Warning to all Politics students

If you don't work hard, this guy will come to get you!

Unit 3: A film explaining the beginnings of the NHS - essential viewing

Unit 1: Voting Systems

Single Transferable Vote (STV)


First Past The Post (FPTP) Alternative Vote (AV)

Unit 3: Education past questions

Here is a list of past questions on education:

Why has education been a major government priority since 1997?

Why has higher education funding become so controversial since 2001?

Jan 12 Explain why the issue of higher education funding has been politically divisive. (15 Marks)

Jan 13 Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of increasing the numbers of students in

higher education. (15 Marks)

Jun 10 Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of increasing the numbers of students in

higher education. (15 Marks)

Jun 12 Explain the main ways in which governments since 1997 have tried to improve standards in secondary education. (15 Marks)

Jun 13 Why and how have recent governments encouraged schools to become academies? (15 Marks)

Jan 10 ‘The introduction of target-setting in health and education has failed to improve

standards.’ Discuss. (45 Marks)

Unit 1: Latest by-election result in Scotland

Click here to see the results of the Dunfermline by-election. What might this say for the next general election and also, the referendum re Scottish independence?

Also, here are the latest opinion polls......

Unit 3: The problem with education

Not only a good read, but it also highlights some of the issues in UK education system today..please comment Y13's (and Y12's if you bother to read it!)

Dear Mr Gove,

 I read recently how you described the current cohort of teachers in the UK as “…the best generation of teachers ever seen in our classrooms- including the very best generation ever of young teachers.” You described how you believe teachers hold the success to this country and the well being of its citizens in their hands.You rightly claim that teachers are the most important fighters in the battle to make opportunity more equal. Therefore, I hope as a young teacher you will appreciate how difficult it is that I have felt the need to explain how I feel, Mr Gove, as I am exhausted, demoralised, disengaged and surfeited.

 I attended a CPD session today. In this conference we, as a group of professionals, sought to address the imbalance between boys and girls attainment in reading and writing. We examined a magnitude of ways to support boys in literacy, to engage them in writing, to deconstruct barriers to learning and to enhance the life opportunities of reluctant readers and writers. Finally, to finish the session, we discussed how ludicrous school league tables were and considered SATs in a facetious manner. We compared the creative and engaging ways we can make a text come alive for children to interact with, and the monotonous and uninspiring manner in which all SATs are presented. We discussed how difficult and abstract exams really can be. We considered how absurd it is to compare the scores of two different schools which will be so incredibly different in terms of prosperity, cultural diversity and parental support. And then, we looked at funny answers from SATs gone by.

We laughed, oh how we laughed, Mr Gove, as one by one we were shown unintentionally humorous retorts. Then, slowly, after looking at 5 or 6 ridiculous answers, we sat in silence. Suddenly, it wasn’t very funny any more. The joke had been lost, for we came to realise that we work in a regime that repeatedly and systematically provides opportunities for pupils to fail; for pupils to be labelled failures.

 In the UK, pupils enter school at a younger age than almost any other country in the world. By the time they reach the age of 6, the age at which students begin school in Sweden (a country you often like to draw comparison from), our children already are provided with an opportunity to become failures as we assess them on their ability to use one reading strategy to read words which don’t actually exist in the English language, or indeed any other language for that matter.

 The following year they complete their KS1 SATs. Already, by the age of 7, pupils begin to develop an awareness of where they consider themselves to be academically. You will often hear pupils as young as this professing how terrible they are at reading, or how they are unable to do maths, or how they cant write. If they are lucky they will have a teacher who can deconstruct this self image before it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If they aren’t, we have lost them before other nations have even considered their pupils’ attainment.

 Then they move into the big world of KS2 where they can look forward to three years of a generally “broad and balanced curriculum” which of course is continually being eroded by more and more time being spent on being able to identify your subordinate clause from your main clause and the article from the pronoun, before counting to 1000 in Roman numerals. Of course this is before you even enter the graveyard of educational creativity, vibrancy and expression that Year 6 has become in this country. Children will be blitzed with maths, reading and writing until every ounce of their being becomes disengaged. We force SATs upon our children in such a way that stifles creativity, limits vibrancy and diminishes expression…and that’s among more able pupils. Those who were lost somewhere around Year 2 have long since resigned themselves to failure and ridicule. If they try, they may just be able to come out with a personal best which is in no way celebrated privately as it still below the target that the Fischer Family Trust set for that child many years previously, failing to account for the individual needs and circumstances of that child. But hey, Mr Gove, they’re only a statistic. Its not like we are setting that child up to be seriously disadvantaged throughout their entire life, right?

Then we move our children on into secondary school. We (and by we, I mean you) continually move the goalposts so that it is progressively more difficult to achieve meaningful GCSE or A Level results. In fact, the ever changing system of assessment seems to be shifting towards a style that will make it increasingly easy to fail, and increasingly difficult to do anything about it. Finally, if a pupil has managed to achieve in spite of our education system, they will face the dilemma of whether to pay £9,000 annual fees to access further and higher education before entering a system where youth unemployment and underemployment is as high as we’ve ever seen in this country and economic promise looks bleak, at best, Mr Gove. 

Now, forgive me if I am presumptuous, Mr Gove, but I rather suspect you wont reply to me so I shall hazard a guess at one of your replies. You often speak of ’rigor’, so I suppose I could assume that you will claim you are making our exams more rigorous. If encouraging pupils to fail is rigorous, perhaps you are right. If responding to 100 educational experts by calling them ’enemies of promise’ when they wholeheartedly (and rightly) disagree with your policies, is rigorous, perhaps you are right. If independently writing an entire section of the National Curriculum despite having no qualifications or experience to do so is rigorous, perhaps you are right.

I’m tired, Mr Gove. I’m tired of being told I am a valued educational professional when I see unqualified teachers being employed in other schools. I am tired of being told I have a vital role to play in addressing educational imbalance when we are forced to fail children at the age of 6. I am tired of pupils being disengaged in reading and writing when we present them with such ridiculous and unsupportive means of assessment. I am tired of being made to feel like I am lazy or incompetent when I spend every ounce of energy I have trying to provide opportunities for every child I encounter on a daily basis to succeed. I am tired of such destructive and invalidating means of judging schools capabilities. I am tired of daily attacks on my pension, my work ethic, my commitment to raising standards, my commitment to improving the quality of pupils lives and my reputation as a professional. I am tired of a pretentious egomaniac, who has no experience of education other than having gone to school as a child, holding the education system in this country to ransom.

I ask you, Mr Gove, who is the real enemy of promise?  Who is causing incomparable destruction to our education system? Who is condemning a generation of young people to mediocrity and demise?

 Surely not you?

 Secret Teacher

Unit 1 & 3: Participation and Policy

This is why we should all study Politics....Excellent 10 minutes of why people are not voting, why young people are turned off politics and why the system should change...please leave a comment after you have watched this!

Unit 1: The Electoral Systems used in the UK

Click here to access a government article which lists all the electoral systems used currently in the UK.

Essential when answering questions on electoral systems - a topic which comes up every year.

Unit 1: An introduction to the Alternative Vote System

The American talking about AV, used in london Mayoral elections.

Unit 1: Introduction to the Additional Member System

The American calls this MMP, but we know it in Scotland as the AMS.

Unit 1: Gerrymandering

The CP Grey explanation of 'Gerrymandering'

Unit 4: An Introduction to the European Union

A slightly amusing but informative look at the EU (from an American point of view).

Unit 1 & 3: What is Thatcherism and are we all Thatcherites now?

Thanks to Qasim for these two excellent articles on Thatcherism and the opinion that all major political parties follw Thatcherism to some extent. Really useful for Unit 1 - Political Ideologies and Unit 3 - Government Policy.

What is Thatcherism?

Are we all Thatcherites now?

Here are two relevant essays from each paper:

Unit 1:

(a) Define two functions of a political party. (5)
(b) Explain what is meant by the term Thatcherism. (10)
(c) To what extent do the UK’s major parties accept Thatcherite ideas and policies? (25)

Unit 3:

‘Limiting state benefits paid to families is politically popular but socially unfair.’ Discuss. (45 marks)

Unit 3: Conservative policy proposals Oct 2013

See below for various policy proposals taken from the Conservative Party Conference - October 2013

Click here to access Osbourne's 'Work for Benefits' policy

Click here to access Cameron's proposal to cut benefit on the under 25's.

Remember, when reading these articles, compare and contrast to the other main parties policies on welfare, the economy, Europe, law & order and the environment.

Click here for BBC home page for conference..lots of articles on all areas of policy.

Unit 3: Welfare reform

Click here to access the government website highlighting the reforms/policies of the NHS.

Click here to see where your money goes (well, UK tax payers money)

Unit 3: Welfare - All you need to know, up to Gordon Brown

Health, Welfare & Education

Click here to be taken to this excellent BBC History Resource

The Beveridge Report

EDEXCEL GOVERNMENT & POLITICS: ROUTE A: UNIT THREE /

THE WELFARE STATE

CONTEXT

Party policies towards the welfare state have changed in a similar way to economic policy. During the post war economic boom, both parties were in favour of the creation of a welfare state.

The  Attlee government

Implementation of Beveridge Report – Welfare State; attack on Beveridge’s 5 giants (want, ignorance, idleness, squalor, disease)

NHS, 1948: free medical care for all; nationalisation of hospitals – 19 health boards; salaries for doctors (resisted, but eventually 90% of GPs join system).

National Insurance Act, 1946: extended to cover all adults: pensions, unemployment, sickness

National Assistance Act, 1948: safety net for those not covered by NI.

Industrial Injuries Act, 1946 – workers and employers contribute to fund to finance compensation claims

Implementing Butler Education Act, 1944 – already facing demands for comprehensivisation

It was agreed that to civic and political rights – that is, the right to own property and the right to vote – social rights should be added.

For example, in the UK social rights such as the National Health Service (NHS) and cash benefits for the unemployed, pensioners and children were introduced and extended.

The consensus on welfare changed in the 1970s when the economic growth required to fund welfare spending could no longer be taken for granted.

Stalling economic performance, rising levels of unemployment and weak public finances meant that high levels of public spending for welfare were no longer sustainable.

In the late 1970s there was a sustained ideological and fiscal attack on the welfare state, and in particular the benefits system.

• The Labour Party, which traditionally prioritises social justice, retained its commitment to unconditional social rights and high levels of welfare spending for a long time.
• Conservative governments sought to radically alter the British welfare state and to prioritise economic efficiency.

Thatcher’s approach

Individualism and Anti-collectivism

“Welfare saps the moral fibre of the nation” – Rhodes Boyson, 1983

“There is no such thing as society, only families and individuals”

Margaret Thatcher, 1978

Thatcher believed that Britain’s poor economic performance and high levels of unemployment were caused by the cushion of the welfare state.

If social rights were removed, or made less generous, then there would be a greater incentive for unemployed people to enter the labour market and a higher likelihood that the economy would perform.

Successive Conservative governments from 1979 onwards sought to dismantle the welfare state and to promote individual rather than state responsibility for welfare. This was done in a number of ways.

The level of social security for the unemployed was cut and a requirement was introduced that only those claimants who could demonstrate that they were actively seeking employment were entitled to benefits.

In other words, social rights became more contingent upon the claimant meeting certain individual responsibilities. Conservative governments reduced spending on social provisions such as social housing.

Marketisation

They ceased to invest in council housing and tried instead to encourage individual home ownership by selling off council houses at a cheap rate to tenants. They also sought to marketise many areas of the welfare state.

For example, an internal market was set up in the NHS and some of its services were contracted out to private firms, under Compulsory Competitive Tendering.

What should be noted, however, is that despite Conservative governments’ attempts to retrench the welfare state, welfare spending actually rose during their 18 years in office. This was largely attributable to an increased tolerance for higher levels of unemployment.

This can also be explained by both the rising demand for welfare services such as health care and the need to mitigate rising levels of poverty.

New Labour

The Labour Party remained committed to the welfare state and high levels of public spending up until the late 1980s. Then a series of electoral defeats and policy reviews led the party to alter its approach.

Rather than advocating high levels of spending and redistribution to compensate the inequality caused by economic failure, it planned to promote education and training and transform the welfare state from a passive safety net to an active ‘springboard’ of opportunity (Annesley, 2001, 204).

By the time the Labour came to power in 1997, many commentators claimed that the party had abandoned its traditional concerns for working people and the poor and had adopted instead the Thatcherite priorities of limited welfare spending and individual responsibility.

New Labour, for example, committed itself to sticking to the Conservatives’ rigid spending plans for the first two years in government and to a welfare-to-work policy – the New Deal – which obliged certain groups of the unemployed to take subsidised work or training in return for their benefits.

On the face of it then, it seems that there has been a convergence of the Conservatives’ and Labour’s welfare policies. This is just superficial convergence, however, for it masks the fact that the parties have quite discrete positions on questions of social rights and equality.

Although the Labour Party is now committed to low level of taxation and welfare spending, it has since 1997 nevertheless used fiscal policy to halt and even slightly reverse the growing inequality that characterised the 18 years of Conservative Government.

Moreover, new kinds of welfare benefit and financial reward such as the Working Families Tax Credit and the Minimum Wage are improving the incentives to entering the labour market and are making the poorest employees better off.

The balance between social rights and individual responsibility appears to be more fairly balanced In New Labour social policy than it does with the Conservatives.

Debate about the inadequacies of the welfare model began shortly after the Labour government implemented the Beveridge report on national insurance and created the NHS on 1 July 1948.

Labour introduced what Professor David Gordon of Bristol University called “truncated universalism” – with a level of contributory benefits too low to take people out of poverty.

In the first 25 years after the welfare state was introduced, the debate concerned how to increase its scope and abolish means-tested benefits.

Then, after the economic crisis in the 1970s, the concern was how to trim it back.

Now, the future of the welfare state itself is the subject of fierce debate.

The right believes excessive spending on the welfare state has weakened economic growth and reduced incentives.

The left argues the traditional welfare state has paid too little attention to important groups like women and ethnic minorities, and to concerns of social justice in the household, workplace, and community.

Policies for welfare reform have gained strength in the UK, but also in continental Europe and the US.

Labour’s welfare reform

Four key parts of new Labour’s inheritance from the Conservatives can be identified:

1. Attempts to control public spending;

2. Privatisation.

3. The growth of means-testing;

4. and the growth of inequality.

Labour has responded to this heritage in 4 main ways:

1. Firstly there was the importance to Labour of shedding its “tax and spend” image leading to tight budget constraints, but with significant reallocation towards health and education;

2. Secondly a strong focus on the promotion of paid work;

3. Thirdly, a series of measures intended to reduce inequality and relative poverty, but with controversy over benefit levels;

4. Fourth the new dominance of the Treasury in making welfare and social policy.

Some of these policies mark clear reversals from those of the Conservatives, but in others they continue an evolution which was already underway, despite the earlier Labour rhetoric about “thinking the unthinkable” on welfare reform.

Taking the period of Conservative Government from 1979 to 1997 as a whole, four themes stand out as central to policies towards the welfare state:

♦  Attempts to control public spending

♦  Privatisation

♦  Targeting

♦  Rising inequality

A. Putting the lid on public spending

For many, the defining feature of Mrs Thatcher’s Government elected in 1979 was its intention to “roll back the state”. Indeed, that Government’s first White Paper on its public spending plans began with the bald statement that,

“Public expenditure is at the heart of Britain’s present economic difficulties”.

Much of the politics of welfare in the 1980s revolved around “cuts” and restrictions in public spending designed to allow tax cuts, particularly reductions in the rates of income tax. Second, the restrictions of public spending began not in 1979,  but in 1976 under the then Labour government. As far as welfare spending is concerned, 1976-77 marked the end of the post war growth in its share of national income. The lid went on spending when the IMF came to visit, not when Mrs Thatcher was elected.

The sharp increases in taxation in the period before the 1997 election are important both in terms of the unpopularity of the Major Government (particularly as there was nothing by way of higher spending to show for the tax increases), and in terms of the Blair Government’s determination not to

increase income tax rates.

At the same time there were ways in which the generosity of welfare provision clearly was cut back under the Conservatives. Most importantly, in the early 1980s the link – in some cases established by statute law, in others simply convention – between the value of social security benefits like the flat rate “basic” state pension and measures of other incomes or earnings was broken.

Other important ways in which the generosity of the welfare system was cut back include sharp reductions in subsidies to social housing in both the early 1980s and early 1990s), a series of dozens of rule changes which reduced entitlements to social insurance benefits for the unemployed, and the cash limit put on the cost of residential and home care for the elderly when responsibilities were transferred from the social security budget to local authorities by 1993.

The reason why such cuts did not succeed in actually reducing welfare spending in relation to GDP lies in two constraints on the Conservatives. First, demand for welfare services increased rapidly. Unemployment an ageing population and the growth in lone parent families account for this increased demand. Secondly rising aspirations have mean that demand for better education, housing and health care have put massive strain on government budgets.

B. Privatisation

The other side of the Conservatives’ attempts to roll back the welfare state were measures intended to increase the role of the private sector. Most notably:

♦ Under the “Right to Buy”, 1.7 million social housing units were sold at discounted prices to their tenants between 1981 and 1995. The provision of new social housing was switched from local authorities to non-profit housing associations and some existing properties were transferred to them

♦ The role of the private sector was encouraged and increased in pensions provision. For each successive cohort retiring, a rising proportion received privately-funded occupational pensions, reducing the importance of state pensions in retirement incomes

♦ Provision of residential care for the elderly is increasingly by the private sector, even where the public sector is the source of funding. Some limited concessions were given to private medical insurance. Including dependants, just over 10 per cent of the population is now covered by such insurance.

In these sectors what emerged as far more important were a series of reforms in the late-1980s designed to bring market principles into public sector provision, to establish what became known as “quasi-markets”

A final development – which has been important in New Labour’s agenda – is the development of what Le Grand has described as “legal” or “regulation” welfare. An example of this is the system of Child Support, under which absent parents (usually men) are supposed to contribute towards the costs of their children, substituting for state social security benefits.

C. Targeting

Historically, a crucial political divide across the British political spectrum has been over the fundamental aims of the welfare state, with those on the Right -particularly the “New Right” – seeing its role as predominantly that of poverty relief, while the Left has pushed towards provision of welfare services on a universal basis, not just to the poor. The protection – at least relatively speaking – of the NHS in the Conservative years goes against this. However, as far as cash benefits and social housing are concerned, the pressure to move towards means-testing and targeting did move spending this way.

D. Inequality

The final factor both shaping and reflecting Conservative welfare policies was the growth in income inequality over their period of government. In complete contrast to the rest of the post-war period, when economic growth had benefited all income groups, incomes at the bottom rose very slowly, or not at all depending on the income definition used.

Putting this together, the key parts of Labour’s inheritance on the welfare state can be summarised as follows:

1. A quarter of national income is spent on the welfare state, neither a high figure in European terms, nor one which has grown over the last two decades.

2. The role of the private sector within welfare did increase over the Conservative years, reflecting deliberate policies. The overall picture is one of gradual, rather than rapid, privatisation of welfare activity.

3. Means-testing became much more important under the Conservatives as far as housing and cash benefits were concerned. The most dramatic change was in the polarisation of social housing, which increasingly houses only the poorest. Given that much social housing is built as estates, this has increased pressures towards geographical polarisation, in turn leading into some of the Labour Government’s priorities in tackling social exclusion.

4. Inequality increased dramatically in the 1980s, reflecting both underlying factors, such as technological change and the skills of the workforce, and government policies, for instance towards social security, taxation, unions and

minimum wage protection.

What’s New About “New Labour”?

1. First, the Manifesto on which it fought the 1997 election pledged not to increase rates of income tax, and to hold public spending totals for the first two years in office to those planned by its predecessor. The exception to this was to be spending on “the New Deal” programme to reduce unemployment, financed by a £5.2 billion “windfall tax” on some of the public utilities privatised

under favourable terms by the Conservatives.

2. Second, the July 1997 Budget brought in the New Deal, concentrating in particular on the young unemployed

3. The Government accepted (with modifications) the recommendations of theDearing Committee on higher education. This had been set up by the Conservatives, but carefully timed (with tacit Labour agreement) to report after the election. The key changes involve introduction from October 1998 of a standard annual fee for (previously free) university education

4. Early in its life, the new Labour government established a large number ofreview groups and committees covering most aspects of the welfare state.

These included: a Minimum Wage Commission to recommend the level of minimum wage, the principle of which was in the election manifesto; a series of Comprehensive Spending Reviews looking across the whole of public spending; the appointment of the independently-minded Frank Field MP as a special Minister for Welfare Reform; an internal review of the pensions system; appointment of an (independent) Royal Commission on Long Term Care; establishment of a small Social Exclusion Unit within the Cabinet Office, initially concentrating on school exclusions and truancy, street homelessness, and the most difficult social housing estates; a review of “welfare-to-work” policies; and another of interactions between the tax and benefit systems.

5. In the Autumn of 1997 it implemented a cut built into the Conservative’s spending plans (to which Labour had committed itself) to remove special additional social security benefits to lone parents. This led to the most serious internal row within the Labour Party since the election, with a substantial back-bench revolt in Parliament.

6. In an attempt to regain the initiative after the lone parents benefit debacle, the government launched a “welfare reform roadshow” in February 1998, with a series of meetings andspeeches launched by Tony Blair, as well as a document setting out “the case for welfare reform”. As the reviews described above were still in progress, this could do little to set out positive policies, concentrating instead on the failings and cost of the existing system, further feeding concerns that more cuts in benefits were planned, particularly in disability benefits.

7. It has set up a new series of area-based policies such as Health Action Zones, Education Action Zones, and Employment Zones, where innovative policies can be tried out (with limited additional resources) in low income neighbourhoods and areas, with significant new resources for an integrated “New Deal for Communities” covering a number of the country’s poorest areas.

8. The March 1998 Budget announced the implementation of recommendations from the review into tax-benefit interactions. These included transformation of the existing cash benefit for low paid workers with children, Family Credit, into a “Working Families Tax Credit” (WFTC) to be paid (usually) via the wage packet, combined with increases in its generosity (including very favourable treatment of childcare costs) and a reduced withdrawal rate as income rises.

9. It also included reforms to the National Insurance Contribution system to align it more closely with income tax. It included the announcement of an increase in the universal Child Benefit going to all parents from 1999, and in the rates of Income Support for the poorest families with children aged under 11. The amounts involved meant that, combined with the new WFTC, virtually all lone parents with younger children would be no worse off than they had been before the withdrawal of special lone parent benefits, despite the equalisation in support across family types.

A week later it published its welfare reform Green Paper, New ambitions for our country: A new contract for welfare, setting out the Government’s broad principles in approaching welfare reform, but containing little or nothing by way of specific proposals which had not already been announced. At the end of July 1998 the Minister originally responsible for this paper, Frank Field, resigned rather than accept a move to an alternative post still outside the Cabinet. In acrimonious exchanges Field said that his plans for radical reform to reduce the role of means-testing had been blocked, particularly by his boss, Harriet Harman (who also lost her job as Social Security Secretary in the reshuffle) and the Chancellor Gordon Brown. Unnamed government sources told the media that Field’s plans had been impractical and had never been worked out in detail.

A. Public spending and taxation: Is New Labour different?

Public spending and taxation is one of the areas where “New Labour” under Tony Blair was most clearly different from “Old Labour”, even including earlier modernisations under Neil Kinnock and John Smith. The new Labour Government produced significant extra spending in popular areas without the

kind of politically damaging tax increases which might have been expected as the way of paying for them under “Old Labour”. It has been able to do this for two reasons. The first is that other forms of taxation – for instance on petrol and tobacco, and on the investment income of pension funds – have been increased. The second is that other areas of spending have been squeezed.

B. New Labour and work

If one is searching for a linking theme across Labour’s welfare policies within its first year it might be found in its promotion of work and the work ethic. Tony Blair’s famous three priorities of “education, education and education” flow explicitly from an analysis that both low productivity and growing inequality have roots in a workforce which is ill-equipped for the contemporary global economy. The major new programme, the New Deal, is all about moving people from social security benefits into work, as were many of the measures in the 1998 Budget.

As another example, the then Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman originally defended the controversial cuts to cash benefits for lone parents on the grounds that the assistance for finding work under the “New Deal for Lone Parents” represented similar resources used in a way which would be more productive for them in the long run.

“The new welfare state should help and encourage people of working age to work where they are capable of doing so”, and

“The Government’s aim is to rebuild the welfare state around work”.

C. New Labour and inequality

In terms of rhetoric, the new government has been clear about its intention to reverse some of the growth of inequality seen in the 1980s. Interviewed in 1996, Tony Blair had stated that,

“I believe in greater equality. If the next Labour Government has not raised the living standards of the poorest by the end of its term in office, it will have failed.”

It can also point to an increasingly comprehensive list of measures as being intended to reduce inequality and relative poverty:

♦ The priority (including extra spending) given to education in general and training for the unemployed in particular as measures intended to address fundamental reasons for unemployment and low pay.

♦ Introduction of a national minimum wage.

♦ Subsidies to employers to take on the young and long-term unemployed, and other elements of the New Deal.

♦ The Working Families Tax Credit, which will be more generous to low paid workers with children than the existing Family Credit.

♦ Increases in the universal Child Benefit and in the allowances for younger children in Income Support.

♦ Proposed reforms to the Child Support Agency which will allow lone parents on benefit to keep some of the maintenance paid to them.

♦ A new campaign to try to ensure that more of the poorest pensioners claim the benefits to which they are entitled, and a real increase in the level of Income Support for pensioners

♦ Special help for low income neighbourhoods through health, education and employment action zones, and the “New Deal for Communities”.

♦ Particular measures recommended by the Social Exclusion Unit to tackle school exclusions and truancy, street homelessness and the poorest areas of social housing.

. Welfare Reform and the “Third Way”

♦ As far as public spending is concerned, it has made great efforts to shed Labour’s “tax and spend” image, and embraced tight public spending limits for its first two years, as set by its Conservative predecessor. In this sense its

policies mark little change from before. However, there is some additional tax-financed spending under the “New Deal”, and spending priorities for the next three years were changed significantly as a result of the Comprehensive

Spending Review, allowing significant real increases in health and education spending.

♦ A major new theme has been the importance of promoting work, both for economic reasons and as part of its vision of an inclusive society. This theme links most of the practical measures which have been taken so far.

♦ In principle, the new government is more clearly committed to reducing inequality than its predecessor, and many of its measures (and others under review) are consistent with this aim. On the other hand, its intention that social security spending should fall in relation to national income constrains what it is likely to do for most benefit levels, determining the living standards of many of the poorest.

In trying to emphasise simultaneously its break with “Old Labour” and its distinctiveness from Thatcherism, the new Government has encouraged talk that it is following what it describes as a “third way”. In its welfare reform Green Paper this is explicit:

“The welfare state now faces a choice of futures. A privatised future, with the welfare state becoming a residual safety net for the poorest and most marginalised; the status quo, but with more generous benefits; or the Government’s third way – promoting opportunity instead of dependence, with a welfare state providing for the mass of the people, but in new

ways to fit the modern world.”

Conclusions

• Tony Blair came to power in 1997 determined to make a clean break with Labour’s past record as the party of “tax and spend”.
• A key part of his New Labour agenda was welfare reform.
• He wanted benefits recipients to pull their weight, with his “rights and responsibilities” approach.
• Certain benefit recipients – such as single parents, the disabled, and older workers – were to be encouraged into work and retrain rather than remain on the dole.
• A strong economy creating plenty of jobs helped Labour here, although the labour force participation rate among single parents and the disabled is still below European averages.
• Another part of the New Labour agenda was to tackle “social exclusion”, groups of the poor who lacked not just income but access to social institutions.
• These included the homeless, young single mothers, and older workers.
• A special cabinet unit was set up to develop initiatives in these areas.
• And finally, Gordon Brown decided to introduce “redistribution by stealth” by sharply increasing benefits to poor families in work paid through a system of tax credits.
• He hoped to radically reduce the amount of child and pensioner poverty – and end the UK’s poor record relative to Europe.
• There has been some progress in this area, although poverty rates have not fallen as fast as the government hoped.
• However, Labour’s plans have had their own problems and echo many previous debates.
• The first minister of welfare reform, Frank Field, clashed with the chancellor over the extension of means tested benefits.
• He wanted a return to Beveridge-style universalism – giving everyone a right to a generous citizen’s pension based on their contribution to society.
• Gordon Brown said this approach was too expensive.
• However, his own means-tested tax benefits are proving difficult to implement, with many either not taking them up or getting incorrect amounts.
• More broadly, Labour’s emphasis on people’s responsibility to seek work harks back to the principles of the liberal welfare state that were only partially obscured by the Beveridge report.
• The means-tested (or tax credit) benefit system – which the chancellor judges is all Britain can afford – is the latest attempt to reconcile a desire for the state to ensure that everyone has a “national minimum” income with the lack of resources to pay for a universal benefit.

Unit 1: Political Parties - All the information you require

Political Parties

• Definition
• Characteristics
• Roles and Functions
• Ideologies
• Programmes, Policies and Manifestos
• Changing Party Images, Consulting Wider Opinion, Involvement of Non Party members (for example in focus groups)

Definition

“An organised and relatively disciplined group of people who freely combine together to advance a set of political attitudes and beliefs with a view to translating them via victory at a general election into government decisions or parliamentary legislation.”

Forman, Mastering British Politics, 1985

A political party is therefore voluntary, organised, possesses beliefs and translates these into policies or legislation. It also assumes that political parties have a set of core beliefs which may change slowly over time.

Characteristics

1. They are organisations which possess a relative degree of permanence.

2. They contest elections and seek to place members in positions of influence in the legislature.

3. They attempt to occupy key executive positions in the political system and if not then to exercise influence on the executive. (e.g. the opposition)

4. Parties hold distinctive labels and organisational structures which distinguish them from other political parties.

Roles and Functions

According to Mackenzie (British Political Parties, 1955) political parties fulfil a number of essential functions within the British system of government. These functions are as follows.

• A Governing Function

• An Opposition Function

• An Electoral Function

• A Policy Function

• A Representation Function

• A Participation Function

• A Communication Function

• An Organisation Function

Each of these functions requires some elaboration and exploration.

The Governing Function

Since (and including) 1945, there have been 18 general elections. In each of these, political parties have competed for the electorate’s mandate (or permission) to govern. In the British system of government a single party usually secures a mandate to become the single party of government. Since 1945, either theConservative Party or the Labour Party has formed the government and given the general level of bedrock support for these two main parties these are the only realistic contenders for office. Most of the other UK political parties seek to influence the government of the day and to secure parliamentary representation in the House of Commons in the form of seats gained.

The minimum number of seats required in order to form a majority government is 323 – 50% +1 seat over all other parties combined out of 646 seats. This gives the largest party a majority over all other parties in the House of Commons, though in practice any governing party will usually require a workable majority of about 40 seats.

In the 18 General Elections since the war there have been sixteen majority governments returned. The exceptions came in February 1974 when Labour obtained 301 seats, the Conservatives 297 and other parties 37 and in May 2010 when the Conservatives with 307 seats fell short of the required number of seats and joined a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

An Opposition Function

The party which obtains the second largest number of seats in the House of Commons following a general election is termed the opposition (The official title is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.) The function of the opposition is to oppose the government of the day and present alternative policies with which to persuade the electorate that it is ready to become the government. The opposition has a shadow cabinet, a team of ‘ministers’ ready to assume office if they win a general election. Watch this Clip of Harriet Harman opposing the coalition’s first Queens Speech.

The Electoral Function

During a general election the parties compete for seats on a constituency by constituency basis. This means that each of the 649 seats in the House of Commons represents a geographical area within the United Kingdom, termed a constituency. The electorate within the constituency choose between the candidates who have put themselves forward as prospective MPs (Members of Parliament). Candidates are usually adopted by the main political parties and put forward to contest the seat on behalf of the party. It is not unusual for candidates to put themselves forward as independents or fringe candidates but they are most unlikely to succeed.  An exception to this rule from the 1997 General Election is when a former BBC journalist Martin Bell stood in the Tatton Constituency Division of Cheshire and beat the incumbent MP Neil Hamilton. In 2001 Dr Richard Taylor successfully contested Wyre Forest under the slogan ‘Save Kidderminster Hospital”

When making a choice between the candidates the electorate rely heavily on the party label in making assumptions about that particular candidates politics. The major parties tend to contest all the seats although the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats do not field candidates in Northern Ireland.

A Policy Function

Political parties are organisations of principle and practice. They hold, though not always rigidly, a set of core assumptions about human nature and society and attempt to design and advance policies which reflect those core assumptions. However it is the realisation that policies must be popular as well as ideologically pure that forces parties to translate their core assumptions into policies which will have broad appeal. Only in 1945 and 1979, 1983 and 1987 have parties been able to translate those core assumptions into policies which have proved electorally popular with the creation of the welfare state under Attlee and the privatisation programmes of the Thatcher administrations. When a party pursues its core assumptions with vigour this is normally likely only to appeal to a narrow section of the electorate, insufficient to win a majority in parliament. The prime examples of this are the Conservatives in 2001 and the Labour Party in 1983. According to McKenzie it is necessary for political parties in a democracy to moderate their policies in order to appeal to as wide a section of the electorate as possible.

A Representation Function

The British system of government is sometimes referred to as a representative democracy. This means that political parties fulfil the function of representing the views and opinions of the electorate. A general election is held to be the simplest way of ascertaining the views of the electorate although sometimes and more frequently under new Labour, referenda, an instrument of direct democracy, have been employed to obtain a mandate for a specific, usually constitutional, measure. M.P.s as representative both of party and constituents are one means by which parties are able to fulfil this key function.

A Participation Function

According to Mackenzie political parties are also vehicles of participation in the political process. It is difficult to imagine becoming involved in formal politics without first obtaining membership of a political party. Many people involve themselves in politics by joining pressure groups or engaging in other forms of extra parliamentary activity, but the primary route to influence is through joining a political party and advancing one’s career within a political party.

A Communication Function

Political parties serve the vital function of listening to (sometimes!) and communicating with the electorate. This allows for the electorate to make an informed choice between the parties and candidates at elections. The function of communication with the electorate is met by a number of strategies including:

• leafleting at a local or constituency level
• press, television and radio interviews with major party figures up to and including the P.M.
• the use of print and billboard advertising
• the televising of party conferences
• the publication of the manifesto
• photo opportunities
• focus groups
• party election broadcasts and party political broadcasts

Parties are increasingly aware of the need for effective communication and public relations. This has lead to the development that in presenting policies parties are more concerned with style, image and presentation rather than with the substance of the policies. The accusation that new Labour uses too much spin comes from this.

An Organisation Function

As vehicles of mass participation political parties have several layers of internal organisation, sometimes called the party machine. The relative importance of each of these usually reflects the internal distribution of power within the party. The key to successfully fighting a general election is that the party is very well organised internally. This in itself however is no guarantee of electoral success.

Ideologies

Ideologies are a set of coherent beliefs which may explain current social, political and economic arrangements, justify them or offer a prescription for change. Over the decades the main political parties have struggled between maintaining their ideological identities and adapting them to changing circumstances. All political parties recognise the importance of retaining their core beliefs and identities but must also square these with what has the potential to appeal to the electorate. In his 1st conference speech as Leader of the Labour Party Tony Blair said that “…we must change or die…”

• The Conservative Party

For significant periods of modern British history it has been the dominant governing party, but it has also suffered divisions, defeats and spells in opposition.

The Conservatives adapted to the agenda set by the Attlee governments whilst in opposition during the 1945-1951 Labour governments, and overhauled both organisation and policy. As a result, between the late 1940s and the early 1970s the Conservatives accepted the pillars of the post-war ‘consensus’: the Welfare State, the public ownership of certain industries, government intervention in economic affairs, and partnership in industry between trade unions and employers. Although Churchill remained rather unenthusiastic, these policies enabled the Conservatives to regain power in 1951 and then to remain in office continuously until 1964.

To general surprise, Heath won the 1970 election and became Prime Minister. Despite his personal achievement in taking Britain into the Common market, the failures of the Heath ministry of 1970-1974 have been the catharsis of modern Conservatism. The reversals of policy, the failure to control inflation or contain the trade unions through legislation on industrial relations, and two defeats at the hands of the coal-miners led first to the fall of Heath and second to the rise and development of Thatcherism. After losing the two elections of February and October 1974, Heath was forced to hold a ballot for the Party leadership in February 1975 in which he was defeated by Margaret Thatcher.

In opposition during 1975-1979 the new leader developed a radical agenda founded upon the ‘free market’, rolling back government intervention and leaving as much as possible to individual initiative. This was the core of Thatcherism.

Andrew Gamble of Sheffield University identifies six core components of Thatcherism. These are:

• Economic Liberalism
• Monetarism
• Anti Corporatism
• Individualism
• Populism
• Authoritarianism

Concern over economic decline and the power wielded by the trade unions created a receptive public mood, and Thatcher led the Conservatives to three successive victories in 1979, 1983 and 1987. She was the dominant political personality throughout the 1980s, especially after securing victory in the Falklands war of 1982. She is widely credited with restoring Britain’s status as an enterprise-based economy and as a significant influence on the international stage. However, at the end of the decade economic recession, her commitment to the deeply unpopular ‘poll tax’, and internal disputes over European policy led to Mrs Thatcher’s defeat in a leadership ballot in November 1990.

From Major to Howard

The successor to emerge from this contest was the relatively unknown figure of John Major, the candidate thought most able to unify a divided and traumatised party. Major abandoned the ‘poll tax’ and presented a more ‘caring’ image, and support for the Conservatives improved enough for him to hold on to a narrow majority in the general election of April 1992. However, this margin was steadily eroded during the following parliament, and by 1997 his administration was clinging on by its fingertips.

The Major government of 1992-1997 was a painful period for the Conservative Party, and opinion poll ratings slumped to record lows following the economic fiasco of ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992. The most serious problems were caused by a recession which hit Conservative support in southern England, a collapse of normal party unity over the increasingly contentious issue of Europe, and ‘sleaze’ – a string of personal scandals involving Conservative ministers and MPs. Press hostility and a modernised Labour opposition prevented the Conservatives from recovering when the economic position improved, and on 1 May 1997 they suffered their third and final sweeping defeat of the twentieth century. Only 165 MPs survived, and Major at once resigned the leadership; in his place, the Party selected its youngest leader in modern times, William Hague.

The Conservatives were unable to recover ground during the 1997-2001 Parliament. The party remained unpopular with the public, whilst the Labour government’s careful management of the economy meant that it survived any other difficulties without lasting damage. Hague followed a more ‘Euro-sceptic’ policy, ruling out joining the single European currency. This caused tensions in the party but also led to its greatest success in the period, doubling its seats to 36 in the European Parliament elections of June 1999. However, concentration on Europe was less effective in the June 2001 general election, and Conservative hopes of at least a partial recovery were dashed. 166 MPs were elected, only one more than in 1997, and on the morning after the poll Hague announced his resignation. A new selection procedure had been introduced, and after ballots of Conservative MPs the two leading candidates went forward to a vote of the party membership in September 2001. Iain Duncan Smith secured 155,933 votes to Kenneth Clarke’s 100,864, and so became the new leader of the Conservative Party.

During the following two years there was little sign of improvement in the Party’s fortunes, as the domestic, political and economic situation remained largely unchanged. The Conservatives supported the policy of Prime Minister Tony Blair in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the spring and summer of 2003. This was in tune with Conservative opinion whilst the Labour Party was deeply divided over the issue, but the war did not change the relative popularity of the two parties. A significant minority of Conservative MPs had been doubtful about Duncan Smith’s leadership from the outset, and the lack of improvement in the Party’s position caused this number to increase during the summer and autumn of 2003. The criticism and speculation culminated in a ballot of Conservative MPs on 29 October, in which Duncan Smith was defeated by 75 votes to 90. The desire of the party to avoid further disunity was shown when only one candidate was nominated for the vacant leadership, and so a contest was avoided. Michael Howard was declared Leader on 6 November; although older than both of his predecessors, he had the asset of considerable experience of government, having been a cabinet minister from 1990. After losing the 2005 General Election and remaining below 200 seats the Conservatives opted for the modernisation agenda of David Cameron who in 2010 returned the party to government, albeit as a coalition government with the LIberal Democrats.

• The Labour Party

The Labour Party has historically been held to be a socialist party. Though there are many definitions of socialism a basic characteristic of it is that it is concerned with the pursuit of equality. There are perhaps 3 basic dimensions: social equality, political equality and economic equality.

• Social Equality

This is the idea that all people are of equal worth regardless of social class, age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or disability. In office Labour has legislated against forms of discrimination, in the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the Race Relations Act (1976). Prejudice (an attitude) is of course much harder to tackle than discrimination (a behaviour).

• Political Equality

The idea is that all persons should have equal access to political rights such as the vote and the right to stand as a candidate.

• Economic Equality

Economic equality is of course very difficult to achieve. In fact it is so difficult that it is not truly an aim of the Labour Party. Instead, equality of opportunity, as opposed to equality of outcome, is the stated aim of the Labour party. Given wide ranging social class divisions even equality of opportunity is very difficult to achieve.

The degree to which the Labour Party has been ‘committed’ to socialism has often been called into question. An examination of how socialist the Labour Party is needs to take into account its record in office as well as changes in its commitments and policies when in opposition. It is particularly difficult to conceive of today’s Labour Party as a socialist party, given the emphasis on ‘New Labour’ by Tony Blair and other leading figures in the party.

The Labour Party: a brief history

In 1900 the Labour Representation Committee was formed to secure seats in parliament for representatives of the trade union movement and the industrial working class.

In 1906, at the General Election, 29 seats were obtained by the LRC and the parliamentary Labour party was officially formed.

In 1918 Sydney and Beatrice Webb drafted a constitution for the Labour Party. The key feature of the constitution was Clause 4, part four, which stated the aims of the party:

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and for the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”.

This clause has historically been referred to as the ‘nationalisation clause’

In 1945 Labour obtained a landslide majority of 146 in Parliament. Set against the context of the war, and of the hardships of the depression ridden 1930s, the Attlee government pledged to build ‘A ‘New Jerusalem’. In 1942 the Beveridge Report had identified 5 Giant Ills, which had stalked the 1930s: Poverty, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Want. The Welfare state, designed to care for citizens ’from the cradle to the grave’ was introduced. The key planks of the post war consensus were laid in the first term of the Attlee government:

• The Implementation of the 1944 White Paper on Employment – Full Employment
• The Implementation of the 1944 Butler Education Act: Free Compulsory Education to the age of 15
• The Nationalisation of the ‘Commanding heights’ of the economy: Clause Four
• The Creation of the Welfare state – a system of pensions, disability and unemployment benefits, based on national insurance contributions
• The Creation of the NHS in 1948 – free health care at the point of delivery.

These reforms laid the planks of the post war consensus, observed by both Conservative and Labour Governments until the mid 1970s when the post war consensus collapsed and both parties moved away from the centre.

On taking office in 1997, Tony Blair said: “We were elected as new Labour and we will govern as new labour”. The concept of New Labour predates Blair’s leadership election in 1994. In fact, New Labour has its antecedents as far back as June 9th 1983. The election of Neil Kinnock in Oct 1983 marked the beginning of an extraordinary shift not only in the Labour Party’s ideological positioning, but also in its internal structure and organisation.

The political theorist Maurice Duverger (Political Parties 1959) argued that political parties experiencing defeat often engaged in a process of what he called “structural tinkering”. The theory is that, having lost an election, the party needs to change the internal balance of power, in order to ideologically reposition itself. The birth and development of New Labour is a case in point.

Under Neil Kinnock’s leadership, a series of internal reforms was initiated, designed to reduce the power of the left and the power of the trade unions. This reorganisation was also an attempt to relate to the electorate that Labour was changing, and that factors which made it unpopular, such as the dominance of the unions over the party, and the infiltration of the Party by members of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency, were being addressed.

In 1987, Labour ran a good campaign, but lost the election. A slightly improved performance appeared to vindicate the reforms thus far implemented. In the aftermath of the 1987 defeat, Labour launched a policy review, had already replaced the red flag (reminiscent of the Eastern European state socialism) with the red rose, emblematic of Western European social democracy. It was a visual cue to the electorate, symbolic of Labour’s distancing itself from hard left policies.

The policy review and the subsequent “Labour Listens” campaign, constituted further evidence of Labour attempting to persuade the electorate that it had changed. One negative perception of such initiatives was that Labour was unprincipled and would do and say anything to obtain office. Although Labour ran the Conservatives close in 1992, it lost its fourth general election in a row.

The death of John Smith in May 1994 gave the architects of New Labour, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, the opportunity to seize the party leadership and accelerate the transition from Old Labour to New Labour. Symbolic of Old Labour was Clause 4, Part 4 of the 1918 constitution, the so-called “Nationalisation Clause”. Tony Blair, in 1995, managed to persuade the party to ditch Clause 4 in favour of a new statement of values. John Prescott, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party called the new statement “traditional values in a modern setting”.

The New Clause Four

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so, as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential, and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity is in the hands of the many and not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe and where we live together freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.

New Labour  embraced the private sector in a way that Old Labour could never have done, and many of its policies were more radical than even the Conservatives could have contemplated, including the privatisation of air traffic control, privatisation of the Tube network, cuts in single parent benefits and the introduction of tuition top-up fees.

Tony Blair called the accusation that New Labour was just the same as the Conservatives, a lie. He pointed to the windfall tax on the privatised utilities, which created 1.5m jobs for the New Deal, which virtually eradicated youth unemployment. He pointed also to the constitutional reforms which the Conservatives have opposed every step of the way and he also introduced the national minimum wage and signed up for the social chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, which gives millions of part-time workers rights and benefits they previously did not enjoy.

Every Labour government since the war has dazzled and then disappointed especially on economic policy. The outstanding achievement of New Labour was  to steer the economy clear of recession for 43 successive quarters and make Labour the electorate’s preference over the Tories for economic management, until the financial crisis of 2008 ripped that reputation and hard won confidence to shreds. Despite attempts to label the crisis as a global one (this worked for the Conservatives in 1991) the electorate never really warmed to Brown.

Old Labour Policies and Image:

• Nationalisation
• income tax rises for the well-off
• social spending
• no private engagement in the public sector
• party control over the manifesto
• strong links with unions
• reputation for economic mismanagement and inflation
• a reputation for extremism

New Labour Policies and Image

• A reputation for strong economic management

• public-private partnerships (PFI = private finance initiative in public services)
• national minimum wage and the New Deal
• tuition top-up fees
• cuts in disability and single-parent benefits
• constitutional reform
• moderate public image

A recent argument for Labour to return to its 1945 heritage and roots

PARTIES JUNE 2009

Please be aware that all guidance for parties questions is dated and therefore needs to be reworked so that it reflects the contemporary policies and ideas. Examples dating back 2-4 years are still valid but care needs to be exercised when using them.