industrial 'decline', this volume emphasizes the tremendous impact of rising affluence and consumerism on British society. It explores various expressions of affluence: new consumer goods; shifting social and cultural values; changes in popular expectations of policy; shifting popular political behaviour; changing attitudes of politicians towards the electorate; and the representation of affluence in popular culture and advertising. By focusing on the widespread cultural consequences of increasing levels of consumerism, emphasizing growth over decline and recognizing the rising standards of living enjoyed by most Britons, a new and intriguing window is opened on the complexities of this 'golden age'. Contrasting growing consumer expectations and demands against the anxieties of politicians and economists, this book offers all students of the period a new perspective from which to view post-imperial Britain and to question many conventional historical assumptions.

Colonized by Humanity

Colonized by Humanity
Author: Rob Waters
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2023-10-05
Genre:
ISBN: 0198879830

'Colonization through a process of affection', wrote the London-based Barbadian novelist George Lamming in 1960, was 'the worst form of colonization'. Lamming's London was marked by the violent currents of racism--some seen, many disavowed. But the operations of race, the putting-in-place of its hierarchies, the destructions of the self that its logics entailed, exceeded only expressions of violence and hatred. It was in 'affection', too, that colonialism's racial visions operated. It was not only among the illiberals, but among the liberals, that colonization continued its hold on metropolitan culture. This was colonization, as Lamming would also put it, by humanity. Colonized by Humanity is a study of racial liberalism at the end of empire. It uncovers the projects to cultivate racial integration developed in the two decades between the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the passage of the first Race Relations Act. These were the years that integrationism took hold as a social phenomenon, its reflexes lodged deep in an English culture that took the idea of 'tolerance' as its watchword. It was a culture that re-inscribed race even as it aimed at overcoming its discriminations. Caribbean London is at the heart of this story. It was in the capital that integration projects multiplied fastest, and it was the multicultural capital that provided integrationism's imaginative geographies. Viewing integrationism through the eyes of Caribbean Londoners, Colonized by Humanity allows us to see it as they did, with its colonial and racial dynamics up close.

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation
Author: Phil Child
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2024-05-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1350423645

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation explores how the urban transformation of Britain between 1945 and 1970 was understood politically by the Labour Party. Placing the Labour Party at the centre of the discussion, the book covers the most extensive period of state-led urban change in British history, from the end of the Second World War to the decline of high modernism in the late 1960s. Taking a particular focus on housing to explore the implementation of modernist ideas to drive a far-ranging process of urban transformation in Britain, it challenges conventional understandings of Labour's urban legacy and puts political ideas at the heart of twentieth-century change. Utilising a breadth and range of material, including two distinct sets of archival sources, published secondary material, national legislation and Housing Acts, and various case studies, Child moves seamlessly between the national picture and its local impacts. It also draws from sources which had a crucial influence on political thinking throughout the mid-twentieth century to understand how urban transformation represented for Labour a political vision of the future. A timely contribution both to urban history and to the history of post-war Britain, it challenges existing interpretations of modernism, connects urban change to the political ideas that drove it, and allows us to comprehend the state of urban Britain today.

Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957-64

Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957-64
Author: Mark Jarvis
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719070822

'[During the 1960s] a society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others' - Tony Blair, July 2004In this fascinating and timely book, Mark Jarvis explores the validity of such notions, together with related views held by those who blame British moral decline on legislation enacted by Harold Wilson's governments. This book strongly challenges this perspective, arguing that it was actually Harold Macmillan's Conservative administrations which introduced social legislation that would be termed 'permissive'. The dilemma faced by the Tories was clear: Macmillan encouraged affluence and presided over a Britain that had more money to spend on pursuing pleasure, but how could government manage this demand while still conserving traditional social bonds? Jarvis discusses some of the most controversial social issues faced by the conservative administration at the time, from crime, gambling, drinking, homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, to Sunday observance and the challenges imposed by the new medium of television. This revolution still reverberates in Britain today, and this book will make fascinating reading for those looking at British society in the 1960s, as well as those looking for a historical perspective on related contemporary issues.