Narratives of British Socialism Also by Stephen Ingle THE BRITISH PARTY SYSTEM GEORGE ORWELL: A Political Life PARLIAMENT AND HEALTH POLICIES (with Philip Tether) SOCIALIST THOUGHT IN IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE Narratives of British Socialism Stephen Ingle Department of Politics University of Stirling © Stephen Ingle 2002 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-38915-5 ISBN 978-0-230-28764-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230287648 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ingle,Stephen. Narratives of British socialism / Stephen Ingle. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.English literature – 19th century – History and criticism.2.Socialism in literature.3.English literature – 20th century – History and criticism. 4.Authors,English – Political and social views.5.Socialism and literature – Great Britain.6.Socialism – Great Britain.7.Narration (Rhetoric) I.Title. PR468.S63 I57 2002 820.9(cid:2)358–dc21 2002025802 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 For my family This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 Narrative and Politics 1 2 ‘The Terrible Stone Face’ 17 3 Power to the People? 39 4 Narrative and the Sword 63 5 Narrative and the Law 85 6 The New Jerusalem 107 7 The Power of Narrative 130 Postscript: The Implosion of Values 150 Notes 170 Bibliography 186 Index 192 vii Acknowledgements I should like first of all to thank the publishers for being so patient with this book. For a variety of reasons it took much longer to complete than had been anticipated. One of the principal reasons was my moving to the University of Stirling and though this proved a disadvantage in respect of completion it has turned out to be a bonus in terms of the exchanges I was able to have with colleagues about various sections of the book. In particular I should like to thank Stanley Kleinberg and Andrea Baumeister for reading and commenting on certain sections. I was also greatly helped in a number of very practical ways by Margaret Dickson and Joyce Burn in the departmental office at Stirling and I should like to take the opportunity to thank them. I would like to thank my good friend John Stewart, whose help with final proof-reading was most welcome. Finally I have to thank my wife Margaret who read and reread various drafts for typographical errors over a long period of time. She showed a patience that never stretched quite as far as enthusiasm. Unfortunately I can blame none of these for any shortcomings that this book might have but I doubt I could have managed the thing without them. Stirling STEPHENINGLE viii 1 Narrative and Politics Human speech is like a cracked copper cauldron on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we would really like is to win the compassion of the stars. (Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, part 2, ch. 12) Shelley may have been thinking wishfully when he declared poets to be the unacknowledged legislators of the world, Solzhenitsyn exaggerating when he identified writers as the official opposition in despotic states, but both took for granted the importance to politics of narrative in the form of imaginative literature. Why is it, then, that narrative forms – novels, drama, poetry, film – play so little part in the formal study of politics?1 True, there is a growing body of scholars working in the area where politics and imaginative literature overlap but few institutions of higher education include this area within their teaching programme. Students of literature, on the other hand, usually take into considera- tion the political context within which writers work and also, when rel- evant, the ideological disposition of those writers. Students of politics, however, particularly in the English-speaking countries, have on the whole felt little impulsion to explore the world of narrative to enrich their understanding of politics. Yet there are at least two areas where a prima facie case could be advanced for such an exploration, namely the manner in which writers might enrich the knowledge and understand- ing of political issues through their function as mass communicators, and the light they might shed through their literary analysis upon the nature of ideologies. To put it simply, imaginative writers should prove of interest to the student of politics both as political commentators and as political thinkers. Since this seems to be no more than common 1