How Blair Killed the Co-Ops: Reclaiming Social Enterprise from its Neoliberal Turn

The growth of social enterprise and third sector activity has been researched extensively, but many academic contributions lack practical experience and fail to consider earlier policy literature. During New Labour's 1998-2002 period, significant policy changes repositioned social enterprise to compete with the private sector for public service contracts, neglecting local economic and social democracy.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 248 pages
\n Publication date: 09 November 2021
\n Publisher: Manchester University Press
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Over the past two decades, social enterprise and third sector activity have grown into a rich field of academic study and discourse, with many attributing their origins to Blair, New Labour, and Giddens' Third Way. However, many academic contributions lack firsthand experience in policy implementation and fail to tap into the wealth of grey, legacy, and public policy literature from earlier periods that offer alternative interpretations. Since most of these works make limited references to developments in the 1970s and 1980s, their narrow focus on New Labour from 1997 onwards not only disregards real antecedents but also miscasts the role of social enterprise.

During a pivotal political period from 1998 to 2002, Blair's New Labour Governments undertook a significant conceptual shift for social enterprise, co-operative, and third sector activity. Many structures, formed as community responses to massive deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s, were repositioned to compete against the private sector for contracts to deliver low-cost public services. Based on previously unseen archival materials and interviews with key players between 1998 and 2002, when major social enterprise and third sector policy changes occurred, Huckfield presents an alternative narrative of social enterprise in the UK. This narrative reveals how local communities have been denied the restoration of local economic and social democracy.

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Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781526149732\n \n