TITLE:

GREAT BRITAIN: FROM ‘THATCHERISM’ TO ‘BLAIRISM’ (MESA REDONDA)

Participants:

José Francisco Fernández Sánchez (Chair)* - Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy** - Celia Wallhead***

Institution:

*Universidad de Almería - **Universidad de Zaragoza - ***Universidad de Granada

E-mail:

jffernan@ual.es - cornut@unizar.es - wallhead@ugr.es  

In 2007 it will be ten years since Tony Blair’s New Labour won the General Election after eighteen years of Conservative rule. It is then a good opportunity not only to assess his legacy but to examine the developments in British politics during the last thirty years. The aim of the present round table is to analyse in what direction the country has evolved under the influence of the most important politicians of the period, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and to offer a complete picture of the ‘state of the nation’ after three decades of change in the institutional and social structure of the country.

Firstly, Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy will consider the complex concept of ‘Thatcherism’ as an economic creed and a political project. She will examine the impact in Britain of such policies as the rolling back of the state, the weakening of the unions, the privatisation of publicly owned corporations, national sovereignty, social order and discipline. After commenting on one of the paradoxes of the Thatcher years: free economic thinking on the one hand, and an exclusivist version of ‘national’ identity on the other, Dr. Cornut-Gentille will look into the social price paid in Britain for the growth in productivity and the internationalisation of the economy: unemployment, the widening of economic inequalities and social divisions, violence and rioting.

Secondly, José Francisco Fernández Sánchez will focus on the period between Thatcher’s resignation in November 1990 and Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. His intervention will deal with the new conservative leader who took over after the Iron Lady. John Major, whose premiership was defined at the time as “Thatcherism with a human face,” continued the politics of his predecessor without the aggressive style and the domineering dogmatism of Thatcher. However, during Major’s term in office, a mutation was taking place in the opposition: a revision of the Labour party’s policy, initiated by Neil Kinnock in the late eighties, was reinforced by successive leaders John Smith and, since 1994, Tony Blair. Dr. Fernández Sánchez will examine the actions that Blair took to make the Labour party electable again, in particular his dragging the party towards the political centre.