Rethinking British Neoliberalism
University College London
11-12 September 2017
Conference Information
Neoliberalism is often used in contemporary political debate to indicate an ill-defined hegemonic discourse or political project assumed to have triumphed in late twentieth and early twenty-first century politics. Neoliberalism is generally taken, in this reading, to be a right-wing formation, promoted by political economists, think-tanks, and politicians. The aim of this conference is to evaluate this widely-held understanding of neoliberalism by bringing together historians whose work offers more complex and nuanced accounts of the origins and practice of neoliberalism in late-twentieth century Britain.
Conference Organisers:
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwate (University College London)
Aled Davies (University of Cambridge)
Ben Jackson (University of Oxford)
This conference has been funded by the Economic History Society, the Royal Historical Society, and University College, Oxford.
Conference Schedule
Monday 11 September
UCL: South Wing 9 Garwood Lecture Theatre (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/garwood-lt)
13.00-13.15
Welcome and Introduction
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, University College London
13.15-14.45
From Merit to the Market? John Vaizey and the Rise of Thatcherism, 1962-1983.
Dean Blackburn, University of Nottingham
Free markets and feminism: the neo-liberal defence of the male bread-winner model in Britain, c. 1980-1997.
Ben Jackson, University of Oxford
In Place of Government: Community Action and the Rise of British Liberalism, c. 1970-1980.
David Ellis, University of York
Commentator: Chika Tonooka, University of Cambridge
15.15-16.45
Governmentality, state, politics: frameworks for a genealogy of British neoliberalism.
Colin Gordon
Deregulating the local 'market': Sunday trading controversies in the early 1970s
Sarah Mass, University of Michigan
Buying into neoliberalism: Investment Clubs in 1980s Britain.
Amy Edwards, University of Bristol
Commentator: Otto Saumarez Smith, University of Oxford
17.15-18.15
British Business and Margaret Thatcher.
Neil Rollings, University of Glasgow
The City of London, the British State, and Neoliberalism.
Aled Davies, University of Cambridge
Commentator: Amy Edwards, University of Bristol
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Tuesday 12 September
UCL: South Wing 9 Garwood Lecture Theatre (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/garwood-lt)
10.00-11.30
A Strange Fascination: The influence of German Ordoliberalism in post-war Britain.
Robert Ledger, Queen Mary University of London
“The Permissive and Lawless Society is a By-Product of Socialism”: Selsdon Man, Morality and Neoliberalism’s Route into Conservatism.
James Freeman, University of Bristol
“If Mr Gladstone were alive today…”: The Liberal Party and the roots of neoliberalism in twentieth-century Britain.
Peter Sloman, University of Cambridge
“Without Politics”: Neoliberalism, Democracy, and the Political in Britain, c. 1966-2002.
Matthew Francis, University of Birmingham
Commentator: Lise Butler, City University of London
11.45-13.15
Constraints on neo-liberalism in Britain since the 1970s: the limits on ‘market forces’ in a de-industrializing economy and a ‘New Speenhamland’.
Jim Tomlinson, University of Glasgow
What came between Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism? Rethinking Keynesianism, the welfare state and British Social Democracy.
David Edgerton, King's College London
Neoliberal Social Imaginaries: how did neoliberals believe it and get others to do so too?
Patrick Joyce, University of Manchester
Commentator: Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, University College London
14.15-15.45
British State Power since the 1960s. Neoliberalism in Practice?
Jon Wilson, King's College London
Good grounds for upsetting the technocrats: Criticisms of large, state-funded technological projects among the New Right in Britain, 1967-1983.
Thomas Kelsey, King's College London
'Modell Deutschland' and the post-oil shock economic stabilization of Britain, 1976-1989: New Realism rather than neoliberalism?
Samuel Beroud, University of Geneva
Commentator: Emily Robinson, University of Sussex
16.15-17.45
The Neoliberal Contours of Unemployment Policy in Britain since the 1980s.
Bernhard Rieger, University College London
Managing Decline: Competing Conceptions of Urban Regeneration in 1980s Liverpool.
Alexander Scott, University of Wales Trinity St David
Was Thatcherism Just about Neo-Liberalism? Exploring the Criminal Justice System since the 1980s.
Stephen Farrall, University of Sheffield
Commentator: Daisy Payling, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Format
In order to maximise the time available for discussion at the conference we intend to pre-circulate papers (c.2,000-3,000 words) to all participants, and to limit the presentation time allotted for each paper to 10 minutes.
To ensure that everyone has time to read them, papers must be submitted for circulation by 11 August 2017.
The conference is now full, and so we are unfortunately unable to accept any more requests to attend.
Location
University College London
Gower Street
Bloomsbury
London
WC1E 6BT