Dr Ben Jackson

Dr Ben Jackson
Associate Professor of Modern History
University College
01865 (2)76653
benjamin.jackson@univ.ox.ac.uk

I am a historian of modern Britain, with particular interests in political thought, labour history, and the history of social and economic policy. I have written about the political thought of the British left, the conceptual history of equality and social justice, corporatism and its critics, and Anglo-American political rhetoric. My current research focuses on the history of neo-liberalism, especially the international development of neo-liberal political and economic ideas between the 1930s and the 1960s. I am also working on the reception of these ideas in British politics in the 1960s and 1970s, on the history of Thatcherism, and on the history and politics of Scottish nationalism.

I teach undergraduate papers in modern British history and the history of political thought. I supervise Masters and DPhil students working on topics in modern British political history, twentieth-century British social and economic policy, and the history of modern political and economic thought. I am happy to hear from prospective research students interested in working in these fields.

I am a convener of the History of Political Thought Seminar and of the Modern British History Seminar. I am the Co-Editor of Political Quarterly and I serve on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of British Studies; Renewal; and Twentieth Century British History.

 

Research Interests

  • The rise of the neo-liberal right and Thatcherism
  • The political thought of British liberalism and socialism
  • The history and politics of Scottish nationalism
  • The history and politics of the Labour Party
  • Twentieth century British social and economic policy

My academia.edu page

Political Quarterly

See page on University College website

In the Media

Great Thinkers: Beatrice Webb FBA

In 1931, the British Academy elected its first female fellow, Beatrice Webb. A sociologist, economist and social reformer, she was one of the four founders of the London School of Economics. In this episode, Professor Jose Harris FBA and Dr Ben Jackson take a closer look at Webb’s extraordinary life and legacy.

17 June 2019

https://share.transistor.fm/e/149b71fa

Teaching

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding:

  • Modern British political history
  • Twentieth century British social and economic policy;
  • The history of modern political and economic thought

I currently teach:

Prelims

 FHS

History of the British Isles 1815-1924

History of the British Isles 1815-1924

History of the British Isles Since 1900

History of the British Isles Since 1900

Theories of the State

The Making and Unmaking of the United Kingdom

Approaches to History

Political Theory and Social Science, c. 1780-1920
  War and Reconstruction: Ideas, Politics and Social Change, 1939-45
  Disciplines of History

Publications

  • The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland

    July 2020
    |
    Book
    Scottish nationalism is a powerful movement in contemporary politics, yet the goal of Scottish independence emerged surprisingly recently into public debate. The origins of Scottish nationalism lie not in the medieval battles for Scottish statehood, the Acts of Union, the Scottish Enlightenment, or any of the other familiar historical milestones that regularly crop up in debates about Scottish identity. Rather, an influential separatist Scottish nationalism began to take shape only in the 1970s and achieved its present ideological maturity in the course of the 1980s and 1990s. The nationalism that emerged from this testing period of Scottish history was unusual in that it demanded independence not to defend a threatened ancestral culture but as the most effective way to promote the agenda of the left. This book provides the first detailed account of the political thought of Scottish nationalism. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished sources, it traces how the arguments for Scottish independence were crafted over some fifty years by intellectuals, politicians and activists and why these ideas had such a seismic impact on Scottish and British politics in the 2014 independence referendum.

  • Whose Liberalism?

    December 2019
    |
    Internet publication
    A review essay on Alexander Zevin, Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist. Available at http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/ben-jackson-whose-liberalism. <a href=""></a>

  • Free Markets and Feminism: The Neo-Liberal Defence of the Male Breadwinner Model in Britain, c. 1980-1997

    March 2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Women's History Review
    Although neo-liberalism is often seen as a set of ideas that prioritises the individual, in fact neo-liberals have always seen the traditional family as the critical social institution that is to be protected from the state and to be granted new freedoms by greater access to market opportunities. A male bread-winner model of economic life was therefore as central to the worldview of neo-liberalism as it was to post-war social democracy. How did the advocates of market liberalism on the British right conceptualise the shifts in gender norms that took place during the 1980s and 1990s? How far did they try to adapt their free market objectives to this new social reality and how far did they try to resist it? How did they react to the growing salience of feminist arguments and policies on the left of British politics, and in particular Labour’s growing enthusiasm for a social democratic politics that integrated some feminist insights? This article investigates these questions through an examination of the political thought of Britain’s market liberals. The picture that emerges is two-fold: in the first instance, a concerted, although unsuccessful, effort by the free market right to resist some of this social change, but secondly greater ideological success for neo-liberals with respect to the role that could legitimately be played by the state rather than the market in addressing the social challenges posed by shifting gender roles.

  • Richard Titmuss versus the IEA: The Transition from Idealism to Neo-Liberalism in British Social Policy

    February 2019
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris
    An influential strand of Jose Harris’s research has emphasised the importance of idealist political thought to the rise and fall of the British welfare state. Harris argues that the mid-twentieth century demise of political theory about social policy left the welfare state vulnerable because its defenders lacked a philosophical discourse with the depth of idealism. This chapter tests this argument by looking in more detail at a case study from the post-1945 discussion about the welfare state: the debate between the group of socialist social policy academics associated with Richard Titmuss and the neo-liberals at the Institute of Economic Affairs spear-headed by Arthur Seldon. The chapter demonstrates that while the defenders of the Beveridgean welfare state lacked theoretical firepower when confronted by a philosophical counterblast from the right, the major weakness of the left’s social policy analysis was in fact a failure to contest the neo-liberal appropriation of economic theory.

  • Citizen and Subject: Clement Attlee's Socialism

    October 2018
    |
    Journal article
    |
    History Workshop Journal
    A review essay on John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Clement Attlee
More