The City Of London And Social Democracy

The City of London and Social Democracy examines the relationship between the financial sector and the state in post-war Britain. The key argument made in Aled Davies's study is that changes to the financial sector during the 1960s and 1970s undermined the state's capacity to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Social democratic economic strategy was constrained by the institutionalization of investment in pension and insurance funds; the fragmentation of the nation's oligopolistic domestic banking system; the emergence of an unregulated international capital market based in London; and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Novel attempts to reconfigure social democratic economic strategy in response to these changes ultimately proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the assumption that national prosperity could only be achieved through industrial growth was challenged by a reconceptualization of Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation — an idea that was successfully promoted by the City itself. These findings assert the need to place the Thatcher governments' subsequent neoliberal economic revolution, which saw the acceleration of deindustrialization and the triumph of the City of London as a pre-eminent international financial centre, within a broader material, institutional, and cultural context previously underappreciated by historians.

The City of London and Social Democracy examines the relationship between the financial sector and the state in post-war Britain. The key argument made in Aled Davies's study is that changes to the financial sector during the 1960s and 1970s undermined the state's capacity to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Social democratic economic strategy was constrained by the institutionalization of investment in pension and insurance funds; the fragmentation of the nation's oligopolistic domestic banking system; the emergence of an unregulated international capital market based in London; and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Novel attempts to reconfigure social democratic economic strategy in response to these changes ultimately proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the assumption that national prosperity could only be achieved through industrial growth was challenged by a reconceptualization of Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation — an idea that was successfully promoted by the City itself. These findings assert the need to place the Thatcher governments' subsequent neoliberal economic revolution, which saw the acceleration of deindustrialization and the triumph of the City of London as a pre-eminent international financial centre, within a broader material, institutional, and cultural context previously underappreciated by historians.

A polemical history of municipal socialism in London - and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. A polemical history of municipal socialism in London -- and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism. This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Opposing currently fashionable bullshit about an imaginary "metropolitan elite", this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and makes an argument for using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.

A polemical history of municipal socialism in London - and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. A polemical history of municipal socialism in London -- and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism. This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Opposing currently fashionable bullshit about an imaginary "metropolitan elite", this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and makes an argument for using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.

How workers fought for municipal socialism to make cities around the globe livable and democratic - and what the lessons are for today. For more than a century, municipal socialism has fired the imaginations of workers fighting to make cities livable and democratic. At every turn propertied elites challenged their right to govern. Prominent US labor historian, Shelton Stromquist, offers the first global account of the origins of this new trans-local socialist politics. He explains how and why cities after 1890 became crucibles for municipal socialism. Drawing on the colorful stories of local activists and their social-democratic movements in cities as diverse as Broken Hill, Christchurch, Malmö, Bradford, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Hamilton, OH, the book shows how this new urban politics arose. Long governed by propertied elites, cities in the nineteenth century were transformed by mass migration and industrialization that tore apart their physical and social fabric. Amidst massive strikes and faced with epidemic disease, fouled streets, unsafe water, decrepit housing, and with little economic security and few public amenities, urban workers invented a local politics that promised to democratize cities they might themselves govern and reclaim the wealth they created. This new politics challenged the class power of urban elites as well as the centralizing tendencies of national social-democratic movements. Municipal socialist ideas have continued to inspire activists in their fight for the right of cities to govern themselves.

Horizons -- Planning -- Architecture -- Community -- Consulting -- Housing.