The City of London and Social Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
International Monetary System ◽  
Banking System ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Post-War Britain evaluates the changing relationship between the United Kingdom financial sector (colloquially referred to as ‘the City of London’) and the post-war social democratic state. The key argument made in the book is that changes to the British financial system during the 1960s and 1970s undermined a number of the key components of social democratic economic policy practised by the post-war British state. The institutionalization of investment in pension and insurance funds; the fragmentation of an oligopolistic domestic banking system; the emergence of an unregulated international capital market centred on London; the breakdown of the Bretton Woods international monetary system; and the popularization of a City-centric, anti-industrial conception of Britain’s economic identity, all served to disrupt and undermine the social democratic economic strategy that had attempted to develop and maintain Britain’s international competitiveness as an industrial economy since the Second World War. These findings assert the need to place the Thatcher governments’ subsequent economic policy revolution, in which a liberal market approach accelerated deindustrialization and saw the rapid expansion of the nation’s international financial service industry, within a broader material and institutional context previously underappreciated by historians.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
International Monetary System ◽  
The State ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The aim of this book has been to evaluate the relationship between Britain’s financial sector, based in the City of London, and the social democratic economic strategy of post-war Britain. The central argument presented in the book was that changes to the City during the 1960s and 1970s undermined a number of the key post-war social democratic techniques designed to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Financial institutionalization weakened the state’s ability to influence investment, and the labour movement was unable successfully to integrate the institutionalized funds within a renewed social democratic economic agenda. The post-war settlement in banking came under strain in the 1960s as new banking and credit institutions developed that the state struggled to manage. This was exacerbated by the decision to introduce competition among the clearing banks in 1971, which further weakened the state’s capacity to control the provision and allocation of credit to the real economy. The resurrection of an unregulated global capital market, centred on London, overwhelmed the capacity of the state to pursue domestic-focused macroeconomic policies—a problem worsened by the concurrent collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Against this background, the fundamental social democratic assumption that national prosperity could be achieved only through industry-led growth and modernization was undermined by an effective campaign to reconceptualize Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation with the City of London at its heart....

The Politics of Banking and Social Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Demand

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....

Decision-making under duress: the treatment of churches in the City of London during and after World War II

Urban History ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER J. LARKHAM ◽  
JOE L. NASR
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Multiple Experts ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACT:The process of making decisions about cities during the bombing of World War II, in its immediate aftermath and in the early post-war years remains a phenomenon that is only partly understood. The bombing left many church buildings damaged or destroyed across the UK. The Church of England's churches within the City of London, subject to a complex progression of deliberations, debates and decisions involving several committees and commissions set up by the bishop of London and others, are used to review the process and product of decision-making in the crisis of war. Church authorities are shown to have responded to the immediate problem of what to do with these sites in order most effectively to provide for the needs of the church as an organization, while simultaneously considering other factors including morale, culture and heritage. The beginnings of processes of consulting multiple experts, if not stakeholders, can be seen in this example of an institution making decisions under the pressures of a major crisis.

Social democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Post War ◽  
Distribution Of Income

The idea of social democracy is now used to describe a society the economy of which is predominantly capitalist, but where the state acts to regulate the economy in the general interest, provides welfare services outside of it and attempts to alter the distribution of income and wealth in the name of social justice. Originally ’social democracy’ was more or less equivalent to ’socialism’. But since the mid-twentieth century, those who think of themselves as social democrats have come to believe that the old opposition between capitalism and socialism is outmoded; many of the values upheld by earlier socialists can be promoted by reforming capitalism rather than abolishing it. Although it bases itself on values like democracy and social justice, social democracy cannot really be described as a political philosophy: there is no systematic statement or great text that can be pointed to as a definitive account of social democratic ideals. In practical politics, however, social democratic ideas have been very influential, guiding the policies of most Western states in the post-war world.

scholarly journals ‘Heading up a blind alley’? Scottish psychiatric hospitals in the era of deinstitutionalization

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Long
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Care ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
Blind Alley ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Institutional Services ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City

This article examines Scottish provision of psychiatric care in the 1960s and 1970s. It demonstrates that institutional services did not rapidly disappear across the UK following the Ministry of Health’s decision to shut down psychiatric hospitals in 1961, and highlights Scotland’s distinctive trajectory. Furthermore, it contends that psychiatric hospitals developed new approaches to assist patients in this era, thereby contributing towards the transformation of post-war psychiatric practice. Connecting a discussion of policy with an analysis of provision, it examines the Department of Health for Scotland’s cautious response to the Ministry’s embrace of deinstitutionalization, before analysing Glasgow’s psychiatric provision in the 1970s. At this point the city boasted virtually no community-based services, and relied heavily on its under-resourced and overburdened hospitals. Closer analysis dispels any impression of stagnation, revealing how ideologies of deinstitutionalization transformed institutional care.

The City of London and the Politics of ‘Invisibles’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Payments ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter considers the resurgence of the City of London as an international financial centre in the late twentieth century. It highlights the role played by a campaign to promote the revival of the City as a post-sterling international financial centre. The Committee on Invisible Exports campaigned for the recognition of the City’s contribution to Britain’s balance of payments through its ‘invisible earnings’, and argued that this could be increased by reducing impediments on its activities. The invisibles campaign was a distinct product of the post-war preoccupation with the balance of payments, which challenged the fundamental belief, embedded in economic policy since the war, that the route to national prosperity was in expanding industrial production. The campaign sought to reconceptualize Britain as a historic commercial and financial, rather than industrial, economy. In doing so it undercut a core principle on which the social democratic political–economic project was based.

scholarly journals The Independent Group Looks at London’s West End

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hornsey
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Independent Group ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City ◽  
British Culture

In the early 1950s, British culture was dominated by welfare-state visions of urban reconstruction. These projections of a stable civic society were premised on a particular way of looking at and reading the metropolitan environment. At odds with this project, the Independent Group’s discussions and collaborative work developed an alternative urban semiology, which found the city to be already rich in visual resources for fashioning a more profound form of social democracy. Soon, this critical engagement would develop in different directions, represented here by Lawrence Alloway’s commentary on Piccadilly Circus in his essay ‘City Notes’ and the London footage inserted by John McHale into his film for the Smithsons’ Berlin Hauptstadt project (both 1959). By the end of the 1950s, members of the erstwhile Independent Group had produced two contrasting critical accounts of how the metropolitan centre should be looked at, which challenged the strictures of post-war reconstruction in distinct and conflicting ways.

scholarly journals Design and functional characteristics of the multi-family housing architecture in the period of mature and late Modern architecture of Nis: Case studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193
Author(s):  
Marjan Petrovic
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Design Characteristics ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second Category ◽  
The City ◽  
Late Modern

The topic of this paper is the functional and design characteristics of multifamily (formerly collective) residential buildings created in the post-war period of Modern architecture of Nis. For the post-war period of intensive and mass construction of residential buildings, a time classification of constructed buildings was performed, and they are classified into two categories. The first category includes buildings built in the 1950s, in the period of the ?mature? Modern architecture, which is a continuation of modern architecture of Nis between the two world wars. The second category consists of residential buildings created in the late 1960s and 1970s, in the period of the late (industrial) Modern architecture of Nis. In this paper, two representative examples of residential and commercial buildings from the mentioned periods were selected, both built on the 14. Oktobar square, in the central core of the city of Nis. As typological representatives of the mentioned periodizations of construction, the buildings will be analyzed in the form of two case studies.

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