PROGRESSIVE PIONEERS: MANCHESTER LIBERALISM, THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY, AND LOCAL POLITICS IN THE 1890s

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1013 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES ROBERT MOORE
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Liberal Approach ◽  
Liberal Trade

The Manchester Progressive Municipal Programme of 1894 has been viewed as indicative of a new Liberal approach to labour and social questions, heralding the New Liberalism of the Edwardian era and marking a gradual transition to class-based politics. Rather than focus on the role of senior individuals, such as Manchester Guardian editor C. P. Scott, in fostering the change, this article explores the practical problems of grass-roots party co-operation and the problems that Progressive approaches brought to Liberals. Progressive ideas had already permeated much Liberal thinking before 1890 and the Progressive Programme was less of a departure than might be imagined. Progressive policies may have helped consolidate Liberal working-class support but they did little to encourage co-operation with the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Where senior Liberals attempted to forge alliances they were invariably rebuffed. When Liberal candidates stepped down in deference to the ILP, Irish and working-class Liberal trade unionists revolted and split the party. The 1895 general election demonstrated the dangers of being too closely associated with the ILP and the limitations of Progressivism as a political strategy.

scholarly journals The Political Activities Of A Trade Union, 1906–1914

1957 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
J. E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Common Ownership ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Liberal Trade

The British Labour Party was not explicitly socialist until 1918. In February of that year a Special Conference adopted a new constitution which stated that the ultimate aim of the party was:-“To secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”Before this change, Ramsay MacDonald, writing in 1911, had said: “The Labour Party is not Socialist. It is a union of Socialist and trade-union bodies for immediate political work…” The new party, founded in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee, was in many ways un manage de convenance of militant Socialists and Glad-stonian Liberal trade-union leaders. The “immediate political work” for which these groups came together was the representation of the working class in parliament. Of the need for such representation both sides were firmly convinced: the Socialists because they hoped to convert the trade unions to their own way of thinking; the trade-union leaders because they were disappointed by the failure of the official Liberal party constituency caucuses to adopt more working-class candidates.

A property-owning democracy?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Lund
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
House Price ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Building Society ◽  
Mortgage Interest ◽  
Tax Relief ◽  
Right To Buy

This chapter explores the political fortunes of the Conservative Party’s quest to create a property-owning democracy. It examines Stanley Baldwin’s support for the owner-occupation dimension of Noel Skelton’s property-owning democracy idea to win the votes of the working class elite and how this was reflected in building society endorsement and suburban values. The politics of homeownership are charted with particular reference to Labour party leadership’s endorsement of homeownership and internal party divisions on the role of tax relief on mortgage interest in supporting owner-occupation. The politics of boom/bust house price fluctuations are charted. Right to Buy politics are examined as are the attempts of the Coalition government and the 2015 Conservative to revive homeownership as private landlordism continued to grow.

The Working Class and the Poverty of Electoral Strategy

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Bob Carter
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Executive Director ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

The defeat of the Labour Party in the 2019 general election was widely seen as a rebuttal of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn but it has also raised the question of the nature and direction of the party and whether fundamental social changes have undermined its long-term electability. A concentration on the changing structure and orientation of the working class of Britain, and the implications for political parties, is the focus of a book by former executive director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), Claire Ainsley, appointed in 2020 as the chief policy adviser to the new leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer. The book’s rationale is that a new working class, lacking political and workplace representation, is being forged, distinct from the working class that preceded it. However, Ainsley’s empiricist approach hinders a coherent analysis of class, which as a result is confused and confusing. Moreover, her analysis lacks any appreciation of the structure of power within which values and opinions are created. Her analysis clearly underpins the shift in policies espoused by Starmer - a move to the ‘centre’ of politics, decency, fairness, family, and patriotism - but gives no indication that it can address the anger and alienation of the working class and its disenchantment with its treatment by Labour.

scholarly journals 'Getting behind the image': personality politics in a Labour party election broadcast

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The Way

The article examines a Labour party broadcast from the 1997 UK general election. I show how the film uses the conventions of a particular mode of contemporary documentary to present a portrait of Tony Blair. My main focus is on the way Blair's 'biography' is used for propaganda purposes, and how the tensions between the competing requirements of biography and propaganda manifest themselves textually. In particular, I examine Blair's strategic use of lifeworld discourses, and the role of pronominal choice in 'self' and 'other' referencing.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

scholarly journals Between Pleasure and Resistance: The Role of Substance Consumption in an Italian Working-Class Subculture

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Placido
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Critical Criminology ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Substance Consumption ◽  
North Western

In this article I discuss how illegal substance consumption can act as a tool of resistance and as an identity signifier for young people through a covert ethnographic case study of a working-class subculture in Genoa, North-Western Italy. I develop my argument through a coupled reading of the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and more recent post-structural developments in the fields of youth studies and cultural critical criminology. I discuss how these apparently contrasting lines of inquiry, when jointly used, shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures contributing to reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society and overcoming some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture. In fact, through an analysis of the sites, socialization processes, and hedonistic ethos of the subculture, I show how within a single subculture there could be a coexistence of: resistance practices and subversive styles of expression as the CCCS research program posits; and signs of fragmentary and partial aesthetic engagements devoid of political contents and instead primarily oriented towards the affirmation of the individual, as argued by the adherents of the post-subcultural position.

Populism as a Political Strategy: An Approach’s Enduring — and Increasing — Advantages

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Strategies ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The World

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.

Party Matters

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
National Party ◽  
Strategic Responses ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Real Picture ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the relationship between political decentralization and the organization of political parties in Great Britain and Spain, focusing on the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, respectively. It assesses two rival accounts of this relationship: Caramani's `nationalization of politics' thesis and Chhibber and Kollman's rational choice institutionalist account in their book The Formation of National Party Systems. It argues that both accounts are seriously incomplete, and on occasion misleading, because of their unwillingness to consider the autonomous role of political parties as advocates of institutional change and as organizational entities. The article develops this argument by studying the role of the British Labour Party and the Spanish Socialists in proposing devolution reforms, and their organizational and strategic responses to them. It concludes that the reductive theories cited above fail to capture the real picture, because parties cannot only mitigate the effects of institutional change, they are also the architects of these changes and shape institutions to suit their strategic ends.

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