Abstract
At the 1970 general election, until three days before polling, most commentators agreed that (in England at least) politics was relegated in interest and coverage to the football world cup. What does this tell historians of political culture? Since the election night results also won sizeable viewing figures, as much as anything, this bore out the cultural pre-eminence of television. It could point to the alleged comparative stability of British politics that impressed political scientists in the early 1960s or alleviate Crosland’s anxieties about high levels of participation? It was not as if, as in the modern parable of Jose Saramago’s novel Seeing, the population withdraws consent by casting blank ballots in elections, there was either mass discontent with or interest in British politics. It surely also illuminates politics’ slight presence in everyday life and popular culture.1
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Notes
D. Butler, M. Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London, 1971), pp.154, 201, 226–228, 337;
J. Saramago, Seeing (London, 2006).
G. Ortolano, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, 2009);
D. Edgerton Warfare State (Cambridge, 2005); J. Tomlinson, ‘Thrice denied: “Declinism” as a recurrent theme in British history in the long 20th Century’, Twentieth Century British History 20:2 (2009).
M. Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth Century Britain (Cambridge, 2003);
J. Lawrence, Electing Our Masters (Oxford, 2009);
N. Crowson, M. Hilton, J. McKay (eds), NGOs in Contemporary Britain (Basingstoke, 2009).
J. Moran, Queuing for Beginners (London, 2008).
B. Harrison, Seeking a Role (Oxford, 2009), pp.523–526.
See E.H.H. Green, Thatcher (London, 2006);
B. Campbell, The Iron Ladies (London, 1987);
J. Curran, I. Gaber, J. Petley, Culture Wars (Edinburgh, 2005);
G. Eley, Forging Democracy (Oxford, 2002);
I. Crewe, A. King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford, 1995);
G. Andrews, Endgames and New Times (London, 2004).
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London, 1973); Curran, Gaber, Petley, Culture Wars, ch.1; R. Lowe, ‘Life begins in the seventies’, Journal of Contemporary History 42:1 (2007);
S. Wagg, Because I Tell a Joke or Two (London, 1998), ch.13.
R. King, N. Nugent (eds), Respectable Rebels (London, 1979);
R. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures (Oxford, 1998), chs.III, V.
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© 2010 Lawrence Black
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Black, L. (2010). Conclusions. In: Redefining British Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250475_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250475_8
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