Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954-70

A history of modern British political culture, Redefining British Politics discusses organisations, ideas, movement, identities, moments and individuals that transcend the spheres of political and social change. Set against the context of relative affluence and cultural change in 1950s and 1960s Britain, it probes whether political behaviour and subject matter became more post-materialist. It addresses identification with party, but also the development of newer forms of pressure groups and social movements and moral, cultural and consumer agendas. It uses these to explore politics' relationship with the wider society and how the shifting category of the 'political' included more than traditional areas of historical focus like party, elections and policy. Its approach is more a cultural history of politics than a political history. As such, it assesses popular participation in political, the salience and reception of political languages and practices and the role of everyday indifference in a political culture that, it argue, in key respects was not, by conventional measures, notably political.