History as Political Rhetoric
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1478-9302.2008.00159.x |
| Author | Jim Tomlinson |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
History as Political Rhetoric
Jim Tomlinson
University of Dundee
In this book as in previous ones,Anthony Giddens underpins a political argument
by the use of history.Three central tropes of this history are apparent. First is that
globalisation is a new phenomenon, and therefore requires new policy responses.
Second is that the Old Left/Old Labour had ideas wholly inadequate to deal with
this new situation, and thus New Labour was required.Third, a declinist account
of post-war Britain is given, in which Thatcher’s policies reversed aspects of
economic decline, but did damage in other directions, and therefore needed
correction. In this schema, Old Labour represented the first way, Thatcherism
the second way and New Labour the Third Way. In this new book, advocacy of
the Third Way is essentially continued but, it is argued, it needs ‘tweaking’ to face
the challenges after ten years of New Labour.
My contention in this essay is that each of these three ‘histories’ is at best
problematic, at worst wholly misleading.
The novelty of globalisation is a key theme. Giddens’ view is that ‘globalization
is the dominant force,or set of forces, shaping our societies today’(Giddens, 2007,
p. 50). He argues that alongside economic globalisation – the integration of
goods, capital and labour markets – the key element is the global power of
communications media:‘one of the dominant forces of change in our lives’(p. 50).
On this basis he dates the beginning of the global age to the late 1960s or early
1970s, ‘the first time an effective satellite system was sent up above the earth,
making instantaneous communication possible from any one point in the world
to any other ... Increasing economic interdependence would not be feasible
without these developments’(pp. 50–1).It is plainly tr ue that the rapid expansion
of international economic transactions requires a capacity to transmit information
cheaply. But the key breakthrough in this regard was the telegraph, which in the
late nineteenth century spanned the globe, and made more or less instantaneous
transmission a possibility.This is nicely illustrated by the Barings cr isis of 1890 in
which a financial problem in one country (Argentina) was rapidly spread across
the world by means of the distribution of financial information by telegraph
(Triver and Wandschneider, 2005). Economic historians and others have pointed
out that along with steamships and railways,the teleg raph facilitated the extraor-
dinary expansion of international economic transactions before the First World
War which is sensibly described as the beginnings of the moder n phase of
POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2008 VOL 6, 297–307
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
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