Politics and Government

Abstract

This chapter analyses the evolution of Britain's political institutions from 1970–1990. The first section deals with the executive (monarchy, cabinet, prime minister); the second on the two houses of parliament. The third section discusses the administrative structure: civil service, devolution, regional and local government. This prompts, in the fourth section, a discussion of the tension between enforcement through the judicial and penal system on the one hand, and libertarian attitudes and structures on the other; the judicial system, police, and prisons then come into view. The fifth and sixth sections consider in detail the Conservative and Labour parties. The final section focuses on one of the most important yet intangible late twentieth-century changes in British politics: the transformed interaction between privacy and publicity.