There is a close  relationship between social values, political traditions and policy paradigms in post-war Britain. Four values – freedom, order, equality and hierarchy serve as compass points. These are not the only possible goals of public policy – others are happiness or well-being, efficiency, cohesion, justice and solidarity – but they suffice to locate the three traditions that dominated British politics during the twentieth century: liberalism, conservatism and socialism. For the sake of completeness, the map also shows where anarchist and totalitarian ideologies fit into the scheme of things. A policy paradigm, it should be noted, is not a policy programme, but a set principles and guidelines for generating programmes. Since the Second World War, two such broad approaches have shaped the policies of British governments – Keynesian social democracy and neo-liberalism – the former prevailing during the ‘golden age’ of post-war capitalism from 1945 to1975, the latter gaining ascendancy thereafter.

The map is, of course, historically and culturally specific. For other countries in the same period or for Britain at different periods, a different map would be needed. In the US, for example, socialism never made much headway, while in continental Europe, liberalism was relatively weak, fascism still cast a long shadow and Christian Democracy or, in France, Gaullism mobilised the centre-right. Similarly, in nineteenth-century Britain the religious divisions that emerged from the Reformation and the Civil War were still a potent political force. Today, I shall argue, the whole political spectrum has shifted so far to the right that the map is almost obsolete.


Social values

For every social value, four questions arise: What does it mean? Why does it matter? How much does it matter? And how is it to be realised? The last of these questions is considered later. For the moment, I want to focus on the first three. How are the concepts of equality and freedom understood in rival traditions? How are these ideals defended or criticised? How do they relate to other values? And which takes precedence when they come into conflict?

Conservatives have traditionally been hostile to egalitarianism. They may concede that we are all equal in the eyes of God, but in this world, they insist, social hierarchy is inevitable: some people just are more able, intelligent, forceful or wiser than others. Governments should avoid grandiose schemes for social levelling and human emancipation and concentrate on the more mundane, but essential task of protecting public order. Liberals and socialists both reject these views, but disagree about what equality entails. The liberal ideal is a society in which all members have equal moral standing (“each counts for one and none for more than one”) and everyone is assured the same basic liberties and opportunities, whereas socialists argue that this is not enough, for wide and persistent inequalities in the distribution of resources and power – notably, by class, gender and race – are both unjust and divisive, making it impossible to build a self-governing democracy in which people’s shared identity as citizens tempers the sectional interests that divide them.

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