The Politics of the Future in Britain 1958 to 2004

这项研究的主要目的是调查1958年至2004年间英国人对未来的看法。从黯淡到光明，从荒谬到可能，这些“未来的过去”告诉我们战后英国的流行政治是什么？自1945年以来，各政党对英国的未来有着不同的看法：社会民主主义的1945年工党宣言，“让我们面对未来”；麦克米伦对20世纪50年代末“富裕”英国的设想；哈罗德•威尔逊（Harold Wilson）的《白热》（White Heat）的技术官僚复兴；伊诺克·鲍威尔预言的“血流成河”；玛格丽特•撒切尔（Margaret Thatcher）试图“击退社会主义浪潮”；布莱尔的“第三条道路”愿景。但是普通的英国人在多大程度上相信这些愿景呢？或者，他们是否发展了自己的方言愿景？由于对公众记忆的研究越来越多，历史学家已经证明，战后的英国人无法就他们的过去及其意义达成一致；这项研究将通过种族、阶级、性别和民族的视角来探讨英国是如何展望未来的。历史学家倾向于目的论，即根据后来的事件来看待过去。关注想象中的未来的历史调查通过重现过去的不确定性和偶然性来避免这个陷阱。迄今为止，关于现代英国“过去的未来”的历史文献相对较少：只有三篇期刊文章（奥尔托拉诺、克罗夫特和科沃）探讨了保守党领导人和城市规划者对未来的看法。罗伯·沃特斯在2019年10月的历史研究讲座中展示了“未来过去”视角在20世纪70年代黑人政治文化分析中的效用。然而，到目前为止，还没有历史学家对战后英国持续的文化和政治史采取着眼于未来的观点。

The primary objective of this research is to investigate British people's perceptions of the future between 1958 and 2004. Ranging from the bleak to the bright, the preposterous to the probable, what do these 'futures past' tell us about the popular politics of post-war Britain? Since 1945, political parties have dealt in competing visions of Britain's future: the socially-democratic 1945 Labour Manifesto, 'Let Us Face The Future'; Macmillan's vision of an 'affluent' Britain in the late-1950s; the technocratic revival of Harold Wilson's 'White Heat'; Enoch Powell's prophesised 'Rivers of blood'; Margaret Thatcher's attempts to 'roll back the tide of Socialism'; and Blair's vision of a 'Third Way'. But how far did 'ordinary' Britons buy in to these visions? Or, alternatively, did they develop their own vernacular visions? Thanks to the ever-growing study of public memory, historians have demonstrated that post-war Britons were incapable of agreeing on their past and its meaning; this research will explore how - through the lenses of race, class, gender and nation - Britain looked to its future.Historians have a tendency to teleology, to view the past in light of subsequent events. A historical investigation that focuses on imagined futures avoids this pitfall by recreating the uncertainty and contingency of the past. To date, there have been relatively few histories of modern Britain's 'futures past': just three journal articles (by Ortolano, Crowcroft, and Kowol) have explored perceptions of the future among Conservative Party leaders and urban planners. Rob Waters' Historical Research Lecture in October 2019 demonstrated the utility of a 'futures past' perspective in his analysis of Black political cultures in the 1970s. As of yet, however, no historian has adopted a future-focused perspective for a sustained cultural and political history of post-war Britain.