New Labour in Government

A unique undergraduate course dissecting the Blair years of British politics is evolving into a Masters module spanning the entire New Labour era at Queen Mary, University of London. Starting in January 2012, the New Labour in Government module, part of the Masters in Modern and Contemporary British History, will examine the UK political landscape from the landslide victory at the polls in 1997 to the Party’s election defeat in 2010. Students will have the rare opportunity to cross-question major Whitehall and parliamentary figures from the time in their seminars, in addition to studying diaries, cabinet correspondence and other primary sources.

Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling; Labour politician and Life Peer, Lord Adonis and Alan Johnson, former Home Secretary are among those to proffer first-hand accounts of New Labour’s historic three terms in power. Guest speakers and convenors of the ‘ultra-contemporary’ history course, Dr Jon Davis and John Rentoul, Blair biographer and political commentator in the Independent-on-Sunday, will cover critical topics including UK Foreign policy from Kosovo to Afghanistan and Iraq; Gordon Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister and economic policy under New Labour. Dr Davis described having former Cabinet Ministers such as Alistair Darling at the classes as “hugely beneficial to students as they develop their capacity to understand both the theory and the practicality of contemporary British governance”.

The New Labour in Government MA started life as a specialist ‘Blair Government’ module for third-year history undergraduates. First run in 2008, the module provided students with a ‘first-draft-of-history’ and bridged the gap between rigorous scholarship and journalism.Each cohort had access to the biggest political big-hitters from the years 1997 to 2007 including Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls and Tony Blair himself.

Teaching the module, says Dr Davis, was “an absolute joy, from the ultra-contemporary source material to teaching with John Rentoul”. Enticing most of the leading figures from New Labour and the Senior Civil Service down the Mile End Road was, he adds, “topped off with record-breaking numbers of independently corroborated first-class results from the wonderful students”.

Davis and Rentoul are currently writing the book of the course, The Blair-Brown Coalition for Oxford University Press.

The Blair Government

The Blair Government' third-year undergraduate Special Subject in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London, began in September 2007. It was co-taught by Dr Jon Davis and John Rentoul of The Independent on Sunday. The study of political and governmental history is becoming ever more contemporary. The reduction of the 30-year-rule to a 20-year-one regarding declassified official documents; the Freedom of Information Act is releasing material years ahead of schedule; the internet age has made instantly available vast amounts of information; while Alastair Campbell’s Diaries were published within a fortnight of Tony Blair’s retirement which in turn loosened the lips of heretofore secretive civil servants.

Each week, primary material ranging from the general election manifestoes through to the public service agreements, speeches such as the 1999 Chicago speech and the unprecedented Hutton, Butler and Chilcot inquiries was analysed and significant figures from the era acted as witnesses: Professor Sir Michael Barber, David Blunkett, Alastair Campbell, Lord Falconer, Professor Peter Hennessy, William Keegan, Baroness Jay, Baroness Morgan, Sir Richard Mottram, Geoff Mulgan, Sir David Omand, Jonathan Powell, Peter Riddell, Sir Peter Ricketts, Sir Kevin Tebbit and Lord Wilson. Many of the special guests were filmed using equipment provided by Tribal Consulting by MEG Assistants (sponsored by HP).

There was also a dissertation component of the course which has seen high-level research from the way the Attorney General’s advice over Iraq gradually made its way into the public domain to the untold story of the Alastair Campbell-Lord Cranborne House of Lords’ deal; and the military’s involvement in the major foot and mouth crisis to the definitive story of the Home Office split in 2007.

To mark the begining of the course John Rentoul gave a lecture to the Mile End Group entitled 'Tony in 2025: Blair as History'. Details of the lecture can be found here