nm1123: over the last two weeks we've been talking about democracy we've been talking about the state as part of a series of lectures on the politics of modern society now we move to a er er er er an aspect of politics which is not directly involved in the state but w-, is seeking to influence the state with what are called social movements it's perhaps best just to to give you some names to illustrate what we're talking about we're talking about the peace movement we're talking about the woman's women's movement we're talking about the socialist movement the movement for civil rights the movement for animal rights now there's enormous variation in the form of social movements those of you who might be members of a trade union or a political party do you want to pick one of those up sf1124: sorry nm1123: [sniff] will er will know that they can take an extremely bureaucratic form in which the powers of committees and whatnot are closely defined alternatively if you've engaged in er in direct action er to stop er calves being exported er alive to the continent or something like that then you'll know that er the form of organization is extremely loose and network based so there's a great debate about how we define social movements if you look in the the the textbook that we use in this course one of the more disappointing chapters there is on social movements i don't particularly recommend that because it seems to me to become er convoluted into a debate about how we define a social movement so to cut through all of that i use a nice straightforward definition which we've got here forms of po-, popular organization which have their basis outside the political system but which seek to influence the political system in the direction of their cause so we've got the idea of popular organization a basis outside the political system we've got secondly the idea of seeking to influence politics rather than join politics and we've got er thirdly the idea of a cause of seeking d-, a a movement for something sometimes a movement against something now until fairly recently it seemed that one particular so-, social movement the labour movement seemed to have some pre- eminence er in er among social movements in terms of size and scale er degree of organization er the the labour movement made up of trade unions cooperative parties er political parties and all sorts of of other associated er er groupings seemed to have a pre-eminence and so i'll start my lecture by talking about a theory of the labour movement and then er a sort of lock lack of of confidence about the labour movement which set in er during the nineteen- seventies so i'll outline a theory and then i'll outline some er scepticism from within er the labour movement about that theory and then to conclude the lecture we'll move on to a different kind of theory the theory of so-called new social movements which claims er that either the pre-eminence of the labour movement has now declined and there it's just one amongst many or a more radical version of the theory is that the labour movement is now er an anachronism and has been overtaken by new social movements okay so let's start then with the classic theory of the labour movement the source that i'm i-, going to use here is er er the accessible sourc-, source that er i've introduced you to already er Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto this is a a nice neat statement of the theory of the labour movement but what i want to stress is that this is not a particularly Marxist theory this is a a theory shared well beyond Marxism within other branches of of the labour movement so let's er just state the theory the first point to state about it is the idea of historical inevitability the inevitability of A some kind of movement generated within modern societies which will lead B to the demise of the the current forms of society and the movement on to a new and different and better kind of society within Marxism the idea of a shift from capitalism to communism and that being linked not just to something which was good about communism but also the the workings the mechanisms of capitalist society in Marx's famous phrase would generate the gravediggers of the capitalist system the labour movement is precisely that gravedigger that out of capitalism would come a mechanism of change which would lead on to a different kind of society secondly let's talk about the process of labour movement growth the idea is that the labour movement grows out of the everyday experience of people in modern society the everyday experience of the deprivations of work poverty problems with housing dah-di-dah-di-dah but that that would grow in three different ways first of all spatially it would grow from groups of workers coming together in a workplace and thinking we're being done here we're being er exploited here and they got together t-, er t-, er at the workplace level and and tried to do something about it but it moved from that level spatially to the idea of the regional trade union and then the national trade union and then international workers so the idea is that spatially the labour movement grows from everyday experience of problems in in capitalist society into a national and indeed international movement secondly the idea of er of organizational expansion again the idea is that er everyday experience would lead to the the formation of trade unions trade unions would grow into a national movement they would then grow into a political movement or merge with a political movement and that would lead to er er a mechanism for change so organizationally there's that idea of expansion out of everyday experience and then thirdly at the level of the individual the idea is that people's moans and groans would er m-, er move on from moaning and groaning about your particular boss or your particular supervisor er to thinking well it's not just me that has this problem i'm in the same boat as other people we all form part of first of all the trade or the industry and then the penny drops in according to the theory we're all part of a class er and the labour movement er is based upon the idea of class solidarity so that's the second aspect of the theory that er out of everyday experience in these different ways a movement would be generated er er which was large-scale er in terms of space in terms of organization and in terms of aspiration of individuals from just solving everyday problems to looking forward to a new form of society and then the third thing about the theory is its politics the claim is that the labour movement is confrontational it is not just a movement which seeks to enter politics on the same terms of as what are called bourgeois parties rather it is a er a political movement that seeks to enter the political arena to confront that political arena and move beyond it to a different kind of society the labour movement er er has an aspiration to m-, to er to change society in fundamental ways so that is or those are the main elements of the theory we'll see if i can get this lined up so that's the theory then what about the experience of th-, er th-, the labour movement and its history well prior to the First World War prior to nineteen-fourteen that's that theory seemed to be working out very well if we take a er the ec-, ec-, example of both the United States and Europe then workers' movements did seem to be developing spatially organizationally and in terms of class consciousness trade union movements had grown had become united as movements and had linked up with socialist movements and formed political parties which were entering the political arena in Germany er for example in the Social Democratic Party on a specific platform that we are not here to collaborate with you our oppressors we are here to get rid of you so up until nineteen- fourteen the the-, the the theory seemed to be working but from the First World War the theory went wrong experience departed from the theory it went wrong in two different ways first of all there was a divergence in the i-, in er in the form of the labour movement the labour movement took two different routes the first route exemplified by the nineteen-seventeen revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union was the Communist Party route that route er saw confrontational politics as based upon a c-, a violent confrontation with the state violent revolution the taking power taking of power through the state and the imposition of a social blueprint of a communist society so that was one route forward that actually happened but secondly there is a second route forward again which actually happened what i'll call the social democratic route everyone turned the page [laugh] [cough] within er Western Europe violent revolution did not occur but by the exp-, ex-, expansion of the franchise and the formation of social democratic parties such as the Labour Party in Britain Social Democratic Party in Germany er not not so clear in in France but similarly in in Sweden a-, again the Social Democratic Party what one had was er a route forward a route forward for the labour movement not based upon overthrow of the state but the use of er electoral power to gain access to the state and the and the proclamation that that access could use er parliamentary strength political strength to fundamentally change capitalist societies so that was the first thing that went wrong the theory didn't predict some kind of divergence along these two er very different paths then the second thing that went wrong with the theory was that in each of these two different cases the more that either form of political expression became successful in inverted commas the more it seemed to depart from the ideals of socialism so in the Soviet Union the longer the experience of the er of the Soviet system er er went on the more it seemed that the Soviet Union became an increa-, increasingly bureaucratized increasingly totalitarian increasingly er militaristic society in which the experience of workers seemed to be little different to the experience of workers under capitalism so the greater the power of the the Communist Party in the Soviet Union the greater seemed to be the disillusionment in terms of the er the c-, the criterion of achieving a socialist society similarly if we look at the second road sometimes called the parliamentary road to er to socialism via social democratic parties again the more successful these parties became the more they seemed to depart from socialism in this particular case what we're talking about is the more that social democratic parties er gained political power and used political power the more they seemed to be not doing away with so w-, with capitalism but depending upon capitalism the classic case i suppose will be Sweden in which from the nineteen-thirties through to the nineteen-seventies you had a er a permanent er er er social democratic government and yet er the great er er er capitalist firms of er of Sweden Volvo Ericsson er there's one other make they make er hoovers and and sm1125: Electrolux nm1123: Electrolux [laughter] er those three er er international firms er seem to be er er strengthened under Swedish er socialism rather than er un-, bu-, rather than overthrown by a socialist government so we have this er dilemma then the theory seemed to work up until it actually seemed to be coming to er to success in which er political parties from the labour movement put it into practice this theory actually came into power then it all seemed to go wrong whichever of these two routes we looked at so why well just as a as a er a little introduction to this this theory of the labour movement that i've been putting forward has been criticized i-, in many ways right from the start it's been criticized by without the labour movement from wou-, outside the labour movement by what are often referred to from within as bourgeois theories some of you will be becoming aware of the work of Max Weber er Max Weber er er Max Weber's work has often been er desc-, d-, des-, described as a debate with the ghost of Marx a putting forward of an alternative theory of society to that developed by Marxism pick up one of those another example will be Karl Popper er well known er well Austrian by origin but er er f-, for many years British based er philosopher who wrote a book er called The Poverty of Historicism being a critique of Marxism another example is Hayek's book The er Roads to Freedom now these are er critiques of er this theory of the labour movement from outside the labour movement and secondly there've been debates within the labour movement er what i put down here debates within these assumptions of the labour movement about quite how to er er how to advance the the er interests of the movement but from around nineteen-seventy what started to emerge were critiques of the labour movement so to speak from within looking at those basic propositions that i outlined at the beginning of the talk and saying well there's something wrong with them and what i'll do now is now to er is to look at three examples of such critiques of the labour movement which were generated from within that labour movement er i think all three authors er are politically associated with the left er Eric Hobsbawm until at least very recently maintained his membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain er André Gorz was a member of the French Communist Party er to i'm not sure about Adam Przeworski's er political allegiances but the his book is clearly from the left but these er left wing or- , or-, oriented authors er mounted critiques of this theory of the labour movement so let me try to er take you through the basic ideas in these critiques Hobsbawm's er er paper The Forward March of Labour Halted question mark has the forward m-, march of labour halted was er first published in nineteen-seventy-eight and it er was offered as er the Marx memorial lecture first of all so that it very much epitomized this idea of er a critique from within it puts forward two basic propositions first of all it puts forward the idea that up until around nineteen-fifty the trend of development of the labour movement was toward the greater er homogeneity of the working class in terms of work experience in terms of lifestyle in terms of political awareness the proposition is fut put forward by er by Hobsbawm that there was an increasing what he called proletarianization of working class life in support of that he m-, he makes the point that most most workers up to that time were increasingly male increasingly manual mm there's another characteristic and i can't just think we'll just leave it at male and manual ah white is the other criterion [laugh] most most workers were white male and manual workers and based upon that the experience of work and of their of these these people's families Hobsbawm claims that there was a a trend towards what he calls the er this proletarianization of life a common experience of life now from around nineteen- fifty he claims that that common experience has changed direction towards a greater heterogeneity of experience and he puts forward the claim that the workforce has become inclease-, increasingly differentiated rather than focused upon white male manual workers we have er in European countries er the growth of a discriminated minority of ethnic minority workers we have the growth during this period of female workers and we have the growth of er white-collar workers and Hobsbawm claims that that has er broken away from this trend towards er a common experience towards a differentiation of experience his second idea is about labour labour movement leadership now there have always been differences and er conflicts within the labour movement for example er er throughout the nineteenth century and throughout the first half of the twentieth century the division between skilled workers and unskilled workers has been a fundamental source of of er of tension within the labour movement with er skilled workers in particular attempting to defend their privileges as much against unskilled workers as against their employers however Hobsbawm wants to argue that although there were these tensions and these differences the skilled elite of the labour movement up until around nineteen-fifty if you like the privileged er sections of the labour movement did provide er a political leadership for the for the movement as a whole we could take for example the issue of pensions pensions for old people during the nineteenth century up until er nineteen-o-nine er privileged skilled workers developed a form of pension provision for themselves their friendly societies whereby they put subscriptions in during their working life and then were entitled to take er benefits out when they are retired now this was very much a privilege of skilled workers a great advantage but it did not stop er the same skilled workers being at the er in the vanguard of a movement to for for the state to intervene with a some kind of national scheme of pension provision for the elderly so that indicates the the idea that er prior to nineteen-fifty in Hobsbawm's view a labour elite provided a class leadership for the working class as a whole again his claim is that after that time he's not precise you can't put d-, this down to a particular date October the fourteenth nineteen-forty-nine or something but from around that sort of time he sees er the privileged sections of the labour movement not as providing leadership but as entering into er an internal competition with other groups in the labour movement particularly over wages so the privileged groups of the period from nineteen-fifty t-, through to the nineteen-seventies in particular mine workers er car workers transport workers er those three groups in particular Hobsbawm sees as not providing leadership but h-, he sees them as entering into a sectional competition to keep ahead in the wages league so this is Hobsbawm's analysis that until up until the period just after the Second World War this trend towards homogeneity this trend towards forward movement led by the privileged section of the working class switches into a trend towards heterogeneity of the working class and secondly sectional competition within it that was er Hobsbawm's analysis which clearly means that the labour movement is not going to be this force for er political change er that er the theory er er claimed m-, moving on to my my second example of this kind of theory er André Gorz's book Farewell to the Working Class again the title gives the game away this is say this is Gorz as i said earlier a member of the French Communist Party er saying the working class thing of the past bye bye his analysis is based upon again er an analysis of the trend of development of the post-war working class and he sees the the working class as marked by a basic division the division goes along these lines on the one hand we have those workers who had become locked into the large work organization the large private company the large public company or pub-, public organization a bank would be a nice example large employer lots of er er in many ways proletarianized workers but each of those workers is becomes a cog in a complex bureaucratic system now at this point er Gorz introduces a contrast between er such cogs in a bureaucratic machine and the skilled craftworker his idea is that if you work in a bank or a hospital or a large er private company then you become extremely skilled but what you become skilled in is operating in that kind of environment it's as if we take er say a radiogra-, radiographer in a hospital a very skilled job but a radiographer needs skills in operating a particular machinery the X-may X-ray machines but also in coordinating with all kinds of departments of a hospital and other er professionals and semi- professionals in the hospital skill does not mean that you can start from some basic raw materials and finish up with some er finished er product now this is the er the contrast with the the craftworker the idea was in the past let's say a carpenter could start with some pieces of wood and finish up with er a er er er a beautiful object of furniture now Gorz claims that if you're a craftworker you can see all the processes of production and you can also see how it's possible to do it all yourself or in collaboration with other workers in other words it's possible to do it outside the organization and outside the the control of capital his idea is that if you're a radiographer how can you possibly do that job outside of the hospital or if you are are a er er some kind of of skilled operator within a car plant let's say operating er one of these hugely expensive er er ro-, automated machines how can you possibly do that outside the the the the organization of the er of the car plant so the idea is that these these er this half of the working class is locked into a form of organization in which in a sense they're in a rut and they can't see out of the edge of the rut there's no perspective onto alternative forms of organization so that's one half of er of Gorz's analysis the other half is about the other half of the working class who Gorz calls the non-class of non-workers [laugh] the people here he's referring to here are people who hold temporary jobs people who are at the margins of the labour market in terms of er frequent experiences of unemployment and then short term employment people who are er depend for much of their working life upon benefits he claims that the working class has been split between er organizational workers that i talked about a moment ago and these non-class of non-workers what does he mean by non-workers he means they're non-workers in the sense that work does not become part of individual identity people d-, don't become miners or carpenters or radiographers because one year they might be picking fruit er er during the summer er that then the next summer they might be er er working as a coach hostess on Harry Shaw's trips to the er er to the Mediterranean er and that's taken from a particular interview i had with er [laugh] with a a a non-worker who was flitted from one kind of work to another so that notion of occupational identity who i am in work terms doesn't develop and secondly this is a non- class of non-workers because the conditions of employment of such workers are so competitive that each worker has to look out for his or herself there's no sense of er a common class identity and class solidarity so for Gorz again the structure of the working class has been restructured in the recent period dividing the working class along these lines and in each case moving it away from some er er association with a movement beyond capitalism to another society for our workers who are locked into large organizations their skills seem to be dependent upon that kind of organization for those er on the the more fringes of the labour market er there's no sense of the centrality of work experience and no sense of er a common experience which moves everyone forward my third example is taken from a book by Adam Przeworski i'm not sure if i pronounced that right but it it does it it's a Polish name and to me it sounds sort of Polish like that so if any of you er speak Polish or have Polish ancestry my apologies if i have made a complete arse of how to pronounce this Polish word [laugh] but i will call him Przeworski this is a theory about not the changing structure of the working class but about social democratic parties those parties which took that second route that i mentioned earlier er along the parliamentary road based upon the increasing electoral presence of the working class forming political parties on a mass basis entering the the the the realm of representative er democracy Przeworski's er question is why hasn't haven't those parties implemented the socialist ideal of creating a socialist society rather than a a a a capitalist society that er yeah er now i just want to include a point there that i haven't got got here Przeworski points out that from the nineteen- twenties right through to the current period where er as you possibly know virtually all of Europe is now er er governed by er parties supposedly on the left of the political spectrum over all that period there doesn't seem to have been any er undermining of capitalism social democratic parties seem to have come into power held power for long periods of time but er er don't seem to have er done the business in terms of delivering something called socialism as opposed to capitalism a nice example that Przeworski uses is that in Germany in France and in Britain in the interwar period social democratic parties did hold political power at er for some er crucial points in time and yet with the exception of a small part of the French armaments industry not one industry was nationalized during the interwar period so he he throws up the the prob-, problem well why why don't social democratic parties deliver something called socialism and his answer has three component parts first of all about the working class and the electorate this particular path toward a socialist society depended upon the idea that as the electorate grew as the franchise was extended to the working class and to women then the working class would become the majority of the electorate and through from that majority position they would be in a position to take political power now this depends upon how you define the working class but most labour movements were based upon er a core of er o-, er er er of m-, of of membership and allegiance from manual workers and from about nineteen-fourteen whilst the electorate grew the place of manual workers in the overall electorate gradually declined what one had was a decline in the manual workforce and on either flank of the manual workforce what you had was a growth of two different kind of constituencies on the one hand the poor the people who are not er locked into the labour market either because they were children or old people or they were disabled or they're unemployed er the multiple reasons for for for poverty but that became er a s-, a section of the electorate who were not well integrated into the labour movement on the other flank of the labour movement are what we might broadly call the wor-, the the middle class white-collar workers er er i-, in particular and so what social democratic parties had to do was to broaden their electoral appeal beyond their natural basic constituency of the the unionized er manual workforce they had to appeal to the poor on the one hand and the middle classes on the other so that nice simple idea that as the electorate grew so the er the the the the proportion of manual workers in the electorate would grow er was not borne out by experience so just as the l-, the Labour Party and New Labour today have to appeal to what was called Middle England so in the nineteen-twenties and thirties er social democratic parties had to appeal electorally to a constituency wider than if you like their organizational class base this is not a new phenomenon er of the nineteen- eighties and nineties this is a er in Przeworski's view a recurrent feature of social democratic parties the second reason he offers for social democratic parties not delivering socialism is that when they came into power they didn't know what to do [laughter] the idea here is that socialism was a motivating vision but had very little in the way of practical policies as to how to move from that motivating vision to how actually to implement er socialism in this sense they are very different from er from the the Communist Party in the Soviet Union where the er er the the Bolsheviks as a as a small if you like professional elite of revolutionaries had w-, worked out in considerable detail what they would do once they took power in a sense they didn't expect to take power so they could spend all their time working it out [laugh] but er er when the Communist Party grasped power in er in Tzarist Russia then er er there was a blueprint as to what to do in terms of setting up Soviets in terms of er er er coordinating industry all of this and the social democratic equivalent er wasn't there so this leads us into the third point that what was there was something that looked like a possible alternative what people called Keynesianism this is from er the s-, the economic and political theories of John mar-, Maynard Keynes and in the nineteen-thirties Keynes had been er putting forward er a theory of how the a capitalist economy could work so long as certain things happened this was in response to the crisis of capitalism of er of the Great Depression and Keynes had developed an alternative way of er of how the modern economy could work what these depen-, depended upon you don't have to know the details of of Keynes' economic theories the key ideas was the key ideas were A that for a modern economy to work the state had to adopt an interventionist role a free market would lead to the disaster of the Great Depression states had to intervene in the workings of the economy and the key idea was that they had this is the second key idea was that states had the responsibility of maintaining overall demand in the economy now what this actually meant when you worked it through was that Keynesianism meant that the state had to engage in some degree of redistribution of wealth and resources in the economy so in order to maintain demand for example you had to have er sta-, state benefit systems er which would give some dema-, some purchasing power to the poor to maintain overall demand what it involved was er er mai-, mai-, intervening to some extent in the workings of the labour market through er er labour exchanges and er u-, unemployment benefit and making sure that people were were er mobile within within the labour market what it meant thirdly was some degree of state intervention to er to generate social goods social goods er such as er education or health in er to maintain overall demand and to er red-, redistribute wealth i-, in these kind of ways now from the perspective of social democratic parties that didn't really know what to do to move to socialism this seemed a very attractive option it involved er some very concrete policies that would be of er of use in to the the constituency that social democratic parties were appealing to to the poor to the working class a national health service for example it formed a basis for bringing together this these three different constituencies of the poor the organized working class and the middle class so the investment in in er in an education for example an education system gave some educational opportunities to the children of the poor to the children of the working class and at the same time it gave professional advantages to this growing army of teachers and educationalists er and university lecturers as well er er who would benefit from the growth of a state system of education so hunky-dory the problems of social democratic er er er parties about on the one hand first of all appealing to a broad electorate and secondly er knowing what to do seemed to be answered by Keynesianism there was only one problem Keynesianism was not a route out of capitalism the whole system was set up in order to regenerate and ensure the continued health of a capitalist economy so what social democratic parties became er locked into was not moving beyond capitalism but managing capitalism and making sure that some of the messes of capitalism er were were at least ameliorated so that's Przeworski's again int-, internal critique of the theory of the labour market looking at social democratic parties and how they become er embroiled within er capitalist societies rather than er working for their change now for the third part of the lecture i want to move from a focus upon the labour movement and its dilemmas and problems on to a different kind of theory er it's er often called the theory of new social movements on the er on the reading list that you've got er a nice example of this is by two people called Eyerman and Jamieson er just so you can locate it in terms of the reading oof dear right now if we go back to the historical experience of social movements whilst the er the labour movement in the post- war period might have been experiencing all these dilemmas and quandaries that i've been talking about other social movements seem to be flourishing in the nineteen- fifties we have the peace movement with the first version of C-N-D the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in er in in Britain in the United States we have the beginnings of the civil rights movements particularly for er black people in the United States as we move into the nineteen-sixties [cough] we have the beginnings of er er er of of of a a new pacifist movement particularly stimulated by er the Vietnam War and opposition to the Vietnam War and toward the end of the sixties we have the rebirth of a feminist movements for women's li-, rights as we get into the seventies this moves out into ac-, increasing concern with problems with the environment so we have er Greenpeace Friends of the Earth er all sorts of activist er movements on behalf of the environment for animals and dah-di-dah so er the idea took hold with people thinking about these er the-, these kind of of experiences these kind of of social movements that something different was happening that these were new social movements and there w-, there was a contrast between these new movements and the old social movements particularly the labour movement so the theory first of all claims that there is such a division there are old movements particularly epitomized by the labour movement and there are new movements epitomized by the kind of er of issue issue led campaigns that i've just been mean-, mentioning have i missed anyone out peace movements nuclear anti-nuclear environmental ism feminism civil rights so a contrast between new and old secondly was a claim that the labour movement had become er had played its part in the development of the modern world the labour movement had pa-, been part of the growth of er shaping the modern state if we take the idea of the modern state as having reforming responsibilities that if we need something done then we try to get the state to do something about it the labour movement had shaped the state in that respect seeing the state as not just a er what we might call the er sometimes call the police state not in a sense of er Pinochet kind of s-, police states but police in the sense of a minimalist role for the state to maintain law and order within and to maintain good relations without the state had become an interventionist state for reform and the labour movement had er become er had b- , played its part in shaping the modern state the labour movement had played its part in defining er voluntary er institutions like trade unions like political parties how they operated er was very much er er er er er er a a a result of the labour movement's efforts over several decades and the labour movement had also er finally been associated with the er modernist er underlying belief that science can save us that from scientific knowledge we can solve all our problems whether they be problems about our health our environment er how we er teach people how we bring up children science is the er root of all knowledge you might er er be aware that Marx and Engels called their their er form of socialism scientific socialism it was also the case that in the the British Labour Party in the nineteen-forties that implemented a whole raft of nationalizations of industry the justification for that was was was not in terms so much in terms of socialism as in terms of national efficiency approaching the pro-, the the the the question of how you dig ma-, coal out of the ground scientifically so the the labour movement had be-, had taken upon er the the taken upon itself the rhetoric of er of a scientific basis for society so in these three different ways from the point of view of this theory the labour movement is associated with basic er institutions and cultures of the modern world that leads onto the third er part of the theory from the perspective of new social movements what this means is that the labour movement is not against the modern world it is part of the problem of the modern world so whether we look at say trade unions whose members work within the nuclear industry whether we look at social democramic gratic-, parties that er that that er er are are responsible for welfare systems that discriminate against women then what the labour movement looked like from the point of view on one hand of anti-nuclear demonstrators or on the other hand of of feminist de-, demonstrators was er that that the labour movement was part of the opposition to er what they were seeking to achieve and so the idea is that these new social movements are not just new in a sort of temporal sense that they emerged in the the nineteen- sixties and seveties er as latecomers to the social movement scene they're also new in that they develop forms of politics which are e-, entirely different to old social movements the three points that we can bring in here are A B and C let me first of all just use an illustration can you see this photograph er this is a photograph of the Greenham Common women who er as you can see associated themselves with the C-N- D but also with the feminist movement this was a photograph taken in the nineteen er er n-, in nineteen-eighty-three er it's a sit-down protest outside the Greenham Common er American Air Base er a confrontation with the police force er this seemed to me to be a nice illustration of several of the points that i'll make er about er about new social movements er the first is that new social movements do not seek political power they seek to influence those who hold power so these women here are not er attempting to get themselves elected they are attempting to influence public opinion er in the in the direction of the dangers of er of nuclear weapons er located er i-, i-, in Britain secondly that kind of political influence is not so much in terms of well let's sep-, set up an Act of Parliament to regulate nuclear power it's rather to try to er shift public opinion in terms of lifestyles to get people to think well eating meat is not what a civilized person does smoking cigarettes in public is not acceptable in a civilized society driving motorcars and polluting the atmosphere is something that we ought to feel fu-, fundamentally guilty about locating er nuclear missiles in the English countryside is not publicly accessible the idea was that through such forms of direct action the agenda of politics would be shifted er in terms of popular perceptions of what's acceptable and what's not sa-, not acceptable a nice example would be er er the w-, the way in which we er we er er stereotypically can present women er in public er in the in the present period to er represent women as either er er the housewife or the bimbo is generally speaking not acceptable there are of course limits to that er if you read the Sun news-, newspaper or whatever but er the the fate of the Miss World competition is a nice example where it became er er unacceptable to parade women in a beauty contest on er main-, mainstream television so it's that kind of of political influence that new social movements are are attempting to shift the agenda of politics and the third aspect of new social movements in according to the theory is that they reject bureaucracy and representative politics in favour of a loose participatory network of organization none of these women were members of some er of some organization they didn't pay subscriptions they didn't have a secretary or a treasurer or a chairperson er they were members of a loose network of people who were concerned about this and who came together er for their stint at Greenham Common on er an informal basis finally let me offer some er critical thoughts on the theory oops wrong bit on the the theory of neo-, new social movements the first criticism takes objection to the er to the description new social movements the concerns of er feminism environmentalism er the civil rights movement er anti-war movements these are not new neither are social movements concerned with these issues clearly in the late nineteenth century the first wave of feminism was a major social movement prior to the First World War there was a considerable pacifist movement within Europe as the build-up to the First World War took place over a about a twenty year period a nice example is environmentalism throughout the nineteenth century there was a concern about the pollution of the environment by er industry and particularly by the city and all sorts of er of er of movements to preserve the countryside er er d-, were were were developed that led to the er the the idea of town planning now just because town planning became in a sense part of er the modern system of bureaucratic regulation doesn't mean to say that environmentalism is a new issue the garden city movement of the nineteenth century was just as much a an active concern with the with the environment as the the modern concern about industrial pollution so none of these movements are new they are er new editions if you like of old movements the second point is that this characterization of the political role of new social movements is idealized and er er and a-, and doesn't correspond with the facts lots of feminists lots of civil rights activists do become involved in organized politics indeed when i was looking out at my my pictures today a frequent picture er which occurred in my on my computer screen er as i was hunting through for feminism and civil rights and things like this was the face of Ellen Wilkinson many of you perhaps haven't heard of Ellen Wilkinson Ellen Wilkinson was a er is the the the the one woman who is responsible for what we now call child benefits what used to be called family allowances she was the person in the nineteen-thirties and the forties who worked for the idea of [laughter] wages for women and er er a f-, a f-, a feminist ideal which Ellen Wilkinson er worked for through the labour movement and through the Labour Party so er similarly we've had recent er m-, many examples of people associated with the feminist movement becoming involved in electoral politics many people involved with the civil rights movement er in America for example becoming part of the Democratic Party er the Reverend je-, er Jesse Jackson is perhaps the best known example so this idea that new social movements are detached from politics is er is one particular er political expression there are many other political expressions of er concerns with these this e-, these issues and thirdly the the third critique of er of this er i-, i-, of this theory is that in many cases in the past these supposedly new issues have been articulated through the labour movement so for example prior to the First World War to be a socialist meant you were also a pacifist the two almost went together similarly the issue of women's rights has been debated in the labour movement ever since the time of Chartism in the eighteen-thirties and forties whether the charter should should appeal for u-, u-, a universal franchise or simply an adult male franchise and this has been a issue within the labour movement for at least a hundred-and-fifty years now what has happened in the er in the recent past is the detachment of some of these issues from that involvement with the labour movement so that labour movement er environmental movement feminist movement have been to some degree detached but this does not mean in my view that er i-, either these issues either that these issues are new nor that they have nothing to do with the labour movement so i think basically there are fundamental flaws in this idea that the the labour movement is now an old movement which has been surpassed by new social movements okay that's just about done it in the time so er er i think we'll draw to a close now and er i'll see you next week