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This book gathers a group of political actors and academics who believe that a radically more active citizenship is a worthy aim. They spell out how it can be achieved in their particular area of concern, looking at the obstacles and how they might be overcome. Together, they show us how we can realise the dream of a citizen culture and the benefits that it would bring for democracy in the United Kingdom. The first and final chapters set the tone, respectively, on civic republicanism today and political identity. Other chapters consider active citizenship in relation to: Labour government policy; Scottish devolution; public services; gender equality; schools; multiculturalism; integrating immigrants; lifelong learning; Europe and international understanding; young people and Scottish independence.

This book considers the ways that representations of Africa have contributed to the changing nature of British national identity. It does so by developing the concept of the African presence: the ways that references to Africa have become part of discussions within British political culture about the place of Britain in the world. Using interviews, photo archives, media coverage, advertisements, and web material, the book focuses on major Africa campaigns: the abolition of slavery, anti-apartheid, drop the debt, and Make Poverty History. Using a hybrid theoretical framework based mainly around framing, the book argues that the representation of Africa has been mainly about imagining virtuous Britishness rather than generating detailed understandings of Africa. The book develops this argument through a historical review of 200 years of Africa campaigning. It also looks more closely at recent and contemporary campaigning, opening up new issues and possibilities for campaigning: the increasing use of consumer identities, electronic media, and aspects of globalization. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in postcolonial politics, relations between Britain and Africa, and development studies.

Speaking at West Point in 1962, Dean Acheson observed that Britain had lost an empire and had still to find a new role. This book explains why, as Britain's Labour government contemplated withdrawal from east of Suez, ministers came to see that Britain's future role would be as a force within Europe and that, to this end, and to gain entry into the European Economic Community, a close relationship with the Federal Republic of Germany would be essential. This account of Anglo-German relations during the 1960s reveals insights into how both governments reacted to a series of complex issues and why, despite differences that might have led to strains, a good understanding was maintained. Its approach brings together material covering NATO strategy, détente and European integration. The main argument of the book is reinforced by material drawn from British and German primary sources covering the period as a whole, from interviews with some of Harold Wilson's key advisers and from newspaper reports, as well as from a wide range of secondary publications. The introduction of material from German sources adds to its authenticity. The book contributes to what we know about Cold War history, and should help to redefine some of the views about the relationship between Britain and Germany during the 1960s.

The Labour party has been largely defined by the battle of ideas between its left and right sections. This book chronicles those battles, highlighting the key ideas and people behind them since Attlee. It focuses on the totemic moments in the party, but pays particular attention to the Corbyn era. It argues that to understand Corbynism it is important to understand the previous battles over ideas in the party. The final chapter analyses how Corbynism has reacted to Brexit, the biggest issue to face UK politics since WWII, and how this issue has re-opened the left and right battle.

A common misunderstanding of the Abortion Act 1967 is that it granted women the ‘right’ to access abortion. In reality, there is no such thing; the current provision of abortion in the United Kingdom rests on a system in which doctors, not women, are the arbiters of abortion access. In recent years, calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion have been given a vigour not seen before. For the first time, MPs and medical associations have moved to back decriminalisation, in line with the demands of pro-choice campaigners across the UK. But at the same time, opponents are mobilising to undermine public faith in both the Abortion Act and abortion providers. In doing so, they have tended to set aside the classic ‘right to life’ arguments, instead focusing on issues such as sex-selective abortion and disability rights. This book makes sense of today’s changed landscape of abortion debate by tracing the evolution of political and parliamentary discourse on abortion from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present. It makes the case that to understand contemporary abortion politics, it is necessary to move beyond a conceptualisation of the debate as characterised by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’.

Why did Britain invade Iraq in March 2003? Debate around Iraq focuses often on illegality, lies, incompetence, or the personal psychology of Tony Blair. ‘Operation Telic’ is often presented as a war of bad faith, waged by elites who had unspeakable secret motives. Beyond fixations with ‘dodgy dossiers’, the flaws of individual leaders, or intelligence failure, Iraq was a real ideological crusade, made by people who were true believers. Deploying primary documents and retrospective testimonies of participants, Blunder reconstructs the assumptions underlying decisions, the policy ‘world’ that participants inhabited 2001–2003, and the way decisions were made. Contrary to much of the existing literature, this book puts ideas in the centre of the story. As the book argues, Britain’s war in Iraq was caused by bad ideas that were dogmatically and widely held. Three ideas in particular formed the war’s intellectual foundations: the notion of the undeterrable, fanatical rogue state; the vision that the West’s path to security is to break and remake states; and the conceit that by paying the ‘blood price’, Britain could secure influence in Washington DC. These issues matter, because although the Iraq War happened years ago, it is still with us. As well as its severe consequences for regional and international security, the ideas that powered the war persist in Western security debate. If all wars are fought twice, first on the battlefield and the second time in memory, this book enters the battle over what Iraq means now, and what we should learn.

Bob Crow was not only the most well-known union leader of his generation but also the most militant. This biography examines his leadership of the RMT union, examining and exposing a number of popular myths created about him by political opponents. Using the schema of his personal characteristics (including his public persona), his politics and the power of his members, it explains how and why he was able to punch above his weight in industrial relations and on the political stage, helping the small RMT union become as influential as many of its much larger counterparts. Deploying an array of source materials and a sympathetic but critical approach, the biography traces Crow’s industrial and political development from a working-class London family, with an influential communist father and early epiphany about unions, to his rise to national prominence within the RMT. His own membership of two particular far-left political parties did not prevent him becoming the undisputed leader of the left within the RMT. This was attributable to his forceful and larger-than-life personality.

Britain and Europe at a Crossroads: The Politics of Anxiety and Transformation dissects the complex social, cultural and political factors that led the UK to take its decision to leave the EU and examines the far-reaching consequences of that decision. Developing the conceptual framework of securitization, the book uses primary sources and a focus on rhetoric and discourse analysis to examine the ways that political elites engineered a politics of fear, insecurity and Brexit nationalism before and after the Brexit vote. The book situates Brexit within a wider shift in international political ideas, traces the resurgence in popularity of far-right politics and explores how Britain and Europe now face a choice between further neoliberal reform or radical democratic and social renewal. The book posits a number of policy responses that might serve as antidotes to the causes of Brexit and radical right populism centred on a new Social Europe, redistribution and social justice and forms of deliberative democracy that extend participation and preserve representative judgement in the British tradition of ‘pouring new wine into old bottles’.

In the latter part of the 19th century, Walter Bagehot wrote a classic account of the British constitution as it had developed during Queen Victoria's reign. He argued that the late Victorian constitution was not at all what people thought it was. In this book, the author argues that the same is true at the beginning of this century. Most people are aware that a series of major constitutional changes has taken place, but few recognize that their cumulative effect has been to change entirely the nature of Britain's constitutional structure. The old constitution has gone. The author insists that the new constitution is a mess, but one that we should probably try to make the best of. This book is neither a reference book nor a textbook. Like Bagehot's classic, it is written with wit and mordant humour — by someone who is a journalist and political commentator as well as a distinguished academic. Highly charged issues that remain to be settled concern the relations between Scotland and England and the future of the House of Lords. A reformed House of Lords, the author fears, could wind up comprising ‘a miscellaneous assemblage of party hacks, political careerists, clapped-out retired or defeated MPs, has-beens, never-weres and never-could-possibly-bes’. The book is the product of a lifetime's reflection on British politics and essential reading for anyone interested in how the British system has changed and how it is likely to change in future.

This is the first survey of the British constitution in the twentieth century. Indeed, it fills a very real gap in the history of Britain during the last 100 years. The book is a product of interdisciplinary collaboration by constitutional lawyers, historians, and political scientists, and draws where possible on primary sources. It is an evaluation of the recent constitutional reforms.

This book provides a concise account of general elections during more than five tumultuous decades in British politics. Beginning in 1964, when partisan allegiances in the UK were relatively stable, it ends in 2019 when the volatility of voters was illustrated by the success of Conservative Party candidates in constituencies which had previously been ‘safe’ for Labour. The book describes the changing influences on voting behaviour—from the early 1960s, when allegiances were largely based on social class, to the 2020s when factors such as impressions of party leaders and new media outlets such as Facebook seem far more important. The electoral contests of these years produced dramatic results, ranging from Labour’s landslide victory in 1997 to the three closely fought battles of 2010, 2015, and 2017. These elections have taken place against a background of concern arising from the low turnout of voters, reaching its nadir in 2001 when less than 60 per cent of the electorate participated. Yet, in recent years, competition for the support of volatile voters has been complicated by issues like devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—not to mention the question of EU membership, which cut across long-established party lines and has helped to raise political passions to unprecedented levels. Apart from its analysis of electoral campaigns and outcomes, the book describes the most relevant developments between elections (including the EU referendum of 2016) which help to explain the dilemmas facing the system of liberal democracy in contemporary Britain.

Despite a recent decline in voter turnout, British general elections are still the centrepiece of Britain's liberal democracy and their results make a real difference to every British citizen. They command strong media interest long before their dates are announced and even uneventful campaigns dominate the headlines. The 2010 general election saw the first direct televised debates between the main party leaders, adding further interest to a battle which was always likely to be close. The result was a ‘hung parliament’ and the first British coalition government since 1945. However, as this book shows these were only the latest manifestations of a transformation in British elections which began in the early 1960s. While some election rituals remain intact — the counting of votes by hand, the solemn declaration of individual constituency results and, most importantly, the peaceful handover of power if the incumbent party loses — almost everything of significance has changed. Voters have very different attitudes; fewer of them have party loyalties which are more than skin deep, and they tend to base their choices on ‘short-term’ factors such as the perceived competence of the parties and the image of the leader. The parties themselves are barely recognisable from the institutions of 1964 — not least because their membership figures have dwindled dramatically. Election campaigns are now heavily centralised and focus obsessively on a handful of target seats.

This collection of essays explores a largely neglected aspect of the history of Anglo-Irish relations: British Labour Party policy on Ireland during the twentieth century. Much of the literature on the relationship between ‘these islands’ concentrates on the present or the recent past, but by viewing an important dimension of that relationship through a wider lens, this work makes a significant contribution to the field British-Irish studies, one that will inform future research and debate. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Labour Party was broadly supportive of Irish self-government, as reflected in its espousal of a home rule settlement. However, from the end of the First World War, Labour anticipated a place in government. As a modern, maturing party that was intent on proving its ability to govern, it developed a more calculated and measured set of responses to Irish nationalism and to the ‘Irish question’. With contributions from a range of distinguished Irish and British scholars, this collection provides the first full treatment of the historical relationship between the Labour Party and Ireland in the last century, from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair. By examining the party’s responses to crises and debates around home rule, partition, Irish neutrality during WWII, Ireland’s departure from the Commonwealth, and the Northern ‘Troubles’, it offers an original perspective on longer-term dispositions in Labour mentalities towards Ireland.

This study examines how the diverse strands of the British left have interpreted the conflict in Palestine. From being overwhelmingly supportive of the Zionist movement's effort to build a Jewish state in Palestine and welcoming Israel's establishment the left, in the main, has become increasingly critical of Israel. The Labour Party, for much of its history, had portrayed Zionist settlement as a social democratic experiment that would benefit both Jews and Arabs. Its leaders turned a blind eye to the Zionist movement's sectarian practices which through its trade union and agricultural co-operatives aimed to build an exclusively Jewish economy. The rise of fascism in Europe and the Holocaust reinforced the party's support for Jewish state building in Palestine. The British Communist Party was by contrast critical of Zionism but in 1947, following the lead given by the Soviet Union, endorsed the United Nations’ partition of Palestine and subsequently ignored the plight of the Palestinian refugees. It was not until the rise of the new left, in the late 1960s, that Palestinian nationalist aspiration found a voice on the British left and began to command mainstream attention. The book examines the principal debates on the left over the Palestine/Israel conflict and the political realignment that they have helped to shape.

What is the connection between inclusion, exclusion and identity? This book argues that the politics of inclusion and identity should be studied as struggles over the representations of the identities involved. The book engages with a range of debates and themes including Britishness, race, the nature and role of Islam in British society, homelessness and social justice, and it adopts a post-structuralist approach to the theoretical and practical issues surrounding inclusion, exclusion and identity. The argument is developed through careful analyses of cases from the last four decades of British multiculturalism. Each chapter deals with a concept and practice of inclusion: equality, recognition, tolerance and hospitality. Each chapter also deals with one or more cases: Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s different versions of Britishness, the legal case Mandla; the debate between Bhikhu Parekh and Brian Barry; newspaper coverage and debates about Begum, X v Y, Playfoot and Watkins-Singh, which all concerned school uniforms and religious symbols and clothing; and Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good. The book makes a contribution to empirical debates about the nature of British multiculturalism as well as theoretical debates about inclusion, identity and representation. It is informed by post-structuralist political theory, particularly Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse and hegemony and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction.

In contemporary British politics one of the key issues is the question of Britain itself. In this book the British question is used as shorthand for a range of inter-related issues involving history, society and politics in the United Kingdom. It is a question which involves topics such as allegiance, loyalty, identity, authority, legitimacy and belief – issues that together constitute a sense of national belonging. This book clarifies what is at stake in addressing the matter of belonging and does so within a conceptual framework that will be useful to readers trying to make sense of the complex debates about the future of the United Kingdom. It distinguishes itself from other texts on territorial politics by focusing on the United Kingdom as a whole, its elective character, its resources of affinity and its political function. The three sections of the book explore the British question from the different perspectives of history, theory and politics. The central argument is that these distinctive debates are closely related, and a coherent understanding of the United Kingdom requires familiarity with all three. The book makes a distinctive contribution towards understanding the challenges to, but also the continuing strength of, the United Kingdom.

This book examines the transformation of governing arrangements in Britain from stagnation in the first two-thirds of the 20th century to hyper-innovation. These two phases were connected by crisis, namely, a crisis of economic policy and the crisis of the content of rule itself. The collapse of the club system is also discussed to explain the reasons behind the hostility towards the new regulatory state.

The distinctive strength of political science in Britain is revealed in this guide to modern British scholarship in the field. As well as charting the development of the discipline, the essays examine the innovative contributions to the study of nationalism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism, and the influential British approach to international relations.

This book is an historical introduction to the varieties of citizenship in Britain, starting in the Middle Ages and bringing the story right up to the present day. Both the status and understanding of citizenship in practice and the theoretical and advisory writings on the subject are introduced, and their inter-relationships are explored. Among the key themes to be examined are: local and national strata; the issue of parliamentary suffrage; women excluded and included as citizens; the influence of classical ideas; nationhood and imperialism; the role of political and social theorists; interpretations by modern political parties; the role of education; environmental citizenship; multiculturalism; globalisation; and human rights. Organised chronologically, each chapter is divided into sections in order to present the reader with different themes in a manageable form. The book is unique in its historical coverage of citizenship in Britain — moving from the Middle Ages to the present day. It reveals the great complexity of the development of citizenship in Britain and demonstrates the importance of an historical perspective in understanding the issue of citizenship in Britain today.