Social Movements in Britain (Theory and Practice in British Politics)

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Communities have a capacity for mutual care and support in distress or when problems arise. They are not simply a way of establishing an identity in the world: Even mutual insurance; providing care now in return for help later has an important role to play. Communities are not constant overtime. Their organisational form and extent vary according to need and inclination. New communities are formed, old ones pass away, some grow, some decline and their membership is forever in flux. Indeed, the pattern of some of the communities whose identity is strongly felt has undergone a profound change over the last century or more.

A great deal of nonsense is talked about the warmth and closeness of the traditional neighbourhood community and the extended family. There is no doubt that; in some places and at times of poverty or other threat, such communities have been important. Nevertheless, they could be restrictive narrowing and oppressive. Many people went to great lengths to escape from them. In any case, the important factor in support was always friendship rather than proximity.

The problem today is the number of factors which inhibit the development of friend-ship and mutual support - geographical and social mobility, mass communications; and the emphasis on the nuclear family are some examples. The growth of the women's movement is an important countervailing factor, the full relevance of which is not yet realised.

The romantic nostalgia for the traditional fore to neighbourhood community and for the extended family may be based on a myth, but the prevalence and attractiveness of that myth show the extent of the need for mutual aid and support, for group friendship links - for community.

Other functions of that idealised community include advice and information, the care of children and the very old, even the regulation of crime As the scale of government has grown, it has become more and more apparent that intervention by the state is not and can-not-be a substitute for mutual aid within the community. The stress on the most basic community - the nuclear family - has grown as other links have withered and it often cannot fulfil the role which is demanded of it. Indeed, the romantic idealisation of marriage and the nuclear family has often directly contributed to breakdown.

They cannot fulfil so ambitious a role, as the only form of social support outside the institutions of the state and the key intermediary between individuals and the rest of the world. This pervasive fantasy has almost made intolerable the lives of many people who choose to live singly. A basic purpose of our approach is therefore to create and to re-create communities, providing a range of mutual support for their members, opportunities to develop and establish a personal role and purpose in life and in co-operation and conflict with each other, to provide the diversity and pluralism which is the basis of mature, participatory democracy.

Politics is the process of interaction between people and groups, leading to decisions which affect them and their environment. It is the way in which we' influence our surroundings.

It is not concerned with the practice of 'politics' by professed 'politicians' working through or in pursuit of 'office' within 'government'. It is concerned with the exercise of power throughout society whether it be through formal structures or not. The essence of politics is power. The central concern of politics is with the distribution of power and the inter-relation between different centres of power. Its secondary concern is with the control of power and of those who exercise it, the uses to which power is put and the processes by which decisions are reached and implemented.

The Liberal view is based on the moral imperative that all people have an equal right to take part in the process by which-decisions that affect their lives are taken. The greatest threat to that right is the concentration of power. Democracy is dependent as much on the dissemination, distribution and control of power as it is upon the ballot. The objective of community politics is not the welfare of communities themselves. Communities are not in themselves an end. The end is the quality of the experience of each individual within them.

The justification for community politics lies in the belief that the key to releasing the potential of each person as a unique individual lies in bringing together all individuals in voluntary, mutual and co-operative enterprise within relevant communities. We have produced world-wide a society of mass production, mass marketing and mass consumption in which choice, participation and creativity are minimal. This approach and the values that have led to it, pervade every facet of human endeavour from industry, politics and commerce to recreation, sports, the arts and eating and drinking: It is a society that operates 'in a similar but, not identical way; irrespective of the professed ideology of the political group who are in control in any particular place at any particular time.

All such political groups, some in good faith and some in bad, profess to be promoting the welfare of all. Most usually they do so at the expense of each. Societies of such mass uniformity not only deny individuality to their members. Faced with changes in the factors upon which they are based, they must either adapt themselves as a whole or be faced with tensions which they may not survive.

Indeed our current society is approaching just such a crisis. It has created an economy dependent upon the accelerating consumption of non- - renewable resources, that inevitably cannot continue. So it must adapt and change or go out of existence. Yet a mass and uniform society is by its nature ' inflexible. The alternative is a society made up of many varied and different communities. Such a society offers the individual a wide range of personal choice of social role and life-style. Such a society has a dynamic inbuilt tendency to change and develop.

New ideas can be tried out on an experimental basis within a community where they could not within the whole of society with-out endangering it if they failed. So, it makes sense in terms of the resilience and survival of society to reverse the trends towards centralisation and uniformity, and to encourage decentralisation and variety. But our perspective is primarily political. We are concerned with the distribution and control of power within communities and with the manner in which decisions, attitudes and priorities emerge from the full range of smaller communities to govern larger and larger communities.

That process of confrontation conflict, negotiation, co-operation, change and law-making is the way in which societies should be run. The concept of pluralism is central to our view of politics, just as the concepts of free choice and diversity are central to our view of personal development. Pluralism is not a neat prescription or an easy concept: We are not just concerned with the creation of communities, but also with their interaction, with the capacity of communities and the individuals who make them up for influencing the world around them and the decisions which affect or involve them, Our view is also outward looking and inclusive: We are all involved in mankind:.

Our aim is therefore the creation of a political system which is based on the interaction of communities in which groups have the power, the will, the knowledge, the technology to influence and affect the making of decisions in which they have an interest. Even more, we want those communities to initiate the debate, to formulate their own demands and priorities and to participate fully in agreeing the rules by which their relationships are regulated.

Dr Bice Maiguashca

The first stage in the creation of community is the emergence of a community identity, involving and interesting its members. Sometimes, such an identity will emerge from a particular struggle and die with it. Sometimes such struggles leave behind a core of dedicated, disillusioned activists, representing nothing but themselves. Our role is to maintain communities which have a function to fulfil but, beyond that it is to create a habit of participation, binding a community together in a constant relationship with power and decision-making.

Within that broader community, there will be many smaller ones taking a more or less active role as they choose and are interested. The two key factors are, firstly, the habit of participation, linked with the techniques and access to power and, secondly, the framework of community institutions, of greater or less structure and formality as necessary, through which participation is made relevant and effective.

The habit and reality of controlling their own affairs are crucial factors in keeping communities open, vital and active. The nature of community politics thus entails a commitment to the dispersal of centralised power in society and its redistribution to the communities which make it up. The theory of community politics has direct implications for many areas of policy. It provides an ideological basis for many traditional Liberal policies as well as high-lighting areas for fruitful investigation and, indeed, shedding new light on well practised arguments within the Liberal Party!

We hope that these examples not only demonstrate the close relationship between community politics and Liberalism; and illustrate the general theory further, but also provide more practical campaigning points. Community politics is quite incompatible with the centralisation of power at the level of the nation-state.

Indeed, it is incompatible with the concentration of power at any level. The most conspicuous and serious absence in Britain is of any structure of neighbourhood government. This is the level that most directly affects the everyday lives of every-one and it is the level of government in which everyone can take part directly.

It is only in small, geographically coherent neighbourhoods that everyone can take a direct part in the making of decisions and the exercise of power. At any level above this, some form of indirect democracy involving representative government is needed. Almost as serious in Britain is the lack of effective power and independence in local government. Local government, by virtue of the control exercised over it by the state through the control of its finances, has in effect become little more than devolved administration exercised by locally elected representatives carrying out the policies of the central government.

Local government has also been emasculated in many parts of the country by a re-organisation which has put the principle of common size and identical powers before the recognition of perceived local communities. Human settlements are not uniform and our pattern of government ought to recognise this. Barnoldswick has the same right to rule itself as does Leicester. The wilful creation of artificial units and the ignoring of natural communities serves only to destroy the basis of local government.

The impact on people of the lack of neighbourhood government and the failure of local government is immediate and clearly identifiable. The lack of regional government and of effective and democratic authorities at a continental, a sub-continental and a world level is more intangible in its effects but equally serious. It is the absence of regional authorities that has created much of the stultifying bureaucracy of British internal administration. It is the lack of supranational authorities that has failed to bring about effective arms control, has allowed exploitation by multi-national corporations to go unchecked and has maintained the inequitable distribution of the benefits of the world's natural resources and the proceed of industrialisation.

Supra-national government is bedevilled by the idea that international democracy means 'one nation one vote', and by the concept of national sovereignty that demands that each country has a veto on any crucial decision. National sovereignty is a perniciously dangerous concept that subverts the independence of lower levels of government and prevents the exercise of effective power by authorities at a higher level.

There is nothing special, sacrosanct or intrinsically superior about the authority of national governments. It is their unbridled exercise of power that is the greatest threat to the ideal of community politics. Power wherever exercised must be limited. It must be held in check by a framework of constitutional relationships backed by effective enforcement. Above all, the use of power must be held in check by the vigilance and activity of communities with the habit and techniques of participation.

Communities at every level have a legitimate claim to exercise power within a defined and limited area. That area of power must be safeguarded against the encroachments of other levels of government. The central concern of politics should be the definition and protection of legitimate sphere of power as exercised by different authorities: Community politics implies federalism.

It is a mistake to think of communities solely in geographical terms. A place is not the only sort of entity that can exist as an organised community and possess a degree of power to run its own affairs. We should be thinking equally of different functions of government and administration as arenas for the promotion of community politics.

In particular, community politics is applicable to the running of industry and other places of work. It is also applicable to the running of education, the health services and other public services. The establishment of the claims of the communities involved in these fields to run their own affairs is no different in principle from the claims of members of a neighbourhood residential community.

In practice the problems may be more complex. The differing and sometimes competing interests of different groups of workers and consumers must be reconciled. This is not easy and has been used as a justification for rejecting the idea altogether. Of course it is not: It is much more an indication of the need to experiment with a variety of different approaches.

Even that at present is premature. It is the claim by communities of both workers and consumers to the control of their own destinies that must be promoted as a valid demand. Community politics is relevant both as policy and as a process. In policy terms, we are looking for co-operative production, bringing direct and representative democracy into the planning, organisation and management of productive work.

In terms of process, we are talking about the organisation and management of industrial communities which can take decisions and can interact in organising production just as any other democratic political community should do. In the public services we are looking for co-operation, involving not only workers and representatives of the public interests, but also the recipients, the victims, of the services they provide. Health, education and transportation are a long way from any form of democratic control, and even further from any realisation of a role for consumers. There is a need for the policy of decentralisation and co-operation.

Senior Lecturer

There is a need for political organisation and community politics. Community politics is as relevant to the shop floor and the classroom as it is to the housing estate and the town hall. It is significant and welcome that Liberal students are a growing political force within further and higher education. It is important that they, like the local community activists, understand the nature of the community politics strategy and their role within it. A community running its own affairs is in itself no guarantee, although it is a pre-requisite, of a Liberal society.

Any community retains the capacity to be repressive, intolerant and discriminatory in its treatment of outsiders and of its own members and it can be chauvinistic in its approach to the outside world. Indeed, ideas of community self-government are not exclusively Liberal. Some of our most bitter opponents have similar concepts - for instance, the National Front's advocacy of industrial democracy.

Community politics can disintegrate into a surrender to the easy populism of the vested interests of a tyrannous majority. Nor should we forget that apartheid is a peculiarly ruthless and logically self-consistent distortion of community politics. The Liberal vision of community politics is dependent upon the universal safeguard of civil liberties. Unless a community respects and upholds the liberty of the individual, of minority groups, and indeed of majority groups, no community, however well organised, however strong in group identity, can enhance the quality of experience of each and every individual who makes it up.

BOOK SERIES

Community politics is dependent upon the universal guarantee within each community of full democratic rights to all its members. This includes a fair voting system. The forms may vary according to the size and circumstances of the particular community but the principle itself is invariable. Communities which sacrifice the liberty of the individual and democratic self-determination to whatever other objective, are intrinsically no better than any other form of government.

But communities can be the most complete way of safeguarding that liberty and freeing the full potential of their members for self-expression. There are two distinctively liberal aspects of community politics which afford protection to civil liberty and democratic practice. The first lies in our belief that with the increasing exercise of power goes an increasing responsibility for its application.

When power is spread, it is in everyone's interest to use their power to maintain the civil liberty of others lest it be their turn next. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance - not only for one's own freedoms, but for others'. The second guarantee lies in the acceptance of personal moral responsibility to defend the liberty of oneself and others.

In a society which is based on the habit and techniques of participation, in which civil disobedience can be a moral imperative, the difficulties of repression can be greater than the benefits. Tyranny depends not on the consent but on the apathy or despair of its subjects: If the essence of community politics is to afford the maximum choice to each individual, that ideal cannot be realised if some of the most basic choices are denied to some people.

For that reason community politics implies a full system of social welfare. The welfare state is in a crisis. The expectations created a generation ago of a constantly rising standard of living for everyone, financed out of a steady and constantly continuing rate of economic growth, have led to a level of public demand for welfare provisions which currently is not and perhaps cannot be met. At the same time, the agencies of public welfare provision have grown into vast, insensitive bureaucracies.

Jo Grimond MP summed up the contradiction between the intent - the advertised purpose - of the welfare state, and the everyday reality, when he said that the institutions are "widely suspected of malevolence by precisely the people they are designed to help". In the eyes of such people, the Housing Department, the Supplementary Benefits Office, even the Health Service and Social Services Department, have taken over the roles of policemen and workhouse superintendents - to be treated with caution and suspicion and kept at arm's length..

The difference is that, today, the officers or the welfare state are more begrudging, more ubiquitous and more arbitrary; they are concerned with more and more areas of daily life and they are very much more intrusive into personal privacy. These are not arguments against social justice or against a role for public authorities in meeting social need. They are arguments against the particular method of achieving social justice and competent, caring support for those in need. The current ideology of social welfare is based on a limited and limiting view of the central role of the paid professional in providing support.

That view is also inaccurate: We believe that it is possible to base a strategy for social welfare on the community politics approach. The emphasis will be on self-help and mutual aid, on the sharing of skills and knowledge amongst-those who provide care in the community. The role of professionals will be much more in the prevention of problems, in support for carers in the family and the community, and in the stimulation of community responsibility and care: This will involve a direct attack on the competency, bureaucracy and vested interests of many of those who are currently involved in providing services.

In particular, professionals must be prevented from colonising the newly-rediscovered 'informal sector' of families, friends and neighbours. The process of resisting such colonisation, of building up mutual aid, and of providing limited support for carers is a political process involving the growth to power of communities.

It is unlikely to be based on conscious decisions amongst professionals to limit their own interference. There is also an urgent need to re-examine and to challenge the way in which decisions about priorities and resource allocation are made. Again, the case is for political and campaigning action, breaking down problems and decisions to a manageable and relevant level for direct participation by the victims of welfare paternalism.

Community politics poses a direct challenge to the social democratic ideology of centralised state welfare provision and its consequent undermining of the role of the community. Over the last 75 years, the ideology of bureaucracy, centralism and paternalism has developed to the point of suffocating its victims. Community politics offers the opportunity for a caring, competent alternative. Social need is not confined within the boundaries of the-nation state.

There are whole populations in the Third World whose lives never rise above total and abject poverty. The remedies of international aid and the promotion of industrialisation have signally failed to work. With the current pattern of regular world recessions and a growing shortage of natural resources it is evident that they never will. Real solutions, are dependent on effective controls to prevent exploitation by international companies and freeing all from the shackles of national self-interest.

New social movements

Both require supra-national institutions pursuing a programme to promote social justice on a world scale. Community politics embraces a commitment to social justice embodying a supranational dimension.

1st Edition

We must be clear, however, that we do not create justice with equality. Aristotleanism flourished as the Islamic Golden Age saw rise to a continuation of the peripaetic philosophers who implemented the ideas of Aristotle in the context of the Islamic world. Abunaser, Avicenna and Ibn Rushd where part of this philosophical school who claimed that human reason surpassed mere coincidence and revelation.

They believed, for example, that natural phenomena occurs because of certain rules made by god , not because god interfered directly unlike Al-Ghazali and his followers. Other notable political philosophers of the time include Nizam al-Mulk , a Persian scholar and vizier of the Seljuq Empire who composed the Siyasatnama , or the "Book of Government" in English. In it, he details the role of the state in terms of political affairs i.

The 14th-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun is considered one of the greatest political theorists. The British philosopher-anthropologist Ernest Gellner considered Ibn Khaldun's definition of government , " For Ibn Khaldun, government should be restrained to a minimum for as a necessary evil, it is the constraint of men by other men. Medieval political philosophy in Europe was heavily influenced by Christian thinking. It had much in common with the Mutazilite Islamic thinking in that the Roman Catholics though subordinating philosophy to theology did not subject reason to revelation but in the case of contradictions, subordinated reason to faith as the Asharite of Islam.

The Scholastics by combining the philosophy of Aristotle with the Christianity of St. Augustine emphasized the potential harmony inherent in reason and revelation. Thomas Aquinas who helped reintroduce Aristotle 's works, which had only been transmitted to Catholic Europe through Muslim Spain , along with the commentaries of Averroes. Aquinas's use of them set the agenda, for scholastic political philosophy dominated European thought for centuries even unto the Renaissance.

Medieval political philosophers, such as Aquinas in Summa Theologica , developed the idea that a king who is a tyrant is no king at all and could be overthrown. Magna Carta , viewed by many as a cornerstone of Anglo-American political liberty, explicitly proposes the right to revolt against the ruler for justice sake. Other documents similar to Magna Carta are found in other European countries such as Spain and Hungary.

During the Renaissance secular political philosophy began to emerge after about a century of theological political thought in Europe. While the Middle Ages did see secular politics in practice under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire , the academic field was wholly scholastic and therefore Christian in nature.

That work, as well as The Discourses , a rigorous analysis of the classical period , did much to influence modern political thought in the West. A minority including Jean-Jacques Rousseau interpreted The Prince as a satire meant to be given to the Medici after their recapture of Florence and their subsequent expulsion of Machiavelli from Florence. At any rate, Machiavelli presents a pragmatic and somewhat consequentialist view of politics, whereby good and evil are mere means used to bring about an end—i. Thomas Hobbes , well known for his theory of the social contract , goes on to expand this view at the start of the 17th century during the English Renaissance.

Although neither Machiavelli nor Hobbes believed in the divine right of kings, they both believed in the inherent selfishness of the individual. It was necessarily this belief that led them to adopt a strong central power as the only means of preventing the disintegration of the social order.

During the Enlightenment period, new theories about what the human was and is and about the definition of reality and the way it was perceived, along with the discovery of other societies in the Americas, and the changing needs of political societies especially in the wake of the English Civil War , the American Revolution , the French Revolution , and the Haitian Revolution led to new questions and insights by such thinkers as Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

These theorists were driven by two basic questions: These fundamental questions involved a conceptual distinction between the concepts of "state" and "government. The term "government" would refer to a specific group of people who occupied the institutions of the state, and create the laws and ordinances by which the people, themselves included, would be bound. This conceptual distinction continues to operate in political science , although some political scientists, philosophers, historians and cultural anthropologists have argued that most political action in any given society occurs outside of its state, and that there are societies that are not organized into states that nevertheless must be considered in political terms.

As long as the concept of natural order was not introduced, the social sciences could not evolve independently of theistic thinking. Since the cultural revolution of the 17th century in England, which spread to France and the rest of Europe, society has been considered subject to natural laws akin to the physical world.

Political and economic relations were drastically influenced by these theories as the concept of the guild was subordinated to the theory of free trade , and Roman Catholic dominance of theology was increasingly challenged by Protestant churches subordinate to each nation-state , which also in a fashion the Roman Catholic Church often decried angrily preached in the vulgar or native language of each region.

However, the enlightenment was an outright attack on religion, particularly Christianity. After Voltaire, religion would never be the same again in France. In the Ottoman Empire , these ideological reforms did not take place and these views did not integrate into common thought until much later. As well, there was no spread of this doctrine within the New World and the advanced civilizations of the Aztec , Maya , Inca , Mohican , Delaware , Huron and especially the Iroquois.

The Iroquois philosophy in particular gave much to Christian thought of the time and in many cases actually inspired some of the institutions adopted in the United States: John Locke in particular exemplified this new age of political theory with his work Two Treatises of Government. In it Locke proposes a state of nature theory that directly complements his conception of how political development occurs and how it can be founded through contractual obligation. Locke stood to refute Sir Robert Filmer 's paternally founded political theory in favor of a natural system based on nature in a particular given system.

The theory of the divine right of kings became a passing fancy, exposed to the type of ridicule with which John Locke treated it. Unlike Machiavelli and Hobbes but like Aquinas, Locke would accept Aristotle's dictum that man seeks to be happy in a state of social harmony as a social animal. Unlike Aquinas's preponderant view on the salvation of the soul from original sin , Locke believes man's mind comes into this world as tabula rasa.

For Locke, knowledge is neither innate, revealed nor based on authority but subject to uncertainty tempered by reason, tolerance and moderation. According to Locke, an absolute ruler as proposed by Hobbes is unnecessary, for natural law is based on reason and seeking peace and survival for man. The Marxist critique of capitalism—developed with Friedrich Engels —was, alongside liberalism and fascism, one of the defining ideological movements of the twentieth century.

The industrial revolution produced a parallel revolution in political thought. Urbanization and capitalism greatly reshaped society. During this same period, the socialist movement began to form. In the midth century, Marxism was developed, and socialism in general gained increasing popular support, mostly from the urban working class. Without breaking entirely from the past, Marx established principles that would be used by future revolutionaries of the 20th century namely Vladimir Lenin , Mao Zedong , Ho Chi Minh , and Fidel Castro.

Though Hegel 's philosophy of history is similar to Immanuel Kant 's, and Karl Marx 's theory of revolution towards the common good is partly based on Kant's view of history—Marx declared that he was turning Hegel's dialectic, which was "standing on its head", "the right side up again". In addition, the various branches of anarchism , with thinkers such as Mikhail Bakunin , Pierre-Joseph Proudhon or Peter Kropotkin , and syndicalism also gained some prominence.

In the Anglo-American world, anti-imperialism and pluralism began gaining currency at the turn of the 20th century. World War I was a watershed event in human history, changing views of governments and politics. The Russian Revolution of and similar, albeit less successful, revolutions in many other European countries brought communism —and in particular the political theory of Leninism , but also on a smaller level Luxemburgism gradually —on the world stage.

At the same time, social democratic parties won elections and formed governments for the first time, often as a result of the introduction of universal suffrage. From the end of World War II until , when John Rawls published A Theory of Justice , political philosophy declined in the Anglo-American academic world, as analytic philosophers expressed skepticism about the possibility that normative judgments had cognitive content, and political science turned toward statistical methods and behavioralism.

In continental Europe, on the other hand, the postwar decades saw a huge blossoming of political philosophy, with Marxism dominating the field. Communism remained an important focus especially during the s and s. Colonialism and racism were important issues that arose. In general, there was a marked trend towards a pragmatic approach to political issues, rather than a philosophical one.

Much academic debate regarded one or both of two pragmatic topics: The rise of feminism , LGBT social movements and the end of colonial rule and of the political exclusion of such minorities as African Americans and sexual minorities in the developed world has led to feminist, postcolonial , and multicultural thought becoming significant.

This led to a challenge to the social contract by philosophers Charles W.

Political philosophy - Wikipedia

Mills in his book The Racial Contract and Carole Pateman in her book The Sexual Contract that the social contract excluded persons of colour and women respectively. In Anglo-American academic political philosophy, the publication of John Rawls 's A Theory of Justice in is considered a milestone.

Rawls used a thought experiment , the original position , in which representative parties choose principles of justice for the basic structure of society from behind a veil of ignorance. Rawls also offered a criticism of utilitarian approaches to questions of political justice. Robert Nozick 's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , which won a National Book Award , responded to Rawls from a libertarian perspective and gained academic respectability for libertarian viewpoints.

Contemporaneously with the rise of analytic ethics in Anglo-American thought, in Europe several new lines of philosophy directed at critique of existing societies arose between the s and s. Exclusive web offer for individuals. A Theoretical and Comparative Introduction 1st Edition. Theory and Practice in Britain 1st Edition. Social Movements in Britain 1st Edition. The Civil Service 1st Edition. The Law 1st Edition. Theory and Practice in Britain 1st Edition David Judge November 05, This book provides an excellent insight into the theory and practice of political representation, a concept that is central to the understanding of modern British politics.

The Civil Service 1st Edition Keith Dowding September 07, Radical reforms of the civil service during the s and 90s have broken up the old unified hierarchical structures.

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