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)

9781108710831, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 July 2024

318 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.462 kg

'…This book should be required reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of planning. [It] will help to rebuild our confidence in British town and country planning.' Lee Shostak, Town and Country Planning

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]