Who wants to read about poverty or the inner city any more?
However, the awkward fact is that no one can argue that the troubles have gone away. Indeed, it could be said that the troubles are so large and so evident that there is no need for professional polemics or expensive research projects
Piecemeal social engineering did not work in the way it was expected to, and now probably never will: ‘Time is not on the side of the humane forces in this country. They will have to learn and think and organise if the drift towards increasingly brutal social division and disorder is to be arrested.’ Looking back you can only castigates the Labour government of the 1970s for adopting the self-interested politics of the marketplace.
Their behaviour and their welface culture has had the unintended consequence of making the poor, poorer.
University teachers should do what they are best at doing. They should use their independence, impartiality and intellectual freedom to expose the mystifications and half-truths of politics and the media.
No longer will the engaging honesty of the leftist intelligentsia expose the forces of darkness that help to keep the poor poor. The idea that the problems of modern society could be solved by the combined brainpower of academia’ is quite rightly scorned. In many ways - this was a leftist notion.
Equally academics should not be at the behest of Government who reduce them to servants of what it believes are Governments needs,
The proper role of an engaged intelligentsia will be by the rigour and quality of their scholarship.
Poverty, then, is not only still with us but is by all accounts growing. The inner city remains a time-bomb. There are few signs that economic regeneration will be possible in many of the cities in question, or that working-class racism will abate. The ameliorist tradition, that is the desire to solve social problems by reforming individuals.
with its supporting welfare state intelligentsia, is in disarray, or discredited as ineffectual.
However, the awkward fact is that no one can argue that the troubles have gone away. Indeed, it could be said that the troubles are so large and so evident that there is no need for professional polemics or expensive research projects
Piecemeal social engineering did not work in the way it was expected to, and now probably never will: ‘Time is not on the side of the humane forces in this country. They will have to learn and think and organise if the drift towards increasingly brutal social division and disorder is to be arrested.’ Looking back you can only castigates the Labour government of the 1970s for adopting the self-interested politics of the marketplace.
Their behaviour and their welface culture has had the unintended consequence of making the poor, poorer.
University teachers should do what they are best at doing. They should use their independence, impartiality and intellectual freedom to expose the mystifications and half-truths of politics and the media.
No longer will the engaging honesty of the leftist intelligentsia expose the forces of darkness that help to keep the poor poor. The idea that the problems of modern society could be solved by the combined brainpower of academia’ is quite rightly scorned. In many ways - this was a leftist notion.
Equally academics should not be at the behest of Government who reduce them to servants of what it believes are Governments needs,
The proper role of an engaged intelligentsia will be by the rigour and quality of their scholarship.
Poverty, then, is not only still with us but is by all accounts growing. The inner city remains a time-bomb. There are few signs that economic regeneration will be possible in many of the cities in question, or that working-class racism will abate. The ameliorist tradition, that is the desire to solve social problems by reforming individuals.
with its supporting welfare state intelligentsia, is in disarray, or discredited as ineffectual.
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