Dennis Kavanagh

  • Simon Griffiths
  • Kevin Hickson
Chapter

Abstract

One doubts that Tony Blair would accept the challenge implicit in the question of did he advance social democracy. His use of the appellations New Labour and the Third Way reflected his belief that his own politics was beyond political left and right. In his first Labour conference speech as leader in 1995, he used the word ‘new’ more than 50 times and socialism just once. What he did do was attempt to redefine social democracy — traditional values in a modern setting, and all that.

Keywords

Minimum Wage Trade Union Social Democracy Unionise Public Sector Political Left 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    M. J. Smith, ‘Conclusion: The Complexity of New Labour’, in S. Ludlam and M. Smith (eds), New Labour in Government (Basingstoke: Palgrave, now Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 267.Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    E. Shaw, The Labour Party since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 218.Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    D. Marquand, Decline of the Public (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).Google Scholar
  4. For another view on the continuity from Thatcher to Blair and Brown, see S. Jenkins, Thatcher and Sons (London: Allen Lane, 2006).Google Scholar
  5. 4.
    P. Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail (London: Faber and Faber, 2005).Google Scholar
  6. 5.
    G. Radice, Southern Discomfort (London: Fabian Society, 1992).Google Scholar
  7. 6.
    D. Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (Basingstoke: Palgrave, now Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); andGoogle Scholar
  8. M. Russell, Building New Labour (London: Palgrave, now Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. 7.
    Labour Party, New Labour because Britain Deserves Better (Labour Party Manifesto, 1997; available at <http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/man/lab97.htm>).Google Scholar
  10. 8.
    I have drawn on V. Bogdanor’s excellent ‘Social Democracy’, in A. Seldon (ed.), Blair’s Britain 1997–2007 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), particularly p. 178.Google Scholar
  11. 11.
    S. Katwala, ‘The Vision Thing’, Freethinking (London: Fabian Society, November 2007), p. 12.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  • Simon Griffiths
    • 1
  • Kevin Hickson
    • 2
  1. 1.University of LondonUK
  2. 2.University of LiverpoolUK

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