History, heritage and tradition in contemporary British politics explores the different stories political parties tell us about British history and about their own historical roles. It examines archives, written histories and commemorations and focuses in particular on a number of explicit negotiations over historical narratives. These include the disputes over the National Curriculum for History, the assertion of a ‘lost’ social democratic tradition by the SDP and New Labour, Conservative attempts to re-assess their historical position in 1997 and the collapse of the Communist Party of Great ... More

History, heritage and tradition in contemporary British politics explores the different stories political parties tell us about British history and about their own historical roles. It examines archives, written histories and commemorations and focuses in particular on a number of explicit negotiations over historical narratives. These include the disputes over the National Curriculum for History, the assertion of a ‘lost’ social democratic tradition by the SDP and New Labour, Conservative attempts to re-assess their historical position in 1997 and the collapse of the Communist Party of Great Britain's narrative memory in 1988-91. These episodes are examined as a process of negotiation between grassroots members and party leaders in which understandings of the past determined the options for the future. The book fuses scholarship on British political parties, collective memory, historical theory and heritage studies. It traces the decline of ideologically distinct approaches to history and argues that although the political past is no longer seen to make demands on the present- either of conservative duty or radical obligation- this is in line with wider social attitudes which see the past as an affirmation of the present, rather than as a legacy which can be honoured or betrayed. It shows how history, heritage and tradition are used to present parliamentary politics as intrinsically ‘historic’ and suggests that the disappearance of active political pasts leaves contemporary politicians unable to speak of radically different futures.