The art of the possible: Politics and governance in modern British history, 18851997: Essays in memory of Duncan Tanner
The art of the possible: Politics and governance in modern British history, 18851997: Essays in memory of Duncan Tanner
Professor of History and Head of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion
Senior Lecturer in History and Dean of Arts and Humanities
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Abstract
‘Die Politik’, Bismarck is reputed to have said, ‘ist die Lehre von Möglichen’. Translated as ‘politics is the art of the possible’, this phrase captures neatly the pragmatism that has been at the heart of modern British approaches to the art of government. It is not as though ideology has not, occasionally, loomed large in political debate. Conviction certainly has a respectable pedigree in explaining the attachments, destinies and ultimate fate of some politicians. But success in British politics has come most readily to those who have been flexible, responsive to the shifting mood of the electorate of the day, able to anticipate how social and economic changes may reconstitute the terms of debate, and how through their own words and writings they themselves may help to constitute political meaning. This volume explores some of the major transitions, opportunities and false dawns of modern British political history. Chronologically its span runs from the first general election to be conducted under the terms of the Third Reform Act, with an extensive (if still incomplete) adult male electorate, through to the 1997 referenda in favour of devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales. This was the period in which British politicians most obviously addressed a mass, British-wide electorate, seeking national approval for policies and programmes to be enacted on a UK-wide basis. In covering this period and this theme the volume as a whole engages with the scholarly legacy of Duncan Tanner.
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Front Matter
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Introduction: Duncan Tanner and the art of the possible: understanding politics and governance in modern British history
Chris Williams
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1
The making and remaking of ‘common sense’ about British economic policy
Peter Clarke
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2
The ‘Big State’ versus the ‘Big Society’ in twentieth-century Britain
Pat Thane
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3
‘One meaning blots out another’? Liberals and Labour in the East Midlands coalfield
David Howell
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4
Cartooning the rise of Labour, 1900–21
Chris Williams
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5
Novels for ‘thinking people’: Fiction and the inter-war broad left
Steven Fielding
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6
Myth and counter-myth in Second World War British politics
Andrew Thorpe
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7
Labour, nationalism and the problem of Welsh devolution, c.1939–64
Andrew Edwards
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8
Defending the constitution: The Conservative party and the idea of devolution, 1945–74
Matthew Cragoe
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9
Public and private languages of ‘class’ in the Luton by-election of 1963
Jon Lawrence
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10
Community and the Labour left in 1970s London
John Davis
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11
Labour, the Union and the rebirth of Welsh devolution
Mari Elin Wiliam
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End Matter
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