Rebuilding the family: 1940s–1950s

Author(s):  
Harry Hendrick

The chapter examines the idea of 'the family' within the context of the so-called 'Golden Age' in social and economic affairs that was said to prevail from the late 1940s through to the early 1970s. It begins with a survey of the social democratic ideals regarding 'mental progress', as expressed in sections of Atlee's Labour Party, and of the Party's failure to convert the electorate to socialist ethics. It then goes on to provide a sustained account of the ideas and popular influence of John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, emphasizing the significance they attributed to family, home, and the 'the bonds of love', particularly between mothers and young children, for the evolution of an emotionally mature social democracy in the post-1945 atomic age.

Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.


Author(s):  
N. Rabotyazhev

The article is devoted to the evolution of the West European social democracy in the late 20th and early 21st century. The author analyses the causes of the social democracy crisis in 1980-90s and considers its attempts to meet the challenges of globalization and the “new economy”. Modernization of the British Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership and updating of the German Social Democratic Party initiated by Gerhard Schröder are thoroughly examined in the article. Political and ideological processes ongoing in such parties as the French Socialist Party, the Dutch Labour Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Austrian Social Democratic Party are also considered. The author comes to a conclusion that the radical shift towards social liberalism took place merely in the British Labour Party. Schröder’s attempt to modernize the German Social Democratic Party turned out to be unsuccessful, while other European social democratic parties did not regard Blair’s “Third Way” as a suitable model for them.


1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Therborn ◽  
Anders Kjellberg ◽  
Staffan Marklund ◽  
Ulf Öhlund

This is a first report on a research project entitled ‘Sweden Under Social Democracy (1932–76)’. It aims at probing into the effects a uniquely long Social Democratic parliamentary reign have had on the present ‘welfare state’. It is argued that a causal analysis such as this has to start from a historical study and that correlational methods have little value. Sweden is therefore compared with other Western societies before and at the end of the Social Democratic era, with a view to finding out in which areas and the degrees to which Sweden was different. Two alternative hypotheses are presented: (1) The Parliamentary Hypothesis, according to which societal development is determined by parliamentary politics and from which an increasing differentiation between Sweden and countries with other parliamentary configurations is to be expected; (2) The Class Hypothesis, according to which social development is determined by the extraparliamentary social forces reflected in parliamentary politics and reproduced rather than transformed by the latter, unless there is a rupture in the political institutions. Since no such rupture occurred in Sweden in 1932 nor after, from this hypothesis it could be expected that Sweden ought to have remained in about the same relation to other Western states. A first test is then made, with reference to aspects of the social conditions of the population, capital-labour relations, educational, social, and tax policies. No definite conclusions are reached, but the evidence casts reasonable doubt on the Parliamentary Hypothesis and indicates the fruitfulness of the Class Hypothesis as a guide to future explorations.


Tempo Social ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Steve Cushion

For the past 30 years, Britain’s ruling class has been deeply split over membership of the European Union. This came to a head over the referendum on so-called “Brexit”. The Conservative Party (Tories) was split into “Remain” and “Leave” wings, both neoliberal, but with a different interpretation of the best way to make profits for the section of British capitalism each represents. Meanwhile the Labour Party is divided between the pro-business, neoliberal wing and the social democratic, reformist wing. The trade unions, with one or two notable exceptions, have conducted their activities within the parameters of parliamentary politics and desperately hoped for a Labour victory. The recent general election gave complete victory to the “Leave” Tories, which is potentially disastrous for the trade unions and their members.


Author(s):  
Harry Hendrick

The theme of this chapter is the emergence by the late 1960s of an environment that gradually became more hostile to the social democratic family and to liberal progressive child rearing. The key themes of the chapter focus on the concerted political attempts to undermine 'Bowlbyism' (including the influence of Winnicott), particularly by feminists and Bowlby's enemies in the psychological/psychoanalytic community. In order to contextualize the 'dethroning' of Bowlbyism, the chapter considers the emergence of new social problems in relation to the changing perception of children (through the re-discovery of poverty and the spectre of juvenile delinquency), the failure of the Children's Rights movement, the ending of progressive primary education, and the hostility of the New Left to many of the values of old style social democracy.


1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Denver ◽  
Hugh Bochel

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was perhaps the nearest thing to a ‘flash’ party seen in British politics in modern times. It was formed in March 1981, largely on the initiative of four leading figures in the Labour party (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rogers), following the apparent success of the left in dominating the party, and initially it had a sensational impact on British politics. It had thirty MPs by March 1982 (mostly as a result of defections by Labour MPs); in alliance with the Liberals it immediately went to first place in the opinion polls and stayed in that position until May 1982. The Alliance won four by-elections between 1981 and 1983, and in the 1983 general election, with 25.4 per cent of the vote, came within two points of ousting Labour from its second place. For the next four years the Alliance held its position and in the 1987 election its vote fell only slightly to 22.6 per cent.


1956 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chushichi Tsuzuki

The Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain came into existence as the result of the “impossibilist revolt” of 1900–1904. The “revolt” was a movement of a few hundred socialists within the Social Democratic Federation, itself a social revolutionary party with a membership of only a few thousands. The absence of widespread support for any of these revolutionary movements in a country whose political tradition has remained predominantly constitutional accounts for the fact that the crisis inside the S.D.F., and with it the origins of the S.L.P. and the S.P.G.B. themselves have been consigned to obscurity in the history of British Socialism.


2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
Reiner Tosstorff

This is a very useful bibliographical tool produced by the efforts of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). This association comprises more than one hundred archives, libraries and research centers all over the world, though the vast majority are located in Europe, and not all of them have the same importance, reflecting the geographical and political unevenness of socialism's history. This particular volume aims to list all the publications of the social-democratic internationals after 1914, i.e. from the time of the political split due to the support for World War I by most social-democratic parties. This means that the left-wing, beginning with the Kienthal-Zimmerwald movement during the war and leading to the “Communist International” from 1919 on, is not represented here. But also left-wing splits from social democracy in later years, as in the 1930s with the “London Bureau” of left-wing socialist parties (and also the Bureau's predecessors) are excluded here, as they openly campaigned against social democracy. Also, a few international workers' institutions (mainly in the cultural field) that had been founded before 1914, but tried to maintain their independence after 1914 faced with the political split, are therefore not listed as well.


Author(s):  
Alan M. Wald

A history of Irving Howe and Dissent magazine is used to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social democratic alternative that became the Left wing of the New York intellectuals during the 1950s. This is followed by an examination of the life and work of Harvey Swados, which also express the ambiguities that would render this tradition problematic during the era of new radicalization in the 1960s.


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