From ‘Consensus’ to ‘Common Ground’

The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10074581
AutoresRichard Toye (0000-0003-3200-7525, University of Exeter, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume48
Fascículo1
Páginas3-23
Data de publicação2013-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0022009412461816
OpenAlexW2106317564
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12

There has been much historical debate about whether or not there was a ‘political consensus’ in Britain in the postwar decades. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to what politicians said about ‘consensus’ at the time and what this indicated about the nature of political argument. This article shows that ‘consensus’ and similar terms (such as ‘the middle way’) were in use from the 1940s, but it does not assume that consensus existed just because some contemporaries asserted that it did. Rather, it examines how differing interpretations of consensus were invoked in political debate in order to advance a range of partisan agendas. It further shows how right-wing Conservatives from the late 1960s sought both to attack the consensus rhetorically and to reach out (in Keith Joseph’s phrase) to ‘the common ground’ that New Right policies supposedly represented. It concludes that Thatcher, as Conservative leader and Prime Minister, did not abandon the structure of consensus rhetoric so much as repopulate it with exclusively ‘national’ terms

Argument (complex analysis · Common ground · Economics · Law and economics · Order (exchange · Phrase · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Washington Consensus · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US