Social Democracy and Labourism (original) (raw)
Related papers
New Labour, Neo-Liberalism and Social Democracy
Soundings, 2006
For too long arguments about New Labour across the broad left have remained at a polemical level. The claims and counter-claims are familiar (we heard them a lot during the recent election). On the one hand: privatisation, flexible labour markets, and the feting of business; on the other: regenerated communities, real reductions in child and pensioner poverty, and unprecedented investment in public services. All is adduced as evidence of, respectively, the government’s fundamentally “neo-liberal” or authentically “social democratic” character. The fascinating debate now unfolding in Soundings, following the publication of Stuart Hall’s breakthrough analysis, shows real signs of taking us beyond this impasse, and moving us closer to, if not a conclusive identification of the “essence” of New Labour, at least a more sophisticated discussion of how its various elements are articulated.
Poverty and social justice in the devolved Scotland: neoliberalism meets social democracy?
Social Policy and Society, 2009
Drawing on current debates in social policy, this paper considers the extent to which social justice has and is informing social policy making in devolved Scotland. Relating to the work of social justice theorists Young, Fraser and Lister in particular, it critically examines some key Scottish social policy measures since 1999, considering some of the ways in which these have been constructed in terms of social justice and which make claims to the Scottish national. Through a focus on the issue of anti-poverty policies, the paper explores the ways in which the dominant policy approaches of the Scottish Government have reflected an uneven and tension-loaded balance between the enduring legacies of Scottish social democracy and the influences of neoliberal economics.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
ABSTRACTThis paper presents an alternative interpretation of Scottish politics between 1945 and 1970, a period that witnessed the decline of a once-powerful Unionist tradition, the revival of Liberalism and the rise of the Scottish National party (SNP). While existing accounts have focused principally upon social and economic factors, this study foregrounds the role of ideology and rhetoric. During the 1940s and early 1950s, Scottish Unionists were, like their Conservative colleagues elsewhere in Britain, able to construct a popular, but essentially negative, anti-socialist coalition that prioritised the defence of individual liberty. This electoral alliance, defined by opposition to Labour's programme of nationalisation and expressed via an individualist idiom, was able to attract broad support; it was, however, always provisional, and proved increasingly difficult to sustain after the Conservative party returned to office in 1951. It was, this paper suggests, the fragmenting o...
Territory, Politics, Governance , 2020
In recent years, the Scottish Labour Party has lost its once dominant position in Scottish politics. Its support has collapsed, and it now faces multiple political challenges, relating both to cleavages in Scottish politics over the constitution and Brexit, and to divisions within the party over its leadership and direction. Employing semi- structured elite interviews with key figures within the party hierarchy and focus groups with grassroots activists, this paper examines the causes of this crisis through an analysis of party members’ views. It identifies sources of the decline of Scottish Labour in unresolved disagreements over strategy and identity. Unable to coalesce around a distinctly Scottish strategy for competing in a multidimensional, multilevel political space with both civic nationalist challengers and conservative defenders of the constitutional status quo, in 2017, Scottish Labour reasserted a class-based identity, seeking to compete largely on the left–right economic dimension of politics. Instead of marking out a Scottish political identity, the Scottish Labour Party chose leftward national alignment with the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the UK Labour Party. The electoral and political failure of this strategy offers important lessons for understanding the prospects of multilevel social-democratic parties.
British social democracy beyond New Labour: Entrenching a progressive consensus
The British Journal of Politics & International …, 2007
Social democrats are seeking a project beyond New Labour's dwindling Third Way. In particular, they have seized on the idea of a 'progressive consensus' as a means of entrenching a deeper, cultural shift in British society on centre-left terms. This article assesses the potential of social democratic responses to New Labour for fulfilling this task. 'Traditional' and 'modernising' perspectives are identified, each of which have a positive and critical variant. The criticalmodernising approach emerges with the greatest potential for moving beyond the New Labour project. Critical-modernisers operate on the Third Way's analytical terrain-recognising the stillchanging operating environment of the centre-left. However, they seek simultaneously to develop a political narrative that is distinct from the Third Way. In order to achieve this latter objective, the normative heritage of more traditional approaches remains a key resource for critical-modernisers, as they seek to show how more recognisably social democratic themes can resonate with a rapidly changing social context.
Who rules Scotland? Neoliberalism, the Scottish ruling class and its intellectuals
Neoliberal Scotland: Class and Society in a Stateless Nation, 2010
This chapter examines changes in the composition of the ruling class of Scotland over the past two decades, showing how it has changed, but also how the dominant ways of thinking about it-particularly those whose primary focus has been with the national question-have maintained by either omission or commission that neoliberalism has somehow passed Scotland by.
We've never had it so good': The 'problem'of the working class in devolved Scotland
Critical Social Policy, 2006
Class has become the social condition that dare not it speak its name in the devolved Scotland. This is despite the persistence of marked class divisions and structured inequalities within contemporary Scottish society. We critically examine the most empirically sophisticated and coherent analysis of social class in Scotland, that provided by 'the Edinburgh school' of social scientists, particularly their claim that Scotland is now a prosperous, 'professional society' where only a small but significant minority are trapped in poverty. This paper further considers the extent to which 'devolution', and the dominant 2 representations to which it has given rise, serve to generate a series of other myths in which class is both devalued but simultaneously mobilised in the negative portrayal of some of the most disadvantaged sections of the working class. Against an emerging, home-grown view of 'New Scotland' as a prosperous 'Smart, Successful Scotland', poverty and wealth inequalities continue to be a necessary feature of the division of labour. In Scotland, as elsewhere, class remains the pivot-point around which much of social policy is encoded and enacted.
Social Justice, Social Welfare and Devolution: Nationalism and Social Policy Making in Scotland
2011
Constitutional change in the UK in 1998 led to the establishment of devolution for Scotland, and the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in 1999 after a gap of nearly 300 years. Devolution promised the development of policies that were more in tune with 'Scottish needs', and was heralded as delivering 'Scottish solutions for Scottish problems'. Now with a Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) Government in power in Edinburgh committed to greater devolution for Scotland and with a goal of full independence for Scotland, it is timely to assess the ways in which the SNP have approach the question of social policy -and more specifically poverty and inequality. While key areas of social welfare policy, notable in relation to benefits, employment policy and most areas of taxation remain reserved to the UK parliament in London, the Scottish Parliament enjoys powers over most areas of social policy as they affect Scotland: health, housing, education, community development, regeneration and criminal justice. This paper considers some of the main influences on SNP policy making, and in particular explores its concern to develop policies that promote solidarity, cohesion and fairness. However, these are secondary to a strategy which promotes economic growth and Scottish economic competitiveness. The paper also considers the importance of nationalism for the analysis of social welfare arguing that social policy making is often central to nation building, and particularly so in the context of multi-national devolution of the kind that has developed in the UK and elsewhere in recent times.