This essay will address whether New Labour contained policies with which it wished to pursue, or was solely developed in order to win elections. It is important to realise whether a political party that held office for approximately 13 years only possessed the goal of winning elections, or promoted policies which it wished to pursue. If a party that held no substance was governing for 13 years, it would be unfair to the people. New Labour was designed to win elections, but still contained policies which it wished to pursue. To adequately defend this thesis, one must look at the re-branding steps taken by New Labour and the new policies the party was going to pursue. Through analysis, it will be shown that New Labour promoted policies in regards …show more content…
The Labour Party had lost the previous four elections, had an identity crisis, and was plagued by party in-fighting. The party had a choice of continuing to represent the working class and not win elections, or reform in order to win elections. The party chose to rebrand to appeal to liberal voters as a whole including the working class. The original constitution for the Labour Party was written in 1918, and clause four defined the goals and values of the party. The original clause four promoted, “common ownership of means of production, distribution, and exchange…”. One can see that Labour was originally a party for the working class. Labour wanted to protect the worker not the business, and was established as a class party. New Labour took many actions to appeal to a broader base, and amending clause four is the most iconic. The clause was amended in the mid 1990’s, and became much broader by using wishy washy language. Instead of calling for ownership of means of production and distribution, it instead called for broad policies that promote centre left progressive policies. The change to clause four separated New Labour from …show more content…
However, New Labour had substance in regards to their stance on constitutional reform. As Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch point out in Exploring British Politics, the New Labour ideals covered four main areas of constitutional reform; rights, modernsation, democratization, and decentralization. Labour never regarded constitutional reform as important, but it became important after Thatcher and her policies. New Labour wanted to promote the importance of the institutions and
It must be considered when viewing the achievements of Labour that in 1924, the Labour government was not in a position to push ahead with radical policies, as a minority in the house of commons a Conservative vote and abstinence of a liberal support would have brought the government down. A heavy reliance on the liberals existed in the first labour government which some argue restricted them heavily, policies such as nationalisation and disarmament had no chance of being implemented. Also due to its reliance on the Liberals its relationship with trade unions was damaged as they felt they were not being represented as well as promised. To labour this was a large problem as trade unions provided most of their funds, however to be too sympathetic to the unions would make it difficult to project an image of their party as genuinely national. Labour theorised that a gradual series of changes would be more beneficial to their aims, and using their rise to power in 24 as foundation stone to prove their capability in government, their socialist views were still present, however were a realistic take on Labours ability to bring change to Britain, which was at this point vastly limited.
The conservative party has been in existence since the 1670s and was first called the ‘Tories’, a term used by the Scottish and Irish to describe a robber. This party is a right- wing party which believed in conserving the tradition and the king, as the name entails. David Cameron, the current party leader became the leader in 2005. He is also the present prime minister of Great Britain and he has made a lot of changes since he became the leader of the party. In this essay, I will talk about the history of the party, looking into detail at their gradual changes or transition in ideology and the various changes that David Cameron has made to the party’s image and beliefs.
The Working Class felt further disillusioned and underrepresented by the current government by the Taff Vale case where Trade Unions could from then on be sued for ...
In the run up to the election therefore the Liberals won the working class support. It was perhaps the working class who had the biggest effect on the result of the election, this proved to be in favour of the Liberal Party.
To determine where the ideas behind the New Deal fit this paper will examine core areas within the new deal ranging from American Politics to economic roles of the New Deal including `Big Government' and `Big Labour'. It will also examine the New Deal's ideas concerning the environment, states, agriculture and social welfare.
In conclusion, it is for sure that the competitive party systems give a plenty of advantages in case of the improvements in the political, economic and civic welfares. But the modern party competition is not based solely on the ideology competition in many states, particularly in those developed countries with the long-standing democracies (USA, UK, most European countries). The facts in support of this argument are next: the changing proportion of mass-cadre parties, globalization, the increasing role of mass media, the domination of the middle class. In this essay the definition of the party, party systems was provided. The arguments for the main conclusion were represented and discussed in detail what resulted in the aforementioned conclusion.
...es adopted immediately after the war it is clear that they were highly influenced by the Beveridge report. Mainly so through the implementation of Beveridge’s assumptions of the provision of family allowances, the creation of National Insurance and the implementation of a comprehensive health service. The Beveridge report further influenced the social reforms of Labour by providing a list of evils to be eradicated to which the Atlee’s government acted upon with varied success. To conclude, it is a fact that although the actual systems implemented diverged over the years from the model contained in the Beveridge report, the sheer impact that Beveridge had in shaping the post war welfare state was profound. In any case, without Beveridge and his organised plan of action, it is safe to say that the British welfare state would be different to that we know of today.
wins in a row was an advantage to the labour party. Though at the time
The Success of the First Two Labour Governments was Outweighed by the Failures in Britain The success of Labour's governments during its two terms in power, in the 1920's easily outweighed its failures and shortcomings, in Britain. This was a Labour government that introduced the idea of free mass secondary education, built over half a million houses, and through Labour established Britain as a major player in European and World politics. The Labour government were in power at the time of the Great Depression, and their failure to address the serious economic crisis bought about as a result of an economic downturn, following the short boom after the war, may be seen as a severe weakness in the second government. However, these flaws may be seen as a small aspect of the overall policy of the Labour government, and cannot out-way the long-term success of their social and political policy plans.
To better understand Brexit, one must know about the European Union (EU). The EU began following World War II with a purpose to create economic agreements amongst the countries of Europe. The belief behind the establishment of the EU is that countries whom trade with one another are less likely to go to war. Since its establishment, the EU has grown in number of member states and in the amount of power the governing bodies of the EU possess. In 1992, the EU became a single market as if it is one country. All new members of the EU must adopt the EU’s currency, the euro, in which 19 of the 28 countries have adopted. As a single market the EU parliament sets laws in many areas: environment, transport, consumer rights, etc. The single market allows
roots and is by no means as socialist as it was. But is it still
...ollectivist approach was used instead. The shocking health issues raised by the Boer War and the medical check-ups in school showed that social reform was evidently needed to maintain national efficiency. The surveys carried out clearly indicated the problem of poverty was not going to solve itself and that action needed to be taken. With the growing electorate, the working classes were more influential than they had been and so political parties were forced to try and accommodate their needs. The Labour party would have been the obvious choice for the working classes and the Liberals and Conservatives knew they had to change their strategies to win favour within that social class. The Liberal reforms in the early 20th century marked a turning point for social reformation. Ultimately, it was all of these reasons that the laissez-faire attitude was abandoned.
The most important changes Thatcher made were economic and these policies were three fold. Her first and probably most famous was an attempt to change the structure of ownership. In the 1980's Thatcher privatised nearly half of the services, which had previously been publicly owned in 1979. The Thatcher government thought that doing this would generate income helping to cut taxes. Although many labour supporters thought that this would see services such as the railways going down... ...
The era of the Great Depression was by far the worst shape the United States had ever been in, both economically and physically. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and began to bring relief with his New Deal. In his first 100 days as President, sixteen pieces of legislation were passed by Congress, the most to be passed in a short amount of time. Roosevelt was re-elected twice, and quickly gained the trust of the American people. Many of the New Deal policies helped the United States economy greatly, but some did not. One particularly contradictory act was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was later declared unconstitutional by Congress. Many things also stayed very consistent in the New Deal. For example, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and Social Security, since Americans were looking for any help they could get, these acts weren't seen as a detrimental at first. Overall, Roosevelt's New Deal was a success, but it also hit its stumbling points.
7th edition. London: Pearson Longman, ed. Garner, R., Ferdinand, P. and Lawson, S. (2009) Introduction to Politics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.