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In the 1990s, the 'knowledge economy' was hailed as a key driver of future prosperity by progressive policymakers in developed democracies. According to its proponents, in the knowledge economy, companies and countries alike would succeed by cultivating workers' knowledge – as opposed to traditional forms of capital such as plant and machinery. This had radical implications for public policy, implying that education reform and other supply-side interventions could deliver inclusivity as well as prosperity. Today, however, this benevolent vision of the social and economic impacts of technological progress has been superseded by an altogether more dystopian view, associated with automation and the rise of artificial intelligence, as well as transformations in the digital economy and the evolving nature of globalisation. This paper analyses that transition. It charts the key assumptions of the knowledge economy concept, through an intellectual history that focuses on how these ideas manifested themselves in the rhetoric of the UK Government under Tony Blair. It then shows how evolving understandings of the digital economy, technological progress and globalisation challenge these assumptions, and the policy agenda that was premised on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the legacy of Stuart Hall’s cultural studies approach to socialist politics. Like many other socialist thinkers, his ideas are the direct outcome of political intervention, often through the form of theoretical practice. Because gaps will always remain between reality and theoretical explanation, political intervention tends to be an overreaction to social change or the underestimation of people’s power. Hall’s political practice cannot therefore be exceptional in that it is far from perfect. This paper attempts to establish a balance sheet in terms of his involvement in the debate on the nature of British society, Thatcherism and neo-liberalism. From this examination, some key concepts will be employed to analyse the nature of Korean society in relation to neo-liberal restructuration and the neo-liberal historic bloc. Discussing Hall’s ideas and applying these to Korea, the paper sets out to demonstrate both weaknesses and strengths in Hall’s thought. The strength consists of his open-ended and empirically sensitive reformation of Marxism. On the other hand, the core weakness is found in his post-Marxist epistemological relativism. The main argument set out here is that, in order to develop and refine Hall’s thought, there should be an ontologically realist position compatible with epistemological relativism. For this difficult task, the concept of needs can be suggested as a fresh starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979–2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of three seemingly opposed accounts of recent dynamics in the management of continuing vocational training: one that sees it moving inexorably to the political right, one that emphasises the singularity of social-democratic policies and one that focuses on the difficulties of any movement, towards the political left or right. The paper concludes that while there has been a degree of convergence between right and left, differences remained in terms of their favoured institutional decision-making structures. However, Labour played a two-level game, which combined the establishment of new channels for dialogue and coordination with key stakeholders, with a limited scope for meaningful stakeholder input to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the term ‘urban renaissance’ in relation to the historiography of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. It examines the place of the Renaissance in cultural history and considers how it has, since its inception, been utilised by writers to reflect on the present. The paper situates the urban renaissance within the context of New Labour rhetoric at the time of the Millennium. It argues that the idea of renaissance can, in this instance, be connected to a kind of millenarianism that was reflected in public rhetoric regarding the city and in a number of building projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a comparative critique of key education and teacher education policies in England adopted by New Labour (1997–2010) and the Coalition government (2010–2015). It focuses on direct measures intended to alleviate the effects of poverty on young people’s educational outcomes, and on teacher education policies with implications for preparing teachers to tackle such problems. It questions the consistency, coherence and effectiveness of the policies pursued by each administration and analyses the similarities and differences between them. Particular attention is paid to the conceptions of professional knowledge and educational research that underpin their assumptions about the role of teachers’ professional learning in seeking to break the link between young people’s socio-economic status and their educational outcomes. While policies implemented by both administrations are deeply imbued with neoliberal perspectives, our analysis highlights important differences, the effects of which may become more apparent as the Conservatives exercise their independent authority over education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper identifies “defensive instrumentalism” as a main feature that has characterised New Labour's cultural policies, and which constitutes an important aspect of its legacy. Yet, resorting to instrumental arguments to defend the arts and to make a case for their usefulness is hardly an invention of New Labour. However, in the past, such defensive arguments were built into a more constructive and creative attempt to elaborate a coherent theory of art and an intellectually sophisticated view of the effects of the arts on individual and societies. What the paper argues, then, is that instrumentalism under New Labour has retained its longstanding defensive character, but was deprived of the attendant effort to elaborate a positive notion of cultural value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to draw out the continuities and ruptures in current English education policy. In particular it considers the relationship between Coalition policy rhetoric and that of the Labour Party. Although the paper is concerned with the British and more specifically English context, it examines a range of questions that move beyond that particular setting. It explores the way in which we can understand crisis and the manner in which this informs policy discussion and the re-ordering of neo-liberalism. In conclusion, it argues that the presumed radicalism of the Labour Party can only take us so far, and that an examination of policy for its progressive and radical possibilities, whatever their origins, is an important site of struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions – if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument of this paper is that one way to examine the legacy of New Labour's cultural policies, including its development of the creative industries, is through an account of the cultural workforce it has created. The idea of “creative industries” embodied a set of assumptions about the changing nature of work which had been central to New Labour's reinvention during its years in the wilderness under Margaret Thatcher. Dubbed “post-Fordist socialism” by Thompson, the premise of many creative industry support initiatives was that the kind of work they provided was inherently progressive, combining demand for high skills with notions of self-expression and determination, in a workplace that was no longer hierarchical, but collaborative, flexible, even fun. Yet empirical evidence from the New Labour period suggests that the assumptions of inherently progressive work are largely unfounded. The cultural labour market remains polarised by gender, ethnicity and social class. Despite high levels of graduates, wages were low, and combined with the practice of unpaid “internships”, and highly informal recruitment practices, class-based exclusion, often reflected in ethnicity, was a defining feature of the sector. The paper thus provides both a historical account of New Labour ideas about work and how they shaped public policy, and a contemporary account of policy initiatives around workforce entry. Its aim is to interrogate the assumptions and limitations of New Labour's “creative workforce”, and through this, its wider policies on work, culture and social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the UK's approach to the digitisation of its cultural heritage during the New Labour administration from 1997 to 2010, with a specific emphasis on academic texts and archival documents. Focusing on the identification of common areas of concern across a range of programmes, the paper asks whether a national digitisation strategy is needed and, if so, what form it should take. It concludes with three recommendations for improving the coordination and practice of the digitisation of the UK's cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a keynote address for the 2010 Cultural Trends Conference “A Golden Age?”. It explores the rhetoric of “creativity” that dominated the New Labour government's cultural policy discourse, and argues that while the promotion of the creative industries and of the economic contribution of culture strengthened the hand of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in attracting resources, there was a price to pay, in the form of auditing, that proved ultimately hostile to creativity. With its main focus on the English region, the paper reviews New Labour's institutional reforms and substantial investment in the cultural infrastructure, but argues that the competing claims of “access” and “excellence” remained unresolved, while policymakers failed to respond to the rapid technological developments in “unofficial” culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the second paper of a 2-part article which draws on interdisciplinary feminist perspectives to critique New Labour's welfare reform agenda. Through examining the Welfare Reform Bill and the subsequent Welfare Reform Act 2009, the paper argues that the increased use of conditionality and sanctions in relation to female benefit claimants - particularly lone mothers - “writes-off” their caring and informal work and pushes these women into low-paid, highly gendered employment in a precarious labour market. Despite the gender neutral language of 'lone parents', the 2009 Act continues a classed and often racialised government tradition of targeting lone mothers in an attempt to privatise social issues, such as povertv and unemployment. Rather than alleviating child poverty and developing the employability skills of claimants - as maintained by the Government - welfare-to-work measures exacerbate the economic insecurities experienced by poor women and their families, restricts their autonomy in choosing work that is right for their family circumstances, and subjects them to ever-increasing degrees of surveillance and coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the UK's recent history of promoting the social inclusion and equality of men and women with learning disabilities they remain a significantly disadvantaged group. Compared with their non-disabled peers they are more likely to be unemployed, less likely to own their own homes and are at a significantly greater risk of physical and mental ill health. The first part of this paper discusses the welfare rights of citizens with learning disabilities in terms of New Labour's welfare to work policies. The second part discusses the UK's mixed welfare economy and its impact upon services for men and women with learning disabilities. The paper concludes by considering whether the social inclusion of men and women with learning disabilities can be promoted solely through policies that emphasise inclusion through work and the personalisation of welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Labour Respect Agenda fuses anti-social behaviour policies, Third Way active citizenship, and a theory of community-based support and regulation. The Respect Agenda itself has a specific focus on, and direct implications for, children and young people, as well as for children living in vulnerable families. This paper argues that the theoretical basis for New Labour's 'Respect' is limited and ultimately flawed. Whilst New Labour policy demands respect from young people, young people's lived citizenship is too often experienced in terms of disrespect and even shame of the self. Young people respond to these feelings of disrespect by seeking out other ways through which respect can be acted out and negotiated. Respect, as conceptualised through the New Labour lens will criminalise vulnerable young people, thereby further stripping them of self-respect, inter-personal respect and societal respect. The paper concludes that respect should be an outcome of policy and a philosophy of a social justice led politics, rather than a conditionally led policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to unpack the term "regeneration", using a discourse analysis approach to examine the ways in which local actors involved in a New Deal for Communities partnership in Newcastle upon Tyne formulate their understandings of regeneration. The paper finds that "regeneration" is a term that has been taken up and used by local actors who have not considered its meaning in any substantive depth, and argues that this is the result of both the powerful policy discourse surrounding regeneration, and the lack of dialogue locally about the nature of the problems to be addressed. The paper concludes by arguing for regeneration partnerships to be given the time and support to discuss local issues in order to facilitate partnership working and develop an appropriate agenda for regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-five years ago, social housing accounted for almost one-third of England's entire housing stock. Since then, mainly because the sales to sitting tenants and demolitions have exceeded new construction, the sector has contracted substantially. However, at the same time, and particularly in the period since 1989, the sector has been undergoing far-reaching restructuring. This paper charts this process focusing, in particular, on developments under the Blair administrations since 1997. The paper discusses the external pressures experienced by social landlords over this period. Such pressures are differentiated between those emanating from central government policy initiatives on the one hand, and from changing housing market conditions on the other. The paper then goes on to analyse the evolving structure of the sector post-1997, the processes that have contributed to this, and the impacts that have resulted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measures that New Labour have introduced to punish and prevent anti-social behaviour need to be discussed in the context of the broader debate about conditionality in welfare. This paper outlines briefly three arguments that have been put forward to justify conditionality in welfare, the contractualist, the paternalist and the mutualist justifications. It then considers the force of these arguments in respect of New Labour's approach to anti-social tenants. The paper concludes that it is possible to formulate a powerful case for the kinds of measures that New Labour is currently taking by integrating elements of the three justifications. It is argued that it is a mistake to view such measures as necessarily disciplinary in intent or in effect. Measures to enforce the obligations that people owe to each other are not incompatible with policies to widen opportunities for self-fulfilment and to reduce social exclusion. On the contrary, they can be seen as two sides of the same coin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'spin' is conventionally used to refer to the process and products of purposively managing information in order to present institutions, individuals, policies, practices and/or ideas in a favourable light and thereby mobilize support for them. Attempts to manage news and political communications are not new. However, the New Labour Government in the UK is frequently presented--by the media and political opponents--as being obsessively concerned with spin to the detriment of both transparency and substantive policy-making. In the collection and analysis of the data from the ESRC-funded study of the English Education Action Zones (EAZs) policy upon which this paper draws, spin arose as a prominent theme. For example, spin was often raised explicitly by those interviewed as an activity that they needed to be reflexive about and engage in. It was described as shaping the fortunes of the policy or in some cases as constituting the policy. Frequently overt attempts were made by those being researched to try to 'persuade' the researchers of a particular spin which should be put on the research questions and/or reports. The overarching purpose of this paper is to illustrate the complex relationship between spin and policy, using the English EAZs policy as an example. The first section of the paper defines spin and places the concept in historical context. It then goes on to explore the role of spin in the construction and evolution of the policy, drawing particular attention to the dynamic, endemic, and disciplinary nature of the policy of spin. Whilst spin is conventionally understood as something separate from policy, as something that is 'done to' policy in order to make it attractive to particular constituencies, the central argument of this paper is that spin needs to be understood as operating on two levels, often simultaneously. At one level it operates as a strategy of impression management, where a range of tactics are used to attempt to control the impression that 'the public' gets of New Labour policies. However, those policies and the spin that represents them to 'the public' cannot be understood as distinct and separate entities because the policies cannot be neatly abstracted from the spin. Thus, at another level, one also needs to focus on the constitutive role that spin plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores institutionalism and New Labour as overlapping and intersecting responses to neoliberalism and the New Right. It links institutionalism to the Labour Party and its advocacy of networks and joined-up governance in much the same way as we have come to tie neoliberalism to the New Right and its faith in the new public management. Because the paper's interpretive approach modifies institutionalism, the link it draws between New Labour and institutionalism also points to something of a critique of these latter. At times, they seek to tame the contingency of social life by reducing the complex to theories about the allegedly given characteristics of institutional forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Part I of this study, we argued that New Labour is keen to use legislation to promote what it sees as desirable family forms and to discourage other, less-favoured family practices. The codification of this approach in the 1998 Green Paper Supporting Families - and, in particular, the 'New Deal for Lone Parents' - was compared with recent empirical research on how people make decisions about their moral economies. We concluded that the government's approach is subject to a 'rationality mistake' - people do not make decisions in the way the government assumes and hence legislation can be inefficient or even oppressive. Here, we examine this contention further, this time focusing on chapter 4 of the Green Paper, indicatively entitled 'Strengthening marriage'. Using recent empirical research on mothers' views on marriage and cohabitation, we find further evidence of the 'rationality mistake', where the government has misunderstood the ways in which people make decisions about partnering and hence misplaces the role of family law. We conclude that supportive and flexible legislative frameworks are needed that recognize the varying ways in which people take moral economic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Labour is keen to use legislation to encourage what are seen as desirable family practices, and to discourage other, less-favoured, forms. What this means in policy terms has now been codified in its 1998 Green Paper, Supporting Families. In this paper, we examine the validity of this enterprise in terms of its underlying assumptions about social behaviour and economic decision making. We argue that the government implicitly assumes a universal model of 'rational economic man' and his close relative the 'rational legal subject', whereby people take individualistic, cost-benefit type decisions about how to maximize their own personal gain. Change the financial structure of costs and benefits, and the legal structure of rights and duties, in the appropriate way and people will modify their social behaviour in the desired direction. However, recent research suggests that people do not act like rational economic man in making decisions about their moral economy. Legislation based on this assumption might then be ineffectual and the proposals in Supporting Families seem to be one example. This is what we have labelled the 'rationality mistake'. In Part I of this work, we focus on the financial proposals in the Green Paper and on the New Deal for Lone Parents in particular. We then go on to counterpose this with the results of recent empirical work on how and why people actually do make family decisions. In Part II, to be published in the next issue, we focus on chapter four of Supporting Families, on strengthening marriage, and again compare New Labour's proposals with recent empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of neo-liberal economic policy, and triggered by the looming demographic crisis of an ageing society, a cornerstone of the policies aimed at parents of the previous New Labour administrations in the UK ‘encouraged’ parents to take up paid work or to make themselves ‘work-ready’ to provide the skills to compete in a globalised labour market. Underpinned by a belief that most citizens should be in a position to participate in the paid labour market, government rhetoric actively perpetuated a normative code of economic participation in a political climate that appeared to increasingly marginalise and denigrate the work of social reproduction. Notions of good parenting and, in particular, good mothering were variously tied to (re)employment, financial independence and offering a productive role model to children. ‘Good parenting’ was supported by a host of policies which aimed to enable parents to take financial responsibility for their families, ensuring their children did not grow up in poverty. In this paper, I consider the impact on parents and children of one of the key policies aimed at parents to come out of the UK in the last decade: ‘The New Deal for Lone Parents’. In  doing so this article will highlight the role that economic and fiscal concerns have had in shaping the direction of policies aimed at parents in the UK. Drawing on empirical work which sought to explore the views of parents and their children of welfare reform, it will also argue that policy-makers must engage with children when developing policies aimed at parents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents selected findings from a historical analysis of change in the discursive construction of social identity in UK education policy discourse from 1972-2005. My chief argument is that through its linguistic forms of self-identification the government construes educational roles, relations and responsibilities not only for itself, but also for other educational actors and wider society. More specifically, I argue that New Labour's distinctive mode of self-representation is an important element in its hegemonic project, textually manufacturing consent over its policy decisions, and helping to articulate its self-styled 'enabling' model of governance. As evidence for these claims I discuss two prominent trends in New Labour's education policy rhetoric, which I characterise as 'personalisation' and 'managerialisation'. Respectively, these relate to the discursive representation of social identity and social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the messages and assumptions relating to parenting that are promoted through Supernanny and how this connects with the policy expectation or hope of New Labour - that parents should take responsibility for being skilled educators and developers of their children. In exploring these state and non-state governance discourses and what these suggest about contemporary ideals and expectations relating to parenting, I make use of Raymond Williams' structure of feeling approach and draw on this to develop the definition and reach the idea of a pedagogical state. I argue that a pedagogical state can be seen as a state of mind or way of being that is produced through and producing of a particular sort of mood and set of sensibilities, in this case relating to contemporary understandings and experiences of parenting. In considering various viewer responses to Supernanny, some resistance to and scepticism of these discourses can, however, be detected. In this context, I further explore the idea of a pedagogical state as a disposition and mood relating to parenting which is disrupted - but also deepened - through people's evaluative reflexivity and (healthy) scepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualises the marked downturn in UK house prices in the 2007-2009 period in relation to longer-term processes of national economic restructuring centred on a new model of homeownership. The structure of UK house prices has been impacted markedly by the Labour Government's efforts to ingrain a particular notion of financial literacy amid the move towards an increasingly asset-based system of welfare. New model welfare recipients and new model homeowners have thereby been co-constituted in a manner consistent with a new UK growth regime of 'house price Keynesianism'. However, the investor subjects who drive such growth are necessarily rendered uncertain compared with the idealised image of government policy because of their reliance on the credit-creating decisions of private financial institutions. The recent steep decline in UK house prices is explained here as an epiphenomenon of the disruptive effect on the idealised image caused by the dependence of investor subjects on pricing dynamics not of their making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors focus on the investment into school leadership in England during the New Labour governments from 1997, and through this they make a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation about leadership development. They are concerned to both understand and explain leadership as a policy intervention into the professional practice and identities of the school workforce. They argue that one of the dominant genres of contemporary media - the makeover - has become part of the policy-making “game”. The paper uses the metaphor of makeover to critically examine the current approach to leadership development and to examine the policy game at play in English education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their first term in UK office since 1979, and also following their election to the Scotland Parliament, 'New Labour' attempted to reposition the museum within society in order to harness its potential for the transformation of the citizen. Through an examination of policy documents created at both the UK and Scottish level during this term, this paper highlights the various discursive shifts that contributed to this attempt to change the relationship between the state, the museum and the citizen. By critically engaging with a variety of the ideas suggested in these documents, it is proposed that, although there is potential for a progressive museum service to develop, there is also a slightly more ominous undertone to such an alignment of state ideology with museum practice. Hence, questions must be asked about Labour's motivation for such a manoeuvre, and whether or not the museum can ever be positioned as such a powerful social agent (as the documentation suggests) in the implementation of policy goals such as social inclusion and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The controversy surrounding the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has been pivotal in the decline of trust in the New Labour Government. The absence of a comprehensive, detailed and diachronic analysis of this episode therefore stands out as an issue that needs to be addressed. In doing so, this paper diverges from conventional narratives of the 'September dossier' affair in several respects. It argues that New Labour's desire for regime change in Iraq pre-dated the rise of the neo-conservative Bush administration and the events of 9/11; that the British Government were fully willing and active participants in the policy of regime change and that the production of the dossier was one of the key components of a broader political strategy designed to achieve this aim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which political devolution has influenced the nature of education policy-making in Scotland, taking initial teacher education and early professional development as a case. Pre-devolution studies of the policy community in Scotland stressed the close relationships between the various stakeholders and the inherent conservatism that sometimes appeared to ensue from this. It might be anticipated that the removal of formal responsibility for education from the UK government in London to the Scottish Executive in Edinburgh might have unsettled such 'cosiness' and also that the influence of New Labour approaches may be less prevalent in Scotland than in England. The processes of change in Scotland appear to have been less radical and at a slower pace than in England; however, they have been achieved through a more consensual process and so in the long term are likely to be more embedded than those in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 15 years, initial teacher education in England has been established as a national system, closely controlled by the government. One of the consequences of this move is that teacher education is now intimately bound up with changing national politics and policy priorities which reach down into the finest of detail of provision. In this paper, we focus on the way in which politics and policy have impacted on one of the defining features of teacher education provision in England - that of 'partnership'. In particular we examine the way in which the concept and practice of partnership has been transformed in line with New Labour's 'Third Way' politics. In order to do this, we reflect on our recent evaluation of the National Partnership Project, an initiative established by the Training and Development Agency for Schools to increase the quality and quantity of schools' involvement in initial teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High profile commitments to stemming homelessness have been integral to New Labour's emphasis on promoting social inclusion since 1997. During this period official policy has favoured an increasingly assertive approach in this area as exemplified by the successful post-1998 programmes to reduce street homelessness. The period since 2002 has seen a broader ministerial drive to reduce homelessness, mainly through encouraging local authorities (LAs) to adopt more pro-active, preventative approaches to the problem. Aided by substantial central funding LAs have responded by developing numerous initiatives to this end. Particularly where they involve assisting people at risk of homelessness to access private tenancies, such schemes are often justified by LAs as empowering consumers and promoting choice. With official homelessness figures in England having fallen dramatically since 2003/04, it would appear that the new 'homelessness prevention regime' has made a marked impact. However, what such figures do not reveal is the extent to which this results from the adoption of more restrictive interpretations of LA duties under the homelessness legislation. This could mean that the problem is being re-defined rather than resolved. Drawing on a recently completed study, this paper explores the tensions between helping resolve people's housing problems, on the one hand, and upholding legal rights to accommodation, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of public services in the UK has been driven - in part - by a conception of citizens as consumers of public services, a conception that has been articulated in narratives about the wider social transition to a consumer culture. This paper explores the political and policy discourses of New Labour's citizen-consumer. We examine some of the conditions, condensation and consequences of this hyphenated identification in the context of New Labour's political and governmental project. We draw on a recent research project that examined the shift towards a consumerist orientation in public services, using material from this project to explore popular understandings of identifications and relationships with one particular public service: health care.1 We end by considering some of the political and analytical implications of such everyday understandings and the forms of reasoning that they involve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of current ideas about English childhood that seem to underpin policies ‘for’ children. New Labour values the future adulthood of children more than their childhoods, and stresses children's responsibilities over their rights. Generally, child protection and provision for children has higher status than children's participation. Children are excluded from participation in social life. Traditional psychological formulations remain powerful in their stress on childhood as a preparatory stage of life, where children are socialised into conformity with the norms of social life. However, the last 15 years have seen greater respect for children's own views and experiences, for their rights and for the idea that childhood is socially constructed. But the idea that children are contributors to society is still rarely recognised and they continue to suffer from low social status accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A flurry of activity in the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ Commonwealths in the 1990s failed to translate into media recognition in the UK. A commitment to the organization from the incoming Labour government has so far failed to deliver the concrete action demanded by the Foreign Affairs Committee. But the Commonwealth has contributed to the UK's foreign policies in three main areas: peace and security, political economy and issues of governance. This paper examines each area in detail but concludes that the official Commonwealth remains “an institution relegated to the back burner”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1970s, there have been highly sophisticated arguments and conceptual discussions put forward in relation to how Western liberal democracies might wish to manage their diverse ethnic minority populations. It is apparent, however, that in the current climate, the important principles of unity and diversity are insufficient to challenge differing forms of ethnic, racial, and religious inequality. This paper argues that because of its underlying assumptions and modus operandi in the post-September 11 climate, British multiculturalism has been ineffective, even supporting some commentators' suggestions of a return to assimilationism. There is a new era in post-September 11 political hegemony, economic determinism and structural and cultural racisms, with European government rhetoric and public policy almost exclusively aimed at Muslims—whether as existing citizens or as part of a process of limiting immigration (which has tended to be from mainly Eastern European, North African, and Middle Eastern sending regions and nations). The example of New Labour and how it has attempted to deal with multiculturalism in Britain is a case in point. The discussion explores the changing concept of multiculturalism with special reference to British Muslims and debates that emerge in relation to identity, nation and civil society. It is argued that the experience and treatment of British Muslims is important to explore and appreciate in the current climate as it provides a test case for the future of (a) British multiculturalism and (b) British Muslims in society per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence has risen up the political agenda, as women's action has inspired changes in police, social work and legal practice. At the same time, one of the oldest pieces of legislation that protected women from violence - the Homeless Persons Act of 1977 - has been transmuted into the Housing Act of 1996. This legislation was introduced by a Conservative government, which was anxious to reduce the rights of homeless people to secure permanent accommodation, on the grounds that these rights gave incentives to pregnancy, lone parenthood and economic migrants. New Labour have softened the Housing Act to give more scope to local authorities to respond to homelessness. This article asks: What are the implications of changing homelessness rights under this legislation and subsequent regulations for women's ability to escape violent relationships and find long term solutions to the housing needs which domestic violence creates? How new is New Labour policy as expressed in housing regulations and its policy Green Paper? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]