To what extent do the Conservatives and Labour parties represent distinct ideologies?

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Politics Assignment                                                                      0334716

HEFP in Law                                                                         28/03/2004

2.        To what extent do the Conservatives and Labour parties represent distinct ideologies?

The term ‘Ideology’ was first used in 1800s; a French writer Antoine Destutte de Tracy described it as the basis of a new and better way of conducting politics. Since then it has been used in several ways, for example, Eagleton in 1991, provided sixteen separate definitions of the term and suggested that ‘Ideology’ has a whole range of useful meanings, some of which are not compatible with each other, and it may be impossible to compress this wealth of meaning into a single comprehensive definition. However, over the years, a ‘descriptive’ meaning of ideology was come up and commonly used by political scientists, that is, ‘An Ideology is a reasonably coherent structure of thought shared by a group of people. It is a means of explaining how society works and of explaining how it ought to work’. Dobson (1992) argued that an Ideology defined in this way has four main elements. First, a view of human nature; second, an idea about how history has developed and why; third, a concept of the relative importance of the individual and the group; and finally, a view of the role of the state.

Nowadays, Ideologies are widely used by people to understand the society, different Ideologies can produce quite different version of the political world. In British politics, three key Ideologies – Liberalism, Conservatism and Socialism, are playing the major role in influencing the two main political parties. Historically, the Conservative Party can be seen as the Britain’s mainstream Conservative party, while the Labour Party is the mainstream Socialist party. Both parties have a rather different view over human nature, history, individuals and the state in terms of their different Ideology.

Conservatives are likely to be the pessimists; they see people as being flawed and tend to have few illusions or idealistic hopes about people. Whilst to Socialists, people are social beings who thrive best in a close relationship with one another. They believe that people are largely the product of their upbringing and their environment rather than inherently flawed.

Edmund Burke (1729-97) was the first one who set out the Conservative view of the past, and many Conservative ideas were come from him. He opposed rapid change and any kind of abstract idea or blueprint, arguing in support of tradition and gradual reform. For Conservatives the family and the nation are the key units. It is through the family that values can be passed from one generation to the next, and the nation is an expression of collective purpose and the symbols of nationhood help to weld people together. In addition, Conservatives emphasises the importance of rule of law, duty and hierarchy, as the flaws in human nature alone require a controlling structure.

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On the other hand, Socialists stress on the changing relationship between different classes in society, claiming that by examining the past, they are able to understand how capitalism has been able to survive and to suggest ways in which a more just and fairer society, based on rational principle, can be established. Whereas Conservatives emphasises the importance of the family and the nation as a basic unit, the key unit in Socialism is the class. At the heart of Socialism is the belief that people should join together and work collectively. Moreover, Socialists aim to transform society, for example, to ...

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