Introduction

In the last chapter, I demonstrated how the New Right exerted a powerful influence over the micropolitics of American community development during the 1970s and 1980s. I analysed how one discourse downplayed the threat of the New Right and was ultimately coopted by this movement. Another discourse sought accommodation with the New Right by adopting its language and social practices and subsequently abandoned key concepts traditionally linked to community development. Only one discourse, linked to anti-racist feminism, attempted to oppose the hegemony of the New Right through a focus on women's empowerment. In this chapter I will examine how British community development discourses fare during the 1979 to 1985 politically salient moment. I have identified two discourses for analysis. The ‘post-Marxist’ discourse is constituted by the texts, language and practices of community development theorists and practitioners seeking to restructure the dominant Marxist praxis of ‘radical’ community development in order to shift away from the perceived economic determinism and dogmatism of classical Marxism and construct a new praxis based on more complex analyses of the welfare state and of ‘working class’ experiences. In contrast this, the ‘Realist’ discourse is constituted by the texts, language and practices of community development theorists and practitioners who seek to subvert and marginalise the dominant Marxist discourse and instead construct a new community development praxis based on professionalism in social administration and neighbourhood-based work.

In this chapter I shall argue that these two discourses emerge in response to two important developments: a major crisis in left-wing politics and the rise of the New Right as embodied in Margaret Thatcher's Government. In contrast to American community development during this moment in time, the micropolitics of British community development are oriented towards reconciling the internal struggles plaguing left-wing politics. Rather than left-wing politics being abandoned by some discourses as I demonstrated in Chapter Four in the US context, I will argue that community development in the UK must contend with the processes of Marxism being altered by new social movements such as second-wave feminism and, to a lesser extent, new political philosophies such as post-structuralism and postmodernism. In addition, I will discuss how community development is forced to respond to the deteriorating state of urban neighbourhoods and rising unemployment levels which Marxist community development had been unable to influence or affect.