British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
‘The Strange Career of British Democracy’
Professor Peter Hennessy FBA, Baroness O’Neill
(President of the British Academy), and
Professor David Marquand FBA
On 2 March 2009, a group of leading academics, past and present politicians and civil servants, other policy makers and political journalists met at the British Academy for a round-table discussion of the state of British democracy in the current climate.
Edited record of discussion (pdf)
Article by Martin Kettle in the British Academy Review (pdf)
In a wide-ranging debate, the group discussed the pressures that currently hamper the democratic process. Participants analysed which political forces and trends will emerge in the aftermath of what was described as ‘both market failure and State failure’, and considered how politicians should try to repair the ‘moral economy’.
This first British Academy Forum had been inspired by the influential recent book, Britain since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy, by Professor David Marquand FBA, in which he has proposed a new means of describing British political debate and practice during the last ninety years. The meeting was chaired by Professor Peter Hennessy FBA.