No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Setting Scene: Labour, Old Anxieties IN WAYS ECHOING THE LATE-VICTORIAN TRANSITION FROM THE 19TH TO THE 20TH century, late-modern anxieties of fin-de-siecle and new-century Britain [1] coalesce around themes of exclusion, fear of crime, and questions about morality and waywardness of young people. Sociopolitical images of falling standards and a decline in moral are commonly expressed in otherwise competing discourses of new government and Conservative opposition, and find further representation in news features and editorials, TV documentaries and talk shows. The recurrence of such perceptions is now well established (Pearson, 1983) and hence we should, perhaps, not be surprised to see them ascendant again. However, for many people, it was hoped that a new government, elected with a dramatic majority in 1997, would bring a new political vision. Intimations were that New Labour (as it had restyled itself) would be committed to addressing exclusion and social wrongs and to championing justice and human rights. As political parties and media sta rt to prepare for next election, this essay reviews aspects of Labour's period of office, particularly in relation to criminal justice, and places developments and debates in recent historical, as well as comparative, contexts. Since early 1980s, complex concerns have repeatedly been addressed by Conservative and now administrations through appeals to nostalgia and promises to recreate safety, security, and reasons to feel good of earlier decades (Young, 1999: 49-50). The Conservatives promised a Back to Basics return to moral values of a settled, orderly, and consensual past, but then faced an embarrassment of rich news stories about moral failings of senior members of their own government. Under Labour, Prime Minister Tony Blair has shown a fondness for speeches that political commentators compare to kind of moralizing sermons one would expect to hear from Church pulpit -- satisfyingly reassuring that values are still important, but nonthreatening in their implications for converted of congregation. Perhaps intended for a different audience, early on in its administration, Labour's spin doctors and supportive media promoted vision of a new Cool Britannia, an idea har king back to an earlier period, 1960s. This was a time when postwar renewal was achieved and now Britain was experiencing cultural excitement and economic prosperity, coupled with (measured and controlled) liberal reforms, all of which reflected well on government of day. It is obviously attractive to political parties to find that they can woo voters with comforting promises of a return to less-troubled times. Even Labour's declaration that it is party of modernization carefully adds that this is to be achieved by valuing and building upon strengths of tradition. Such promises are contradictory and unrealistic. They appeal to images of past that are now so reconstructed by memory and media that these have become edited versions of history, repackaged by a thriving nostalgia industry (McQuire, 1997). Inevitably, realities of crime and victimization in here and now remain unchanged, and invariably governments--of Right and now Left--turn to calls for more policing, law, punishment as the answer. This policy prescription for crime control represents one of clearest areas in which political convergence between Right and Left has occurred in British politics. In 1997, at his first Party Conference as home secretary of new government, Jack Straw told delegates: We said we would make party of law and order. And we did. Since this title had previously been proud claim of Conservative governments of 1980s and early 1990s, some on Left complained that they could see little difference between criminal justice policies of new government and those of their predecessors. …
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 50 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.