Thatcher's Progress
From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town

Examines a pioneering programme of urban development to rewrite the history of Britain's transition from social democracy to neoliberalism.

Guy Ortolano (Author)

9781108482660, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 June 2019

316 pages, 17 b/w illus. 3 maps
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.65 kg

'… [An] important and highly erudite book. [It] makes an original and largely persuasive case, one less about Milton Keynes alone than about how later twentieth-century British and intellectual history is too one-dimensionally periodized, as is the enduring vitality of progressive ideas.' Jeremy Nuttall, American Historical Review

During the quarter of a century after the Second World War, the United Kingdom designated thirty-two new towns across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Why, even before selling council houses or denationalising public industries, did Margaret Thatcher's government begin to privatise these new towns? By examining the most ambitious of these projects, Milton Keynes, Guy Ortolano recasts our understanding of British social democracy, arguing that the new towns comprised the spatial dimension of the welfare state. Following the Prime Minister's progress on a tour through Milton Keynes on 25 September 1979, Ortolano alights at successive stops to examine the broader histories of urban planning, modernist architecture, community development, international consulting, and municipal housing. Thatcher's journey reveals a dynamic social democracy during its decade of crisis, while also showing how public sector actors begrudgingly accommodated the alternative priorities of market liberalism.

List of maps
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Horizons
2. Planning
3. Architecture
4. Community
5. Consulting
6. Housing
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]