Feelbad Britain.Qxd

The University of Manchester Research The environmental wedge Link to publication record in Manchester Research Explorer Citation for published version (APA): Castree, N. (2009). The environmental wedge: neoliberalism, democracy and the prospects for a new British Left. In Feelbad Britain (1 ed., pp. 222-233). Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. Published in: Feelbad Britain Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Takedown policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please refer to the University of Manchester’s Takedown Procedures [http://man.ac.uk/04Y6Bo] or contact [email protected] providing relevant details, so we can investigate your claim. Download date:04. Oct. 2021 Feelbad Britain Feelbad Britain EDITED BY Pat Devine, Andrew Pearmain and David Purdy Lawrence & Wishart LONDON 2008 Contents Introduction 000 Part I Feelbad Britain 1. Pat Devine, Andrew Pearmain, Michael Prior & David Purdy Feelbad Britain 000 Part II Directions 2. David Purdy Re-conceptualising the economy 000 3. Pat Devine Social ownership and democratic planning 000 4. Kate Soper The fulfilments of post-consumerism and the politics of renewal 000 Lawrence and Wishart Limited 99a Wallis Road Part III Policies London E9 5LN 5. David Beetham Can British democracy be revived? 000 6. Linda Patterson A decade of health service reform: from First published 2008 transparency and restructuring to competition 000 Copyright © Lawrence and Wishart 2008 7. Patrick Ainley What has gone wrong with education in & Martin Allen England and how to start putting it right 000 The author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents 8. Pat Devine Tackling climate change 000 Act, 1998 to be identified as the author of this work. Part IV Politics All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, 9. Angela McRobbie Whatever happened to feminism? Four stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, technologies of young womanhood 000 electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording 10. Andrew Pearmain Gramsci now 000 or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. 11. Noel Castree The environmental wedge: neoliberalism, democracy and the prospects for a new British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. British left 000 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 12. David Purdy Looking for the Left 000 ISBN 9781905007868 Notes on Contributors 000 Text setting E-type, Liverpool Index 000 Printed and bound by Biddles, Kings Lynn 4 5 Introduction he four authors of the first chapter of this book, a preliminary Tversion of which was published online in February 2007, have all been involved in left-wing politics for upwards of forty years.1 That chapter, and this book, were written as an attempt to apply the insights and experience of our political lifetimes to the history of the past thirty years – an era characterised, above all, by the ascendancy of neoliberalism, both as a general world-view and as an approach to public policy. The period that more than any other shaped our political outlook was the 1970s, a turbulent decade that began with such high hopes for the left and ended with the triumph of Mrs Thatcher. As we struggled to understand the unfolding drama of these years and to respond with creative intelligence, we drew heavily on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks became more accessible in the English-speaking world with the publication of a must-read new translation in 1971.2 Gramsci’s efforts to explain the ebbing of the revolutionary tide that swept across Europe after 1917, the rise of fascism in Italy and the resilience of capitalism in its heartlands, resonated powerfully with our predicament and preoccupations. The editors of this volume still believe that the 1970s were a watershed in British history, and that our Gramscian heritage remains indispensable for understanding what went wrong then and what needs to be done today to tackle the besetting weak- nesses of the British left: its ambivalent attitude to democracy, its workerism, its economism, and its failure to appreciate the role of moral and intellectual leadership in defending or challenging the prevailing social order and in winning or retaining political power. This is a suitable moment to take stock. The New Labour project has reached the end of the road. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, lives on. It has, to be sure, been severely shaken by the 6 7 8 Feelbad Britain Introduction 9 near collapse of the global banking system and the onset of what which solidarity, trust and citizenship depend and in which they is shaping up to be a deep and prolonged global recession. And were once embedded. Our sense of social membership and our beyond these classic manifestations of capitalism in crisis loom the shared identity as citizens have been effaced by individualist longer-term challenges of climate change and the shift in the consumerism, the dominant culture and common sense of the balance of global economic power from West to East. age. Nevertheless, the return of boom and bust and the end of light- Structurally, the source of the problem is the social and envi- touch financial regulation do not in themselves portend an ronmental damage caused by the incorrigibly expansionist impending change of regime. The struggle to replace neoliber- dynamic of capitalism. Historically, the malaise goes back to the alism, at national and global levels, is what the politics of the next organic crisis of the 1970s, when the post-war political settle- ten years will be about, just as the Great Crash of 1929 and the ment imploded and the radical right seized the chance to launch Great Depression that followed it prompted an urgent search for a neoliberal counter-revolution. In the absence of a counter- workable alternatives to the discredited economics of laissez faire, vailing hegemonic project of the left, the New Labour leading, eventually, to a new international order – though only government elected in 1997 embraced the new order and, indeed, after ten years of world-wide economic carnage and six years of set out to complete Mrs Thatcher’s unfinished business by total war. placing public services on a quasi-commercial footing and In Britain, it looks as if the baton of government may pass from driving market forces deep into the welfare state. As a result, New Labour to a revamped Conservative Party, which has redis- after thirty years of neoliberal ideological social engineering, covered ‘society’, but remains hostile to ‘the state’ and continues there is now a gaping hole in British politics where the democ- to idolise ‘the market’. Conceivably, the Labour government ratic left ought to be. could tackle the recession by repudiating neoliberalism and The British left today is a shadow of its former self, a diffuse forging ahead with a green new deal. Thus re-invigorated and and amorphous body of opinion with almost no presence in main- perhaps inspired by the example of Barack Obama, Labour could stream politics and little impact on public affairs. Not only this: reconnect with Britain’s own progressive past, rally the broad- there is also a marked gap in experience and outlook between the based popular coalition required to sustain a radical shift in course remnants and survivors of the old left and the new generation of and proceed, against the odds, to win a fourth term. But if the green activists and counter-cultural campaigners. Of course, inter- pattern of the 1930s repeats itself, as Obama’s election victory generational misunderstanding and conflict is a feature of the suggests is more probable, the voters will eject a government human condition. But as long as the past is remembered, young which has presided over a major crash. The further consequences and old remain connected by a common culture. By the same of a change of government at Westminster are hard to foresee, for token, if historical memory fails, radical traditions are lost and with nationalist parties in office for the first time in Scotland and radical politics flounders. If we are to fill the vacuum on the left, Wales, the future of the UK as a union state and the whole pattern we need to retrieve our own history and reconnect the genera- of British party politics are in a state of flux. tions. NEW LABOUR, NEOLIBERALISM AND THE TIMESCALES DEMOCRATIC LEFT Clearly, a long road lies ahead for those who aspire to turn the The central thesis of Feelbad Britain is that contemporary British democratic left into a serious political force. But the longest society is troubled and dysfunctional. Three decades of neoliber- journey starts with a single step, and if this book turns out to be alism, extended by New Labour into the heart of the welfare that step, other steps might reasonably be expected to follow. state, have undermined the institutions and social relations on Before discussing these, however, it is worth outlining what 8 9 10 Feelbad Britain Introduction 11 kind of journey we have in mind and how long it is likely to our own choosing.

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