scholarly journals TCBH Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2018 Financing the Information Age: London TeleCity, the Legacy of IT-82, and the Selling of British Telecom

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Ward
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Technology Policy ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Information Revolution ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Telecommunications Services ◽  
British Telecom ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

Abstract This article is a history of the privatization of British Telecom. BT's privatization occupies a central position in histories of Thatcherism as a pivotal moment in Thatcherism's ideological focus on popular capitalism. These histories, however, overlook the important intersection of financial institutions and information technology policy in shaping BT's privatization. Financial institutions in the City of London formed a lobbying group, the City Telecommunications Committee, that pressured for BT's privatization and secured preferential treatment for the City from BT, ending a decades-long policy of uniform telecommunications services across Britain. Margaret Thatcher's government positioned BT's privatization as central to the success of two of Britain's information industries, electronics manufacturing and the City of London. Her government also cast BT's privatization as essential to an ‘information revolution’ that, through personal, networked computing, would further personal freedom and free markets. BT's privatization thus performed two important and related functions. First, it oriented Britain's telecommunications network to the City of London's needs, and secondly, it enacted an ‘information revolution’ that was portrayed as essential to the success of the City of London and British electronics. I label this fusion of City finance, neoliberal politics, and British telecommunications the ‘London ideology’, and this ideology shaped the broadly-held assumption that privatizing telecommunications was essential to reaching the ‘information age’.

Francis Woodleke’s Window

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon McSheffrey
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Drainage Channels ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

A royal enquiry was commissioned in the mid-1530s to investigate the boundaries of the sanctuary of St Martin le Grand. This enquiry was precipitated not by a problem with felonious sanctuary seekers, but instead by a conflict between the City of London and Dutch-born shoemakers making and selling their wares in St Martin’s precinct despite prohibitions against immigrant labour. The testimony in the enquiry uncovers the complexity of jurisdictional rights woven into the idea of sanctuary: battles over labour, trade, and immigration were conflated with asylum for accused felons in both attacks and defences of sanctuary privilege. The witnesses’ statements also reveal how the boundaries of the sanctuary—often marked only by convention or by drainage channels in the street—functioned in the urban environment.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
International Monetary System ◽  
The State ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The aim of this book has been to evaluate the relationship between Britain’s financial sector, based in the City of London, and the social democratic economic strategy of post-war Britain. The central argument presented in the book was that changes to the City during the 1960s and 1970s undermined a number of the key post-war social democratic techniques designed to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Financial institutionalization weakened the state’s ability to influence investment, and the labour movement was unable successfully to integrate the institutionalized funds within a renewed social democratic economic agenda. The post-war settlement in banking came under strain in the 1960s as new banking and credit institutions developed that the state struggled to manage. This was exacerbated by the decision to introduce competition among the clearing banks in 1971, which further weakened the state’s capacity to control the provision and allocation of credit to the real economy. The resurrection of an unregulated global capital market, centred on London, overwhelmed the capacity of the state to pursue domestic-focused macroeconomic policies—a problem worsened by the concurrent collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Against this background, the fundamental social democratic assumption that national prosperity could be achieved only through industry-led growth and modernization was undermined by an effective campaign to reconceptualize Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation with the City of London at its heart....

scholarly journals From Big Bang to Brexit: The City of London and the Discursive Power of Finance

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172098571
Author(s):  
Scott James ◽  
Hussein Kassim ◽  
Thomas Warren
Keyword(s):  
Big Bang ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Business Power ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
Discursive Power ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
The Eu

This article aims to generate new insights into the City’s influence during the Brexit negotiations. Integrating theories of discursive institutionalism and business power, we set out to analyse the dynamic ‘discursive power’ of finance. From this perspective, a key source of the City’s influence historically has been a powerful strategic discourse about London’s role as Europe’s leading global financial centre. This was strengthened following the financial crisis to emphasise its contribution to the ‘real’ economy and emerging regulatory threats from the EU. We argue that Brexit challenges the City’s discursive power by removing ‘ideational constraints’ on acceptable policy discourse, and undermining the ‘discursive co-production’ of financial power by government and industry. By encouraging financial actors to re-evaluate their interests, this has contributed to increasing discursive fragmentation and incoherence. Evidence for this comes from the City’s ambiguous policy preferences on Brexit, and the emergence of a rival pro-Brexit ‘discursive coalition’.

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