History, heritage and tradition in contemporary British politics: past politics and present histories

History, heritage and tradition in contemporary British politics explores the use of the past in modern British politics. It examines party political perspectives on British history and the historical process and also looks at the ways in which memory is instituted within the parties in practice, through archives, written histories and commemorations. It focuses in particular on a number of explicit negotiations over historical narratives: the creation of the National Curriculum for History, Conservative attempts to re-assess their historical role in 1997, the assertion of a ‘lost’ social democratic tradition by the SDP and New Labour and the collapse of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s narrative memory in 1988-91. This book shows how history, heritage and tradition are used to present parliamentary politics as intrinsically ‘historic’ and suggests that the disappearance of active political pasts leaves contemporary politicians unable to speak of radically different futures.