Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- List of tables and figures
- List of acronyms
- one Introduction
- two Public expenditure and the public/private mix
- three New Labour’s health policy: the new healthcare state
- four The personal social services and community care
- five Education, education, education
- six Housing policy under New Labour
- seven New Labour and social security
- eight New Labour and employment, training and employee relations
- nine The new politics of law and order: Labour, crime and justice
- ten Citizenship
- eleven Accountability
- twelve Bridging the Atlantic: the Democratic (Party) origins of Welfare to Work
- thirteen Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
nine - The new politics of law and order: Labour, crime and justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- List of tables and figures
- List of acronyms
- one Introduction
- two Public expenditure and the public/private mix
- three New Labour’s health policy: the new healthcare state
- four The personal social services and community care
- five Education, education, education
- six Housing policy under New Labour
- seven New Labour and social security
- eight New Labour and employment, training and employee relations
- nine The new politics of law and order: Labour, crime and justice
- ten Citizenship
- eleven Accountability
- twelve Bridging the Atlantic: the Democratic (Party) origins of Welfare to Work
- thirteen Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I know I sometimes go into prisons feeling tough but I always come away feeling that 90% of the people there are not evil but somehow inadequate. The roots of crime are still social deprivation, broken homes and all the rest. (James Callaghan, Labour Home Secretary, 1970)
Paul: Number 28's been burgled. I bet it's that gang of yobbos again.
Helen: Even if they catch them they get off scot-free.
Voiceover: Already crime has doubled under the Tories.
Paul: If they get back next time there’d be more criminals getting off.
(Labour Party political broadcast, January 1997)
Introduction
To an extent ‘law and order’ policy has presented New Labour with one of its biggest challenges. Labour may have had to fight extremely hard to establish itself as a Party seen as capable of managing the economy, or as being held to be reasonably sound on defence, but particular difficulties applied when it came to policies on crime, policing and criminal justice. After all, it has had to compete with the Conservatives’ apparently natural status as the ‘Party of law and order’. Traditionally, the Conservative Party has been able to point to its ‘tough not tender’ approach to law and order as evidence that it, not Labour, is to be trusted with waging a war on crime. Conservative policies in the years running up to the 1997 General Election were notably more ‘tough’ in the accepted sense than at any time in the post-war period. At the very least, this presented New Labour with an uphill task.
Seen in this light it is difficult to deny that Labour has, by some standards, been remarkably successful. Labour managed to enter the General Election having at least neutralised the Conservatives’ identity as the natural Party of law and order. As the key elements of its crime policy began to unfold in the early years of office, it could claim not only to have gained the backing of senior police officers and senior prison managers (‘Editorial’, Prison Service Journal, May 1998) but also to have won over some of its former critics on the Left (see below). This was no mean achievement. On the way, spearheaded in opposition first by Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair and then by Jack Straw, the Party had decided to break from tradition and throw down new gauntlets.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- New Labour, New Welfare State?The 'Third Way' in British Social Policy, pp. 191 - 212Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 1999