Jeremy Nuttall

Tony Crosland and the many falls and rises of British social democracy

There is a widely accepted declinist chronology of the career of Tony Crosland. It charts the increasing irrelevance of his ideas since his supposed revisionist magnum opus, The Future of Socialism(1956). This article suggests this narrative overrates the 1956 book, and underrates the continuing relevance of Croslands later approach, including his adherence to the Rawlsian concept of ‘democratic equality’, and his optimistic, synthesising approach to political ideas. It also overlooks the fact that many ‘progressive’ developments, such as an increase in the political and social status of education in Britain, which was evident while Crosland was Secretary of State for Education in the 1960s, have intensified since his death in 1977. This has implications for the wider narrative of post-war British social democracy, which also stresses decline from the high point of the 1940s and 1950s onwards. Croslands example points to a more nuanced chronology. Instead of the history of social democracy being a story of rise and fall, it is one of many falls and rises in different progressive indicators at different times, with no overall picture of social democratic decline evident by the end of the 1970s.

Pluralism, the people, and time in Labour party history, 1931-1964

Observing the increasing, yet still partial exploration of pluralism, complexity and multiplicity in recent Labour party historiography, this article pursues a pluralist approach to Labour on two central, related themes of its middle-century evolution. First, it probes the plurality of Labours different conceptions of time, specifically how it lived with the ambiguity of simultaneously viewing social progress as both immediate and rapidly achievable, yet also long term and strewn with constraints. This co-existence of multiple time-frames highlights the partys uncertainty and ideological multi-dimensionality, especially in its focus both on relatively rapid economic or structural transformation, and on much more slow-moving cultural, ethical, and educational change. It also complicates neat characterizations of particular phases in the partys history, challenging straightforwardly declinist views of the post-1945–51 period. Secondly, time connects to Labours view of the people. Whilst historians have debated between positive and negative perceptions of the people, here the plural, split mind of Labour about the progressive potential of the citizenry is stressed, one closely intertwined with its multiple outlook on how long socialism would take. Contrasts are also suggested between the time-frames and expectations under which Labour and the Conservatives operated.

Equality and freedom: The single, the multiple and the synthesis in Labour Party thought since the 1930s

This article examines the ways in which Labours thinkers and leading politicians since the 1930s were attracted to single and to multiple explanations and solutions. The writing of historians and political philosophers on the Labour Partys thought has tended to focus on thinkers’ approach to particular values, especially equality, or to the relationship and prioritisation between specific values, such as equality and freedom. This article, in contrast, explores not the values themselves but to what extent one single value (or one single explanation of social problems or one single policy prescription) was deemed to be special or sufficient, and also when and why single answers were deemed insufficient and in need of broadening through the embrace of multiple (that is several or various) values and explanations, and the adoption of certain syntheses of these. The article, then, is concerned with ideological dimensions and breadth more than ideological content. In being so, the article seeks to facilitate scrutiny of a variety of often neglected aspects of the history of Labours thought, including the roles of simplicity, complexity and the mundane. In particular it examines the claim of some socialists to be pursuing radicalism or progress through the range of their values and not only through fidelity to particular individual values. The article additionally asserts that the focus on the content of ideas and assumptions to the frequent exclusion of analysis of those ideas’ breadth and dimensions is also a feature of historical writing on modern Britain more generally.