This page is for the academic year 2021-22. The current handbook year is 2022-23
A Safe Democracy? Constitutionalism, Extremism, and Political Violence in Modern England, c. 1890-1939
Excluded Combination of Modules
- To help students develop an independent command of primary material in the history of modern British politics and political culture, with an appreciation of the nature and form of sources and the ability to deploy different methods and techniques to interrogate them
- To help students develop a deep engagement with historiographical trends and historical interpretations in the history of modern Britain.
- The â€˜Brexitâ€™ victory in the 2016 referendum was about many things, including, for some, a sense that â€˜Englandâ€™ was unique. One historically persistent and significant expression of this exceptionalism has been the view that England was a uniquely stable, constitutional, liberal, consensual, practical and successful nation-state, unlike the unstable, strife-torn and dogma-ridden nations of â€˜Europeâ€™, which â€“ sooner or later â€“ end in revolution, authoritarianism, and â€˜tyrannyâ€™. This is certainly a comforting view, not least for a cross-party political class; but is it a correct view? The objective of this module is to explore this terrain by clarifying its conceptual bases, examining both published and manuscript primary sources, and engaging closely with problems of historiography. The first half of the module explores Britain in the early twentieth century. An industrialized, urbanized society, with a long-established tradition of parliamentary government, Britain seemed the very model of the modern, civilian, and constitutional state. It was widely regarded (not least by its governing political elite) as a mature â€˜democracyâ€™. But, in terms of its parliamentary franchise, Britain was in fact one of the least â€˜democraticâ€™ societies in Europe. It was also a polity whose prosperity and confidence had been built on an industrial and imperial dominance that was increasingly being threatened by international rivals. Early seminars in the module focus on the tensions in politics and society around the turn of the century that seemed to challenge Britainâ€™s self-conception and self-confidence as a stable, liberal, nation-state. These include the spirit of paranoia, â€˜jingoismâ€™, and militarism that seemed to take root in Britain during the final quarter of the 19th century, and intensified during the South African War; the emergence of new challenges to the nationâ€™s established parliamentary system, from militant suffragettes, Syndicalists, and organised Labour; and the looming threat of paramilitary violence, perhaps even civil war, in Ireland, where it appeared that the armed forces of the Crown might not be fully under the control of civilian statesmen in London. The second half of the module considers the impact of the Great War and the economic slump on Britainâ€™s institutions and political culture. Seminars explore the question of â€˜traumaâ€™ in British society in the aftermath of the war, and the scholarly controversy over the extent to which political violence was either normalised or rendered illegitimate by the experience of the conflict. Seminars will also examine the emergence of a nascent fascism, arguably driven by a â€˜revoltâ€™ of the middle classes; the worsening of class tensions that culminated in a General Strike, the nature and meaning of which remains fiercely contested; the problem of unemployment and its corrosive effects on social solidarity; and a resurgence of political violence during the 1930s in the contest between fascism and anti-fascism. The module considers how far these phenomena undermine the narrative of an inter-war Britain characterized by a spirt of national unity, internationalism, and pacifism, in what has often been seen as a golden age for civil society. The module concludes by considering how far, and in what ways, British â€˜democracyâ€™ had developed over the first half of the twentieth century: did victory in the Second World War mark the triumph of a British form of social democracy, or the failure to break free from what was only ever a half-formed and incomplete democracy?