Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:25:46.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Postwar Protest Movements in Britain: A Challenge to Parties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Anthony M. Messina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article asks why new protest movements have recently emerged in Western Europe by focusing on the British postwar race and anti-nuclear movements. Contrary to “subjective” propositions which have attributed their emergence to inter-generational value change, this article instead proposes a “structural” explanation. It is argued that the failure of the major British political parties to articulate citizen concerns on a number of salient issues has generated extra-party initiatives whose willingness to “voice” citizen anxieties primarily explains their popular support. Once in existence, these groups further politicize the conflict over public policy through various unconventional activities.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Summer 1987 , pp. 410 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 See, for example, Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Baker, Kendall, Dalton, Russell J., and Hildebrandt, Kai, Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Barnes, Samuel H., Kaase, Max et al. , Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979).Google Scholar

2 Inglehart, Ronald, “Generational Change and the Future of the Atlantic Alliance,” PS 17, No. 3 (Summer 1984): 525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Inglehart, , Silent Revolution Google Scholar; and Marsh, Alan, Protest and Political Consciousness (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1977).Google Scholar

4 Here I am adopting the paradigms identified by Offe, Claus, “New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics,” Social Research 52, No. 4 (Winter 1985): 817–68.Google Scholar

5 The subjective and structural explanations for protest movements would, of course, lead to very different predictions about their future prospects.

6 Baker, et al. , Germany Transformed, p. 293.Google Scholar

7 See Schattschneider, E. E., The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1975), pp. 20–45.Google Scholar

8 Papadakis, Elim, The Green Movement in West Germany (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), p. 133.Google Scholar

9 As cited in George, Bruce and Marcus, Jonathan, “Unilateralism's Second Wave: The 1983 General Election and After,” The Political Quarterly 55, No. 1 (01–03 1984): 60–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Parkin, Frank, Middle Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 32.Google Scholar

11 Inglehart, , “Generational Change,” p. 531.Google Scholar

12 See Groom, A. J. R., British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons (London: Frances Pinter, 1974), pp. 205–52.Google Scholar

13 Inglehart identified 8 percent of the British population as pure postmaterialists, Silent Revolution, p. 38.Google Scholar

14 See, for example, The Alternative Defense Commission, Defense Without the Bomb (New York: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1983).Google Scholar

15 For a fuller discussion of these strategies see Katznelson, Ira, Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900–30, and Britain, 1948–68 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 123–90Google Scholar; and Layton-Henry, Zig, The Politics of Race in Britain (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 122–44.Google Scholar

16 Gallup, George H., ed., The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls, Great Britain, 1937–75, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1976)Google Scholar; and Gallup Political Index (1978–1983).Google Scholar

17 Schoen, Douglas E., Enoch Powell and the Powellites (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), p. 195.Google Scholar

18 Walker, Martin, The National Front (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978), pp. 25–67.Google Scholar

19 Husbands, Christopher T., “The ‘Threat’ Hypothesis and Racist Voting in England and the United States,” Racism and Political Action in Britain, ed. Miles, Robert and Phizacklea, Annie (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 147–83.Google Scholar

20 Author's interview with ANL founder Peter Hain, December 1980.

21 Ibid.

22 Walker, , National Front, pp. 137–39.Google Scholar

23 Harrop, Martin, England, Judith and Husbands, Christopher T., “The Bases of National Front Support,” Political Studies 28, No. 2 (06 1980): 271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Only 10 NF candidates stood in the 1970 general election. Nationwide the Front put up 45 candidates in the May 1969 municipal elections and 84 in the 1971 local elections, receiving an average 8 and 5.2 percent of the respective vote.

25 Edgar, David, “Racism, Fascism, and the Politics of the National Front,” Race and Class 14, No. 2 (Autumn 1977): 111–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Steed, Michael, “The National Front Vote,” Parliamentary Affairs 31, No. 3 (Summer 1978): 284–85.Google Scholar

27 Whiteley, Paul, “The Decline of Partisan Allegiance in Britain and the National Front Vote” (unpublished paper, 1978).Google Scholar

28 Ibid.

29 Taylor, Stan, The National Front in English Politics (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Quoted in The Times, 31 01 1978.Google Scholar

31 Time, 27 08 1979, p. 51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Miller, W. L., “What Was the Profit in Following the Crowd? The Effectiveness of Party Strategies on Immigration and Devolution,” British Journal of Political Science 10, No. 1 (01 1980): 15–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Remark made by the National Front's newly elected chairman, Andrew Brons, as quoted in The Times, 1 03 1980, p. 2.Google Scholar

33 Author's interview with Paul Holborow, January 1981.

34 For a discussion of Labour's policy shift on race see Messina, Anthony M., “Race and Party Competition in Britain: Policy Formation in the Post-Consensus Period,” Parliamentary Affairs 38, No. 4 (Autumn 1985): 423–36.Google Scholar

35 Malone, Peter, The British Nuclear Deterrent (NewYork: St. Martin's Press, 1984), pp. 26–44.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 27.

37 Groom, , British Thinking, p. 276.Google Scholar

38 Taylor, Richard and Pritchard, Colin, The Protest Makers: The British Nuclear Disarmament Movement of 1958–1965 Twenty Years On (London: Pergamon Press, 1980), p. 5.Google Scholar

39 Papworth, Andrew, “CND and Party Politics: A View from the Outside,” in The CND Story, ed. Minnion, John and Bolsover, Philip (London: Allison and Busby, 1983), p. 125.Google Scholar

40 Groom, , British Thinking, p. 335.Google Scholar

41 Along these lines CND threatened a “voters' veto” of pronuclear parliamentary candidates during the 1959 general election.

42 Groom, , British Thinking, p. 381.Google Scholar

43 Thayer, George, The British Political Fringe (London: Anthony Blond, 1965), p. 167.Google Scholar

44 Taylor, and Pritchard, , Protest Makers, p. 36.Google Scholar

45 For a discussion of these events see Groom, , British Thinking, pp. 405–55.Google Scholar

46 Pressures to leave CND and close ranks around the Labour party became especially strong with the election of Harold Wilson as party leader and an improvement in Labour's chances to form a government after 1962.

47 The trade unions influence Labour party policy through their large bloc votes at the party's annual conference.

48 Indeed, just as a Conservative government can coopt the political right on race so, too, is it easier for a Labour government to coopt the political left on nuclear disarmament.

49 Every indication points to the Callaghan government's intention before the 1979 general election to replace Polaris. Malone, , British Nuclear Deterrent, p. 38.Google Scholar

50 Griffiths, David, “CND and the Labour Party,”Google Scholar in Minnion, and Bolsover, , CND Story, p. 133.Google Scholar

51 Author's interview with CND Chairman, Bruce Kent, 2 August 1985.

52 Nelkin, Dorothy and Pollak, Michael, “Political Parties and the Nuclear Energy Debate in France and Germany,” Comparative Politics 12, No. 2 (01 1980): 138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Approximately 30 percent of the German electorate in 1981 believed that an environmentalist party was needed in Germany. Conradt, David P., The German Polity (New York: Longman Inc., 1982), p. 128.Google Scholar