Ideology, socialism and the everyday: forgotten lessons from the inter-war years?

Abstract

One of the great contributions of the Journal of Political Ideologies to the study of politics has been the emphasis it has given to recovering lost ideological traditions or subtraditions. With regard to the recent history of the United Kingdom, contributions to the Journal have long argued that there is far greater ideological complexity in British politics than is usually credited and that analysis of this complexity might throw up powerful arguments for contemporary political argument. In this essay, I take inspiration from that notion in order to establish whether a lost tradition of twentieth century British socialist thinking – that associated with a series of inter-war and mid-century thinkers who were sceptical of both modernism and the state – might throw new light on the failings of recent British Labour ideology, especially that associated with Ed Miliband’s failed attempt to secure victory in the 2015 general election. The essay contends that the arguments of these earlier thinkers – and especially their obsession with crafting a ‘socialism of the everyday’ – could have provided a vital warning to Miliband’s Labour, had it chosen to heed it.

Notes

1. M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

2. For a thorough discussion of these trends, see M. Freeden, ‘Practising Ideologies and Ideological Practices’, Political Studies, 48 (2000), pp. 302–322.

3. For an overview of the 2015 election and its aftermath, see P. Cowley and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2015 (London: Palgrave, 2016).

4. See C. Crouch, Post-Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004) and C. Crouch, ‘The March Towards Post-Democracy Ten Years On’, Political Quarterly 87 (2016) pp. 71–5.

5. See M. Glasman, J. Rutherford, M. Stears and S. White (Eds), The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2010), available at https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/book/labour-tradition-and-politics-paradox.

6. See M. Stears, ‘Guild socialism’ in M. Bevir (Ed.), Modern Pluralism: Anglo-American Debates since 1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 40–60.

7. For examples see N. Pearce and B. Honig, ‘The optimistic agonist’, Juncture 19 (2013), pp. 34–41; G. Eaton, George Eaton, ‘Danielle Allen: labour’s new heavyweight’, New Statesman, 6 December 2012, available at https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/12/danielle-allen-labour’s-new-heavyweight

8. See E. Goes, The Labour Party under Ed Miliband: Trying But Failing to Renew Social Democracy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

9. See J. Denham (Ed.), The Shape of Things to Come (London: Fabian Society, 2011).

10. See J. Cruddas and J. Rutherford, One Nation: Labour’s Political Renewal (London: One Nation Register, 2014).

11. For a retrospective, see J. Cruddas and J. Rutherford, ‘There are no easy answers’, New Statesman, 20 May 2015, available at https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/there-are-no-easy-answers-labours-defeat.

12. See Cruddas and Rutherford, op. cit., Ref. 10.

13. For scholarly equivalents of this childhood hobby, see B. Highmore, Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).

14. For the transcript of the exchange, see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/28/gordon-brown-gillian-duffy-transcript.

15. See D. Axelrod, Believer: My Forty Years (New York: Penguin, 2015).

16. See P. Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing-Out of Western Democracy (London: Versom, 2013).

17. See D. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v Board of Education (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004).

18. For excellent overviews, see S. Fielding, P. Thompson and N. Tiratsoo, England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995) and J. Fyrth (Ed.), Labour’s Promised Land? Culture and Society in Labour Britain, 1945–51 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995).

19. D. Thomas, ‘Memories of Christmas’ in R. Maud (Ed.), On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts (New York: New Directions, 1991), p. 21.

20. Thomas, ibid.

21. For a useful overview, see J. Esty, A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). For examples, see G. Orwell, Coming Up for Air (London: Penguin, 1991); J. B. Priestley, English Journey (London: Penguin, 1979); L. Lee, Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year (London: Penguin, 2016); D. Thomas, The Dylan Thomas Omnibus (London: Phoenix, 1995).

22. See M. Stears, ‘Death shall have no dominion: humanism, realism and agonism in Virginia Woolf and Dylan Thomas’, Contemporary Political Theory 13 (2014), pp. 193–208.

23. B. Jones, The Unsophisticated Arts (London: The Architectural Press, 1951).

24. Jones, ibid, pp. 11–12.

25. D. Thomas, ‘The festival exhibition, 1951’ in Thomas, op. cit. Ref. 19, p. 306.

26. See H. Laski, Will Planning Restrict Freedom? (London: The Architectural Press, 1945). For a discussion, see M. Stears, Progressives, Pluralists and the Problems of the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 263–75.

27. See B. Jackson, Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

28. For powerful discussion of this general trend and its potential alternatives, see P. Rosanvallon, The Society of Equals (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) and J. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

29. See F. Faucher-King and P. Le Gales, The New Labour Experiment: Change and Reform Under Blair and Brown (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2010) and P. Mandelson and R. Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).