This book presents new, cross-disciplinary research on leprosy in medieval Europe, focusing on questions of identity. It reveals complex responses to the disease, challenging earlier views that medieval sufferers were uniformly stigmatised. The social, religious and cultural impacts are explored, as are post-medieval perspectives.

This monograph recasts the modernisation of the Labour Party and sheds new light on Labour's years in the wilderness between 1979 and 1997. The monograph uniquely traces the party's major organisational changes across its eighteen years of opposition. Labour's organisational modernisation in this period fundamentally altered the party's internal structures, policy-making pathways and constitution. The study begins with an investigation into the scene inherited by Labour's leadership in the early 1980s and examines Neil Kinnock's quest for a stable majority on the party's ruling National Executive Committee between 1983 and 1987. From this position the monograph surveys the major organisational changes of the Labour Party in their period of opposition: the Policy Review (1987-92), One Member, One Vote (1992-94), Clause IV (1995-96) and Partnership in Power (1996-97). Through a re-examination of Labour's modernisation, in the light of new source material and extensive primary interviews, this research significantly contributes to the understanding of the rise of New Labour.

This book provides a novel account of the Labour Party’s years in opposition and power since 1979, examining how New Labour fought to reinvent post-war social democracy, reshaping its core political ideas. It charts Labour’s sporadic recovery from political disaster in the 1980s, successfully making the arduous journey from opposition to power with the rise (and ultimately fall) of the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Forty years on from the 1979 debacle, Labour has found itself on the edge of oblivion once again. Defeated in 2010, it entered a further cycle of degeneration and decline. Like social democratic parties across Europe, Labour failed to identify a fresh ideological rationale in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews and unpublished papers, the book focuses on decisive points of transformational change in the party’s development raising a perennial concern of present-day debate – namely whether Labour is a party capable of transforming the ideological weather, shaping a new paradigm in British politics, or whether it is a party that should be content to govern within parameters established by its Conservative opponents. This text will be of interest to the general reader as well as scholars and students of British politics, British political party history, and the history of the British Labour Party since 1918.

Labour's 1997 victory was widely credited to the party's reinvention of itself as New Labour. This book argues that the transformation of the Labour Party is best understood as the product of Thatcherism, and marks the emergence of a new consensus in British politics.

"First [originally] published in Great Britain in 2007 by Politico's Publishing ..."--Title page verso.

The first academic biography of one of the leading thinkers of the Labour Party, Peter Shore.

Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, 'neoliberalism' has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. At the dawn of the new century, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by a financial calamity not seen since the dark years of the 1930s. So is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? Will reform-minded G-20 leaders embark on a genuine new course or try to claw their way back to the neoliberal glory days of the Roaring Nineties? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and considerable variations of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated 'isms' of our time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The book considers Labour's economic strategy as it developed through the party's long period of opposition between 1979 and 1997. This history argues strongly that accounts of Labour's recent past which claim that the Party was driven by a combination of Thatcherism and opinion polls are flawed. It offers an alternative account which stresses the importance of debates within and around the Party about how the economy should be understood, the role of markets and the state, and British industrial decline.

This year marks the centenary of Harold Wilson's birth, the fiftieth anniversary of his most impressive general election victory and forty years since his dramatic resignation as Prime Minister. He was one of the longest-serving premiers of the twentieth century, having won a staggering four general elections, yet, despite this monumental record, his place in Labour's history remains somewhat ambiguous. By the end of his two periods in power, both the left and right of the party were highly critical of Wilson - the former regarding him as a traitor to socialism, the latter as contributing directly to British decline. With contributions from leading experts in the fields of political study, and from Wilson's own contemporaries, this remarkable new study offers a timely and wide-ranging reappraisal of one of the giants of twentieth-century politics, examining the context within which he operated, his approach to leadership and responses to changing social and economic norms, the successes and failure of his policies, and how he was viewed by peers from across the political spectrum. Finally, it examines the overall impact of Harold Wilson on the development of British politics.