to impress the electorate with its decisive implementation of a radical
programme. Policies (such the Criminal Justice Act 1994) were
pushed through against, or without the advice of, the professional
groups most concerned.
Traditional British emphasis on the autonomy of local government
was, as we have seen, also considerably undermined by a new stricter
insistence on central financial control, the compulsory putting out to
tender of many local services, taking schools out of local government
control and other measures.
Of course a more hostile interpretation of these same develop-
ments is that the Conservative Party became more open in its advo-
cacy of a straight capitalist system with its overriding of the interests
of ordinary people in the interests of the capitalist ‘bourgeoisie’.
Miliband (1984) describes this as a slide from ‘capitalist democracy’
toward ‘capitalist authoritarianism’. The trappings of democratic
institutions can be combined with limitations which make them
ineffective:trade unions might be allowed in such a regime providing they do not
organise strikes. Parties might operate providing they were not
subversive. Political activity might be possible, providing permission had
been obtained for it. Newspapers would be allowed providing they did
not foment ‘class hatred’ or ‘spread disaffection’.... There would be
censorship, but on a limited basis; on the other hand, self-censorship
would be unlimited.
(Miliband, 1984: 154)Such developments do not, however, seem typical of trends in liberal
democracies generally. Despite a widespread tendency towards the
adoption of Thatcherite economic policies such as privatisation and
monetarism, the predominant political style in Western Europe
remains one of ‘concertation’ (see Chapter 4, p. 97) as epitomised in
the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty (1991) (see Chapter 6, p.
162).
In the 1990s and early twenty-first century this neo-liberal
approach was challenged by what became known as the third way by
centre or left-of-centre politicians such as Tony Blair in the UK, Bill
Clinton in the USA and Gerhard Schröder of Germany. Such
politicians critiqued the role of the state and how power is shared. For188 DEMOCRACY