Abstract
British politics have in the last ten years been marked by a considerable revival of ideological argument about fundamental political values and principles. While it is of course true that differences between political parties have been profound, nevertheless most commentators have tended to argue that from the late 1940s to the early 1970s there was a consensus about the fundamental parameters of the post-war political settlement: an acceptance of the welfare state, the mixed economy managed by Keynesian techniques, a duty on the government to secure ‘full’ employment, combined with low rates of inflation, and economic growth. Of course, within this broad ‘Butskellite’ consensus (a term of art combining the name of Hugh Gaitskell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government of 1951 and R. A. Butler, Chancellor in the subsequent Conservative government) parties had different priorities: Labour seeking to extend the services of the welfare state and the boundaries of the public sector, the Conservatives placing more emphasis on private consumption rather than public expenditure and the ‘social wage’.
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Guide to Further Reading
A. Wolfe, The Limits of Legitamcy, (Collier-Macmillan, 1977)
R. Rose and G. Peters, Can Government go Bankrupt? (Macmillan, 1978)
M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (Methuen, 1962)
S. Brittan, ‘Hayek, the New Right and the Crisis of Social Democracy’, Encounter (1980)
H. Drucker, Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party (Allen & Unwin, 1979)
B. Crick, In Defence of Politics, 2nd edn (Penguin, 1982)
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© 1983 Paul Arthur, Nick Bosanquet, Paul Byrne, Henry Drucker, Patrick Dunleavy, Andrew Gamble, Martin Holmes, Martin Kettle, Joni Lovenduski, Peter Nailor, Gillian Peele, Raymond Plant, R. A. W. Rhodes
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Plant, R. (1983). The Resurgence of Ideology. In: Drucker, H., Dunleavy, P., Gamble, A., Peele, G. (eds) Developments in British Politics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17587-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17587-1_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-38646-0
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