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‘Fire, fire’, be it in Noah’s Flood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

David Marquand
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Extract

IT IS A COMMONPLACE THAT BRITISH POLITICS ARE AT PRESENT less consensual, and more polarized ideologically, than they have been for a generation. It is also a commonplace that the ideological polarization of the 1980s has its roots in the economic and political failures of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1985, pp. 504 - 521
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 Namier, L.B., Avenues of History, London, 1952, pp. 2–3 Google Scholar.

2 Sober examples of the genre are to be found in King, Anthony (ed.), Why is Britain Becoming Harder to Govern?, London, 1976 Google Scholar; more lurid examples are Moss, Robert, The Collapse of Democracy, London, 1975 Google Scholar; Haseler, Stephen, The Death of British Democracy, London, 1976 Google Scholar.

3 For the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, admittedly in a different context, see Bulpitt, J., Territory and Power in the United Kingdom, Manchester, 1983 Google Scholar.

4 Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven and London, 1982 Google Scholar.

5 Or corporatism? But, despite the vast literature on it, the notion is still imprecise. (For a critique see Martin, Ross M., ‘Pluralism and the New Corporation’, Political Studies, vol. XXXI, No. 1, 1983 Google Scholar.) Many usages, moreover, spring ultimately from a Marxist or quasi‐Marxist conception of the nature of class relations under ‘capitalism’, which I do not share. (See, in particular, the seminal Schmitter, Philippe C. and Lehmbruch, Gerhard (eds), Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation, Beverly Hills, 1979 Google Scholar.)

6 Representative talkers include Benn, Tony, Arguments for Socialism, 1980 Google Scholar; Holland, Stuart, The Socialist Challenge, London, 1975 Google Scholar; Meacher, Michael, Socialism with a Human Face: The Political Economy of Britain in the 1980s, London, 1982 Google Scholar.

7 Keynes, J.M., The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill, London, 1925, p. 23 Google Scholar.

8 For a robust expression of this view, see Hayek, F.A., 1980s Unemployment and the Unions, Hobart Paper 87, London, 1980 Google Scholar.

9 Estimates vary, of course. For a good summary see Riddell, Peter, The Thatcher Government, London, 1983, pp. 91–92 Google Scholar.

10 For the 1930s, see Runciman, W.G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, 1966 Google Scholar.

11 Layard, Richard, More jobs, less inflation: the case for an inflation tax, London, 1982 Google Scholar; Meade, J.E., Wage‐Fixing, London, 1982 Google Scholar.

12 See, in particular, Gamble, Andrew, Britain in Decline, London, 1981 Google Scholar; Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 231–358 Google Scholar; Levine, A.L., Industrial Retardation in Britain 1880‐1914, London, 1967 Google Scholar; Leys, Colin, Politics in Britain, London, 1982 Google Scholar; Mant, Alistair, The Rise and Fall of the British Manager, London, 1979 Google Scholar; Pavitt, Keith (ed.), Technical Innovation and British Economic Performance, London, 1980 Google Scholar; Perkin, Harold, The Making of English Society, 1780–1880, London, 1969 Google Scholar; Weiner, Martin J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, Cambridge, 1981 Google Scholar.

13 Notably, of course, Crosland, C.A.R., The Future of Socialism, London, 1956 Google Scholar.

14 Currie, Robert, Industrial Politics, Oxford, 1979 Google Scholar.

15 Metcalfe, Les and McQuillan, Will, ‘Corporatism or Industrial Democracy?’, Political Studies, vol. XXVII, no. 2, 1979, pp. 266–82Google Scholar; Grant, W. and Marsh, D., The Confederation of British Industry, London, 1977 Google Scholar; Coombes, David, Representative Government and Economic Power, London, 1982 Google Scholar.

16 Olson, op. cit., pp. 47–53.

17 Middlemas, Keith, Politics in Industrial Society, The Experience of the British System since 1911, London, 1979 Google Scholar.

18 Cawson, Alan, Corporatism and Welfare, London, 1982, pp. 105–12Google Scholar; and ‘Functional representation and democratic politics: towards a corporatist democracy?’ in Duncan, Graeme (ed.), Democratic theory and practice, Cambridge, 1983 Google Scholar.

19 Beer, Samuel, Modern British Politics: Parties and Pressure groups in the Collective Age, second edition, London, 1982, pp. 71–79 Google Scholar.

20 Mackintosh, John, ‘Taming the Barons’, in Marquand, David (ed.), John P. Mackintosh on Parliament and Social Democracy, London, 1982 Google Scholar; Gilmour, Ian, Britain Can Work, Oxford, 1983, pp. 186–220 Google Scholar. For a useful summary of other proposals of the same sort see Coombes, David, op. cit., pp. 128–47Google Scholar.

21 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin edition, London, 1982, p. 135 Google Scholar.

22 For the ‘Old Whig’ view, see Samuel Beer, op, cit., pp. 9–22.

23 Cole, G.D.H., Guild Socialism re‐stated, London, 1921 Google Scholar; Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain; Eustace Percy, first Baron Percy of Newcastle, Democracy on trial: a preface to an industrial policy, London, 1931 Google Scholar.