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Z0375723

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘New Political History’ Z0375723

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.

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Z0375723 ‘New Political History’

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.

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‘New Political History’ Z0375723

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.

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Z0375723 ‘New Political History’

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.

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