EQ 6 : How new was New Labour’s ‘New Britain’?

‘New Labour’s’ 1997 election manifesto promised a ‘New Britain’ and much language and expense was again made constructing a ‘Modern Britain’ for a new millennium. But how successful was this endeavour? Big and at the time seemingly irreversible political shifts occurred both at Westminster and in Northern Ireland. British foreign policy gained a new language – adopted from Washington – of a ‘war on terror’ that energised wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. British society – according to Blair himself in his 2007 leaving speech– had become more tolerant, liberal, and multicultural at the same time as it had introduced greater state powers to punish, imprison and deport those living here. How fair an interpretation was Blair’s of the previous ten years. What was the ‘New Britain’ he had helped construct and how new was it?

1. How did New Labour seek to ’reconstitute’ Britain?

2. How successful was Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer?

3. How much of a ‘New Britain’ did ‘New Labour’ deliver?

4. Were the Conservatives simply unelectable after 1997?

5. Who or what can take most credit for the Good Friday Agreement?

6. How typical was the experience of Tower Hamlets under New Labour?

7. How far was 9/11 a turning point in foreign policy under New Labour?

In the first enquiry of our course, we specifically consider the different nature of change and continuity in Britain during a period ostensibly characterised as one of continued Conservative political dominance. Not all change is the same. Neither is all continuity. Students need a language to articulate this complexity and in this enquiry they are provided with it.

Between 1951 and 1964, Britain was ruled by successive Conservative Governments. Instead in exploring important first order concepts – such as race, colonialism, sexuality, gender, stop-go economics, class, deference, the establishment – we are invited to consider the extent to which more hidden traces of change can be identified in the sources and events of the time. Although many of the events covered – such as the Suez Crisis, the Notting Hill riots and the Profumo Affair – can be seen as expositions of a changing or ‘modernising’ Britain – we use our first-order concepts to ask what type of change this was. Was it a transformation or merely a revision? What survived and what stabilised? Were there any advances and did anything worsen? In short, How far was Modern Britain being remade in this period and what was the pace and extent of that change?

1. Why were the Conservatives able to dominate for thirteen years?

2. Did Britain’s post-war economy really boom?

3. Did British society remain largely unchanged by 1964?

4. Had Britain really ‘lost an empire but failed to find a role’ by 1964?

Factual / Non-Fiction

• White Tribe
  https://www.channel4.com/programmes/white-tribe
  Darcus Howe travels the length and breadth of the country to find out why the English don't seem to want to be English any more

Fictional

Films/TV Series

• This Is England '90
  https://www.channel4.com/programmes/this-is-england-90
  Lol, Woody, Shaun and the gang are back for the final chapter of Shane Meadows' award-winning series