Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part One Respect in context
- Part Two Respectful young people and children
- Part Three Respectful communities and families
- Part Four Respectful city living
- Part Five Respect, identities and values
- Index
one - Respect and the politics of behaviour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part One Respect in context
- Part Two Respectful young people and children
- Part Three Respectful communities and families
- Part Four Respectful city living
- Part Five Respect, identities and values
- Index
Summary
Who can be against ‘respect’? And who can be in favour of ‘anti-social behaviour’? These twin, Janus-faced mantras have guided many government initiatives and new laws since New Labour came to power in 1997. Their effects (or lack of them) are the subject of subsequent chapters in this book. This chapter seeks to set out the ideology behind the various initiatives described, and asks whether slogans with ill-defined targets are sufficient to change public behaviour.
The importance of the notion of community is that it defines the relationship not only between ourselves as individuals but between people and the society in which they live, one that is based on responsibilities as well as rights, on obligations as well as entitlements. Self respect is in part derived from respect for others. (Tony Blair, speaking at Wellingborough, 19 February 1993)
This speech of Tony Blair’s, made when he was shadow Home Secretary, and in the wake of the James Bulger murder, contains several themes which he had spoken of before, and was to do many times subsequently. The individual in relation to society and community; rights as well as responsibilities; and respect for others as well as for oneself – all were to become drivers of policy under the New Labour government.
Where did these ideas derive from? They were not particularly visible in post-war Labour thinking, based on equality and the beneficent effects of the welfare state, as well as ‘liberal’ attitudes to individual rights. As John Rentoul has written:
Blair's great triumph as shadow Home Secretary was to move the debate from traditionally ‘liberal’ themes to a ‘tough’ message on crime and the family based on the concept of duty…. In return for society fulfilling its side of the moral bargain by giving people a better life, people had responsibility to give something back to the community and obey its rules. And because mutual obligations originate in family responsibilities, the family must be strengthened. (Rentoul, 2001: 199–200)
This philosophy began with Tony Blair's personal Christian faith, acquired while a student at Oxford, and his simultaneous adoption of politics in the form of Christian socialism. As he said in 1995: ‘My Christianity and my politics came together at the same time’ (Rentoul, 2001: 35).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Securing RespectBehavioural Expectations and Anti-social Behaviour in the UK, pp. 23 - 40Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2009