The Political Lives Of Postwar British Mps

Author : Emma Peplow
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350089281
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Political Lives of Postwar British MPs written by Emma Peplow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parliament is Britain's most important political institution, yet its workings remain obscure to academics and the wider public alike. MPs are often seen as 'out of touch' or 'all the same' and their individual motivations, achievements and regrets remain in the background of party politics. In this book, Emma Peplow and Priscila Pivatto draw on the History of Parliament Trust's collection of oral history interviews with postwar British MPs to highlight their diverse political experiences in Parliament. Featuring extracts from a collection of interviews with over 160 former MPs who sat from the 1950s until the 2000s, The Political Lives of Postwar British MPs gives a voice to those MPs' stories. It explores why they became interested in politics, how they found their seat and fought election campaigns, what it felt like to speak in the chamber and how their class or gender dictated their experiences at Westminster. In the process, readers will be given rare glimpse into the spaces inhabited by MPs, the political rivalries and friendships and the rising and falling of their careers. With accounts from MPs of all political stripes, from the well-known like David Owen and Ann Taylor to those who sat for just a few years such as Denis Coe; from old political families like Douglas Hurd to those like Maria Fyfe who felt themselves outsiders, this book provides deep insight into the political lives of MPs in our age.

Author : Donald Searing
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674950726
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Westminster's World written by Donald Searing and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Policy Advocates to Whips to Ministers, the many roles within the British Parliament are shaped not only by institutional rules but also by the individuals who fill them, yet few observers have fully appreciated this vital aspect of governing in one of the world's oldest representative systems. Applying a new motivational role theory to materials from extensive first-hand interviews conducted during the eventful 1970s, Donald Searing deepens our understanding of how Members of Parliament understand their goals, their careers, and their impact on domestic and global issues. He explores how Westminster's world both controls and is created by individuals, illuminating the interplay of institutional constraints and individual choice in shaping roles within the political arena. No other book tells us so much about political life at Westminster. Searing has interviewed 521 Members of Parliament--including Conservative Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Peter Walker, and James Prior; Labour Ministers Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, and Denis Healey; rising stars Michael Heseltine, Norman Tebbitt, David Owen, and Roy Hattersley; habitual outsiders, like Michael Foot, who eventually joined the inner circle; and former insiders, like Enoch Powell, who were shut out. Searing also gives voice to the vast number of Westminster's backbenchers, who play a key part in shaping political roles in Parliament but are less likely to be heard in the media: trade unionists, knights of the shires, owners of small businesses, and others. In this segment of his study, women, senior backbenchers, and newcomers are well represented. Searing adroitly blends quantitative with qualitative analysis and integrates social and economic theories about political behavior. He addresses concerns about power, duty, ambition, and representation, and skillfully joins these concerns with his critical discoveries about the desires, beliefs, and behaviors associated with roles in Parliament. Westminster's World offers political scientists, historians, anthropologists, political commentators, and the public rich new material about the House of Commons as well as a convincing model for understanding the structure and dynamics of political roles.

Author : Richard Tuck
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509542299
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Left Case for Brexit written by Richard Tuck and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal left orthodoxy holds that Brexit is a disastrous coup, orchestrated by the hard right and fuelled by xenophobia, which will break up the Union and turn what’s left of Britain into a neoliberal dystopia. Richard Tuck’s ongoing commentary on the Brexit crisis demolishes this narrative. He argues that by opposing Brexit and throwing its lot in with a liberal constitutional order tailor-made for the interests of global capitalists, the Left has made a major error. It has tied itself into a framework designed to frustrate its own radical policies. Brexit therefore actually represents a golden opportunity for socialists to implement the kind of economic agenda they have long since advocated. Sadly, however, many of them have lost faith in the kind of popular revolution that the majoritarian British constitution is peculiarly well-placed to deliver and have succumbed instead to defeatism and the cultural politics of virtue-signalling. Another approach is, however, still possible. Combining brilliant contemporary political insights with a profound grasp of the ironies of modern history, this book is essential for anyone who wants a clear-sighted assessment of the momentous underlying issues brought to the surface by Brexit.

Author : Anthony Wright
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199661103
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book British Politics: A Very Short Introduction written by Anthony Wright and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interpretative essay on the British political system looks at the key characteristics and ideas of the British tradition, explores what makes British politics distinctive, and considers how the system continues to evolve.

Author : David Goodhart
Publisher : Atlantic Books
ISBN 13 : 0857899759
Total Pages : 506 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The British Dream written by David Goodhart and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The British Dream, David Goodhart tells the story of postwar immigration and charts a course for its future. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with people from all over the country and a wealth of statistical evidence, he paints a striking picture of how Britain has been transformed by immigration and examines the progress of its ethnic minorities—projected to be around 25 per cent of the population by the early 2020s. Britain today is a more open society for minorities than ever before, but it is also a more fragmented one. Goodhart argues that an overzealous multiculturalism has exacerbated this problem by reinforcing difference instead of promoting a common life. The multi-ethnic success of Team GB at the 2012 Olympics and a taste for chicken tikka masala are not, he suggests, sufficient to forge common bonds; Britain needs a political culture of integration. Goodhart concludes that if Britain is to avoid a narrowing of the public realm and sharply segregated cities, as in many parts of the U.S., its politicians and opinion leaders must do two things. Firstly, as advocated by the center right, they need to bring immigration down to more moderate and sustainable levels. Secondly, as advocated by the center left, they need to shape a progressive national story about openness and opportunity, one that captures how people of different traditions are coming together to make the British dream.

Author : Laura Beers
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674971523
Total Pages : 569 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Red Ellen written by Laura Beers and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ellen Wilkinson viewed herself as part of an international radical community and became involved in socialist, feminist, and pacifist movements that spanned the globe. By focusing on the extent to which Wilkinson’s activism transcended Britain’s borders, Laura Beers adjusts our perception of the British Left in the early twentieth century.

Author : Rachel Reeves
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786731517
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alice in Westminster written by Rachel Reeves and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice Bacon was one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable female politicians. Born and raised in the Yorkshire town of Normanton, she defied the odds to be elected Labour MP for Leeds North East in the 1945 General Election. Famed in her home town for her unlikely love of sports cars, she was a much-respected, no-nonsense, hard-working representative for her beloved Yorkshire home in Westminster. Mentored by Herbert Morrison and Hugh Gaitskell, she rose through the party becoming a Home Office minister under Roy Jenkins and latterly an Education Minister with responsibility for the introduction of comprehensive schools. In the Home Office in the 1960s she oversaw the introduction of substantial societal changes, including the abolition of the death penalty, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the legalisation of abortion. Her political career spanned some of the most momentous decades in Britain's postwar history and she played an integral part in some of the most significant social, educational and political changes which the country has ever witnessed.Labour MP Rachel Reeves here tells Alice Bacon's story, narrating one woman's extraordinary progression from the coalfields to the Commons.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004291962
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New Perspectives on Power and Political Representation from Ancient History to the Present Day written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Perspectives on Power and Political Representation from Ancient History to the Present Day offers a unique perspective on political communication between rulers and ruled from antiquity to the present day by putting the concept of representation center stage. It explores the dynamic relationship between elites and the people as it was shaped by constructions of self-representation and representative claims. The contributors to this volume – specialists in ancient, medieval, early-modern and modern history – move away from reductionist associations of political representation with formal aspects of modern, democratic, electoral, and parliamentarian politics. Instead, they contend that the construction of political representation involves a set of discourses, practices, and mechanisms that, although they have been applied and appropriated in various ways in a range of historical contexts, has stood the test of time.

Author : Fintan O'Toole
Publisher : Apollo
ISBN 13 : 9781789540994
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Heroic Failure written by Fintan O'Toole and published by Apollo. This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read ... Pitilessly brilliant' JONATHAN COE. 'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times. A TIMESBOOK OF THE YEAR. 'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative'David Miliband. 'Hugely entertaining and engrossing'Roddy Doyle. 'Best book about the English that I've read for ages'Billy Bragg. A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism. Trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact came to define the style of an entire political elite; a country that once had colonies redefined itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation. Fintan O'Toole also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster. Now failure is no longer heroic - it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters. A new afterword lays out the essential reforms that are urgently needed if England is to have a truly democratic future and stable relations with its nearest neighbours.

Author : Marcus Collins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108477240
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Beatles and Sixties Britain written by Marcus Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rigorous study, Marcus Collins reconceives the Beatles' social, cultural and political impact on sixties Britain.