"How important is the 'new political history'?"

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Essay in Historical Interpretation

HOW IMPORTANT IS THE ‘NEW POLITICAL HISTORY’?

‘Political historians are a fissiparous lot’.1 Methodological consensus among political

historians, and especially British political historians, is rare. The historiographical debates that

have emerged since the 1960s have emphasised the differences between contrasting historical

perspectives. New Political History promises to supplant these debates with a broad synthesis.

This synthesis is to be achieved, it is suggested, by a broadened conception of the ‘political’ and

the erosion of ‘old’ boundaries, meaning that New Political History can accommodate diverse

historical perspectives within a methodological framework that refutes the idea that political

history is monolithic.

New Political History has resolved theoretical uncertainty by accepting that a degree of

uncertainty is natural but that this uncertainty exists within certain bounds. It is due to its

engagement with cultural theory that historians now explicitly deal with questions of linguistic

theory: a new generation of historians have restored the link between the ‘social’ and the

‘political’. It responds constructively to the theoretical shortcomings of ‘old’ political history.

What is new in New Political History is the degree of synthesis that it represents given the gradual

nature of the change that it describes, the diversity of its principles, and the extent to which it is

indebted to earlier traditions. Croll has described recent developments in social history, in the

light of the postmodernist challenge, as ‘the cultivation of postmodern sensibilities within an

essentially modernist framework’.2

But if there is a New Political History, what of the ‘old political history’? There is no single ‘old

political history’: its most important characteristic is its division. There are three key features of

the different traditions of ‘old’ political history. Firstly, they were never theoretically neutral. All

had very clear views about what did and what did not ‘matter’. Secondly, they all attempted to

displace one monolithic approach with another. Thirdly, all either avoided explaining the

relationship between social and political change or explained it reductively. New Political History

1 Steven Fielding, ‘Rethinking the "rise and fall" of two-party politics’, in Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Britain, 1939 - 2000 (Oxford, 2005), p. 359.

2 Andy Croll, ‘The impact of postmodernism on modern British social history’, in Stefan Berger (ed.), Labour and Social History in Great Britain: Historiographical Reviews and Agendas, 1990 to the Present (Essen, 2002), pp. 137-8 (emphasis added).

‘New Political History’ Z0375723

refutes the restrictive definitions that were central to ‘old’ political history. It challenges the

relativistic emphasis of ‘high politics’ upon elites, of ‘popular politics’ on supposedly homogenous

socio-economic groups such as ‘workers’, and has discredited socio-structural Marxist

explanations of change in terms of class. New Political History emerged in the context of a

historiography that was fiercely contested. That it emerged from social history reflected

dissatisfaction with the reductive nature of materialist explanations of change. Yet New Political

History is not ‘New Social History’ because it is imbued with a broad view of the ‘political’ and an

understanding of the complexity of the relationship between discourse, ‘social reality’ and

consciousness.

This essay considers the value of New Political History through an examination of its three

most important features. The first section examines its understanding of language and structure.

It is argued that New Political History maintains its explanatory power while emphasising the

complexity of ‘reality’. The second section examines the broadened definition of the ‘political’

inherent in ‘political culture’. It is argued that it has removed the dichotomies that formerly

existed in political history. The third section examines the importance of individual agency in

‘New Political History’. It is concluded that New Political History is likely to be an enduring

approach to political history because it is both empirical and grounded in theory.

New Political History posits a complex interrelationship between language and structure. This

is important because traditionally, political history has explained change either relatively or

structurally. New Political History rejects postmodernists’ absolutely non-referential view of

language that suggests ‘there is nothing outside the text’ because it means that studies of language

are descriptive rather than explanatory. Yet it recognises the importance of this in challenging

longstanding causal assumptions. Non-referential language is problematic because an

understanding of texts requires an understanding of ‘reality’, even if this is neither directly

described by that text nor directly produced by it. New Political History posits the need for an

acceptance of a ‘reality’ beyond discourse. The partly-constructed nature of this is not disputed;

but it is suggested that so long as this is understood, such constructions can provide the basis for

explanation. This view of language shares the postmodernist rejection of structuralism, but

emphasises the importance of contemporary perception. It is argued not that structures did not

exist but rather that they did not matter apart from the extent to which a particular discourse

made them a ‘social reality’. Black, for example, has demonstrated the importance of Labour

politicians’ negative perceptions of their supporters.3 Even if ‘we cannot have direct knowledge of

3 Lawrence Black, ‘"What kind of people are you?" Labour, the people and the "new political history"’, in John Callaghan, Steven Fielding, and Steve Ludlam (eds.), Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches to Labour Politics and History (Manchester, 2003), pp. 23-38.

Z0375723 ‘New Political History’

reality as such’,4 it is possible to understand reality as it was perceived and accept that this

influenced discourse. As Stedman Jones has argued, ‘changes in the social realm necessarily form

a large part of the raw material out of which different political languages may be forged or

reforged.’5

Yet, while New Political History accepts the argument that links between social reality and

language are complex, it rejects the view that they cannot be understood; the ‘truth’ has merely

become more difficult to locate.6 McKibbin has suggested in Class and Cultures that, while

structures cannot be used to predict change, political change can often be understood in

retrospect by examining social conditions. Even Stedman Jones now claims that Languages of

Class left the value of language open to interpretation.7 It is necessary to presuppose that there

are ‘truths’ at some level in order to access ‘social reality’ and realms where historical explanation

is possible. This is not structuralism. Any ‘social reality’ is understood discursively and as one of a

range of possible social realities through which change is explained. Saussure spoke of ‘the

impossibility of abstracting experience from the language which structures its articulation’.8 New

Political History emphasises that while such extraction is impossible to carry out with certainty it

is nevertheless possible.

The importance of this approach is that it is neither reductive nor descriptive. The problem

with postmodernism is that ‘a tight focus on the reconstruction of public discourse ultimately

weakens [an account’s] explanatory power’.9 This descriptive approach tends to arise because a

rejection of context means that relationships between discourses are not studied. ‘In some ways,

the idea of postmodern history is an oxymoron.’10 Despite Stedman Jones’ claims that language

was self-referential, he always recognised the importance of a reality beyond that created by

language. He made ‘real gestures towards accommodating much that had gone before’.11 ‘The

intention in Languages of Class’, he has claimed, ‘was to… reserve the central position of political

history’.12

As Pedersen has pointed out, few contest the view that ‘structural analysis was and is

necessary’.13 This is significant because materialist historians are more able to explain change

4 Mark Bevir, ‘Review Article: Objectivity and its other’, History & Theory 35 (1996), p. 393. 5 Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Why is the Labour Party in a mess?’ in Gareth Stedman Jones (ed.), Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 239.

6 Stefan Berger, ‘Introduction’, in Stefan Berger (ed.), Labour and Social History in Great Britain: Historiographical Reviews and Agendas, 1990 to the present (Essen, 2002), p. 13.

7 Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Anglo-Marxism, neo-Marxism and the discursive approach to history’, in Alf Lüdtke (ed.), Was bleibt von marxisthischen perspektiven in der Geschichtsforschung? (Göttingen, 1997), p. 183.

8 Quoted in Patrick Joyce (ed.), Class (Oxford, 1995), p. 153. 9 REF 10 William G. Shade, ‘Dèjà vu all over again: is there a new new political history?’ in Jeffrey Pasley, Andrew

Robertson, and David Waldstreicher (eds.), Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to Political History of the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2004), p. 393.

11 Croll, ‘Impact of postmodernism’, p. 142. 12 Stedman Jones, ‘Anglo-Marxism’, p. 183. 13 Susan Pedersen, ‘What is political history now?’ in David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (Basingstoke,

2002), p. 52.


than cultural theorists.14 The reality of socio-economic change is undeniable. The continued

importance of material factors for New Political History – albeit in a more tentative framework –

reflects its reassertion of historical values. Fielding demonstrates the value of this in his study of

post-war political parties: while acknowledging that ‘internal linguistic limitations’ defined the

possible, he notes that there were very real material limitations.15 This tension produces

scepticism based upon the limits of postmodern epistemology. As Lawrence has concluded:

The freedom to weave new discourses about the social world, to conceptualise political identity and

interest in new ways, may be considerable, but it is not infinite, and material ‘reality’ is one of the

factors circumscribing the plausible languages for describing the social world in politics.16

The shift to ‘political culture’ in New Political History reflects the extent to which it

conceptualises relationships in terms of power, and paves the way for a broader definition of the

‘political’. ‘Political culture’ has come to describe a menu of historical approaches.17 This

redefinition means that more diverse evidence can now be drawn upon and areas that traditional

political historians would have not have studied have been legitimised. Lawrence has been at the

vanguard of this attempt to look at different ‘sites’ of political activity.18 ‘Political culture’ has also

become a means to understand how parties were able to engage with society.19 It means that

political history has been opened up to insights from other disciplines; New Political History

represents a ‘political turn’ in cultural theory.20 The value of ‘political culture’ is that it has

produced a subtler understanding of power relationships through analytical concepts such as

‘representation’.21

The result of this broadening is a synthesis, eroding the barriers of political history and the

polarizations of longstanding debates. It affirms the value of historical research. This is a contrast

to postmodernism, which doubted the extent to which an understanding of ‘reality’ was

attainable. Yet ‘it has to remain doubtful whether [the denial of social reality] can be made

productive for the practice of historical research’.22 Because New Political History cannot be

14 Dror Wahman, ‘The new political history: a review essay’, Social History 21 (1996), p. 353. 15 Fielding, ‘Two-party politics’, p. 359. 16 Jon Lawrence, ‘Political history’, in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner, and Kevin Passmore (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), p. 195.

17 Ronald P. Formisano, ‘The concept of political culture’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (2001), p. 408. 18 Jon Lawrence, ‘The transformation of British public politics after the First World War’, Past & Present 190

(2006), pp. 185-216. 19 Fielding, ‘Two-party politics’, p. 353. 20 James Epstein, ‘New directions in political history’, Journal of British Studies 41 (2002), pp. 255-259. 21 e.g. Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867-1914

(Cambridge, 1998). 22 Berger, ‘Introduction’, p. 13. See also James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815-1867 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 6. and Michael Bentley, ‘Victorian politics and the linguistic turn’, Historical Journal 42 (1999), pp. 883-902.


accused of ‘intellectual parochialism’,23 it has created consensus. The debates in the 1990s, a

‘dialogue of the deaf’,24 have given way to ‘a productive synthesis of modern and postmodern

history’.25 The erosion of elite-popular division has also reflected developments in social and

intellectual history.26 The high-low dichotomy has been a longstanding problem: while political

historians were opposed to social ‘encroachments’, social historians scoffed at political historians’

lack of social context. Yet it was only with the ‘turn to culture’ that ‘political culture’ emerged, and

allowed these two approaches to achieve rapprochement by providing a means to relate different

areas of political activity. The value of this has been demonstrated, Pedersen suggests, by

Williamson’s work on the dominance of the interwar Conservative party.27 That such work is

largely compatible with recent studies of constituency-level activism demonstrates the

importance of ‘political culture’.28

New Political History is neither monolithic nor polemical: it is inclusive because the unifying

concept that binds different types of activity (‘political culture’) is so broad. Of course, this

broadening is not unproblematic. 29 However, its importance is that it provides a link between the

‘social’ and the ‘political’ and recognises the political character of activities in spheres that have

traditionally been seen as non-political.

New Political History emphasises the importance of individuals in creating political identities.

Traditionally, political historians have seen ‘ordinary’ (non-elite) identities as unimportant, and

social historians have only seen identities as important insofar as they formed part of larger

structures. New Political History suggests that individual identities are important in their own

right. The scope for individual agency reflects scepticism towards sociological assumptions about

the institutional structuring of political behaviour. As a result, it is important to understand the

role of individuals in creating identities, acting as dynamic forces rather than responding to

broader structural arrangements.30 Lawrence and Taylor have emphasised that ‘political parties

in modern Britain have seldom been the passive beneficiaries of social change.’31 The importance

of associational activity not only in responding to political alignments but also in creating them

underlines the diversity of political activity that is central to New Political History.

23 Patrick Joyce, ‘The return of history: postmodernism and the politics of academic history in Britain’, Past & Present 158 (1998), p. 211.

24 Croll, ‘Impact of postmodernism’, p. 142. 25 Berger, ‘Introduction’, p. 12. 26 Stedman Jones, ‘Anglo-Marxism’, p. 200. 27 Pedersen, ‘What is political history now?’ pp. 44-5. 28 e.g. Lawrence, Speaking for the People. 29 Formisano, ‘Political culture’. 30 Croll, ‘Impact of postmodernism’, p. 141. 31 Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, ‘Introduction: electoral sociology and the historians’, in Jon Lawrence and

Miles Taylor (eds.), Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), p. 18.


The effect of this diversity is that politics is understood as a range of semi-autonomous spheres

unified by political culture. Westminster is one of these spheres, and the extent to which this was

‘closed’ recognises the dominance of political elites that had a privileged ability to shape

discourse.32 In this respect, there are parallels with the work of historians such as Cowling.

However, even if the sphere of Westminster politics was important, it was not independent of a

wider culture operated upon by other spheres. New Political History sees ‘parliamentary society’33

in broader terms and within a larger political culture. This emphasis on individual political

activity has undermined the assumption that there was a homogenous realm of ‘popular’ activity.

That identity was diverse means political historians should go beyond conventional labels and

that no identity should be privileged above others: political identity was neither exclusive nor

uniform.

The importance of this emphasis on individual activity, identity and semi-autonomous spheres

of political activity has challenged the view that political history is monolithic or simple. The

reason postmodernism spent so much time attacking the idea of ‘class’ is the fact that its

emphasis on discourse has produced an understanding of diverse political identities.34 This

demonstrates that New Political History is more sophisticated than simply a reaction against

Marxism.35 Political historians are concerned not just with grand narratives but also with

contingencies: to historians, what is trivial is not necessarily unimportant.

New Political History is more than just a convenient label. Its epistemology is more consensual

than contested because its combination of distinctive strands of historical thought has resulted in

a broadening of the ‘political’. It emphasises the importance of research by being neither

reductive nor descriptive. Yet it is not just a reassertion of traditional political history. It is more

sophisticated and sceptical, accepts uncertainty and ‘historicizes’ practices from other

disciplines.36 Its emphasis on individuals is important because it goes beyond the limitations

imposed by a view of politics in terms of structures or privileged groups. Although it remains

difficult to understand the links between Westminster politics and ‘ordinary’ political activism,

‘political culture’ provides a means to do so. New Political History recognises that although

certain debates can often be reduced to conjecture by evidential uncertainty, simply because it is

difficult to access ‘reality’, historians should not avoid attempting to do so. ‘Inevitably much will

be left to inference… and much will simply remain unknown’.37

32 Vernon, Politics and the People, pp. 7-8. 33 Richard Brent, ‘Butterfield's Tories: "High Politics" and the writing of modern British political history’, Historical Journal 30 (1987), p. 247.

34 Berger, ‘Introduction’, p. 13. 35 Black, ‘"What kind of people are you?"’, p. 24. 36 Fielding, ‘Two-party politics’, p. 360. 37 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. 67.


The significance of the British political history that it has created is underlined by the

distinctiveness of its narrative. This denotes gradual change with strong continuities. The

importance of individual identities, however, guards against teleology. There has not yet been a

critical analysis of the extent to which this narrative was consistent with earlier ‘Anglo-Marxist’

narratives of political history, but such a study would likely be a rewarding one.38 While it is

important to avoid triumphalism, New Political History is undeniably important because it

represents a flexible methodology that is able to accommodate different approaches. That it has

an epistemology of diversity means that it is likely to endure, in one form or another, for some

time to come.

(2,908 words.)

38 Stedman Jones, ‘Anglo-Marxism’, p. 160.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bentley, Michael, 'Victorian politics and the linguistic turn', Historical Journal 42 (1999), pp.

883-902.

Berger, Stefan, 'Introduction', in Stefan Berger (ed.), Labour and Social History in Great Britain:

Historiographical Reviews and Agendas, 1990 to the Present (Essen, 2002), pp. 5-18.

Bevir, Mark, 'Review Article: Objectivity and its other', History & Theory 35 (1996), pp. 391-401.

Black, Lawrence, '"What kind of people are you?" Labour, the people and the "New Political

History"', in John Callaghan, Steven Fielding and Steve Ludlam (eds.), Interpreting the

Labour Party: Approaches to Labour Politics and History (Manchester, 2003), pp. 23-38.

Brent, Richard, 'Butterfield's Tories: "High Politics" and the writing of modern British political

history', Historical Journal 30 (1987), pp. 943-954.

Croll, Andy, 'The impact of postmodernism on modern British social history', in Stefan Berger

(ed.) Labour and Social History in Great Britain: Historiographical Reviews and Agendas,

1990 to the Present (Essen, 2002), pp. 137-52.

Epstein, James, 'New directions in political history', Journal of British Studies 41 (2002), pp.

255-259.

Fielding, Steven, 'Rethinking the "rise and fall" of two-party politics', in Paul Addison and Harriet

Jones (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Britain, 1939 - 2000 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 351-

70.

Formisano, Ronald P., 'The concept of political culture', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31

(2001), pp. 393-426.

Joyce, Patrick, 'The return of history: postmodernism and the politics of academic history in

Britain', Past & Present 158 (1998), pp. 207-235.

——— (ed.), Class (Oxford, 1995).

Lawrence, Jon, 'Political history', in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner and Kevin Passmore (eds.),

Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), pp. 183-202.

———, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867-1914

(Cambridge, 1998).

———,'The transformation of British public politics after the First World War', Past & Present 190

(2006), pp. 185-216.

Lawrence, Jon, and Miles Taylor, 'Introduction: electoral sociology and the historians', in Jon

Lawrence and Miles Taylor (eds.), Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Britain

since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 1-26.


Pedersen, Susan, 'What is political history now?' in David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now?

(Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 36-56.

Shade, William G., 'Dèjà vu all over again: is there a new new political history?', in Jeffrey Pasley,

Andrew Robertson and David Waldstreicher (eds.), Beyond the Founders: New Approaches

to Political History of the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2004).

Stedman Jones, Gareth, 'Anglo-Marxism, Neo-Marxism and the discursive approach to history',

in Alf Lüdtke (ed.), Was bleibt von marxisthischen perspektiven in der Geschichtsforschung?

(Göttingen, 1997), pp. 149-209.

———, 'Why is the Labour Party in a mess?' in Gareth Stedman Jones (ed.), Languages of Class:

Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983).

Vernon, James, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815-1867

(Cambridge, 1993).

Wahman, Dror, 'The new political history: a review essay', Social History 21 (1996), pp. 343-354.

"How important is the 'new political history'?"

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