Search

The questions discussed in this paper are the following: how many activists are there and how are they organized? What are their distinctive values and ideologies? What are the main patterns of recruitment at the present time and why? What impact do young activists have on the policies and prospects of the parties they support? For answers to these questions, the information is drawn as provided by the parties and other political organizations themselves and on the results of the pilot inquiry of a large study of political activists now in progress. Three preliminary points may be noted. First, that the energies of young activists are concentrated in and around the three parliamentary parties. There is no important political action by the young outside this framework. Young people have participated in two major efforts to escape from or change the existing structure of political organization in the last decade-the New Left and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-both have failed. Secondly, the parties have made serious efforts to appeal to the young only in periods of electoral adversity-the Liberals before 1905 and since 1955, the Conservatives after 1906 and again after 1946, the Labour Party in the 1930s and since 1959. One might infer from this that there is no substantial rapport between any of the parties and youth perceived as a distinct generation with peculiar values and interests. Thirdly, at the time of writing youth is withdrawing from political activity. The membership of each of the party youth organizations is declining.