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4 - A Telling Absence

Race, Multiculturalism, and Modernisation

from Part II - Identities and ‘Modern Socialism’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2023

Colm Murphy
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Chapter 4 explores a more marginalised interpretation of modernisation, which foregrounded race and multiculturalism. Throughout the late twentieth century, the left wrestled with a growingly multiracial society and the rise of both the far right and a more self-confident anti-racist movement in post-colonial Britain. This profoundly shaped the Labour Party, which this chapter illustrates by exploring the 1980s ‘Black Sections’ controversy. Yet, there were only scattered arguments that linked either antiracism or multiculturalism to ‘modernisation’. This chapter explores some isolated explorations of antiracism as modernisation, notably by Ken Livingstone, and explains their intellectual context. However, it also explains why they stalled, stressing institutional and electoral factors, but also the growing discomfort among anti-racist movements with concepts like modernisation. Thus, ‘modernisation’ only became consistently linked with ‘multiculturalism’ in the 2000s, and even then, this association was hotly contested. The implications for Blair’s governments of this absence of race and multiculturalism in 1990s discourses of modernisation are explored at the end of the chapter.

Type
Chapter
Information
Futures of Socialism
‘Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997
, pp. 152 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • A Telling Absence
  • Colm Murphy, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Futures of Socialism
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009278829.007
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  • A Telling Absence
  • Colm Murphy, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Futures of Socialism
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009278829.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • A Telling Absence
  • Colm Murphy, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Futures of Socialism
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009278829.007
Available formats
×