A Desmond or a Douglas?
I had my British Politics and Government Since 1900 exam this week - it was supposed to be the good one that might drag the other 7 dog-awful ones up a bit. It was ok - but not sure about good enough frankly.
I answered these three questions, which I thought might provoke a bit of debate (I'm paraphrasing since I've lost the copy of the exam paper which I stole):
1. Could the "Progressive Alliance" before 1914 accomodate the sectional interests of the Labour Party and the Radicalism of the New Liberals? (My Answer: yeah but no but, probably not forever)
2. Is there evidence of Thatcherism before 1974? (My Answer: Sort of Heath tried but failed, but actually Enoch Powell in the 1950s, and Callaghan killed crap Keynesianism first)
3. Is the Labour Party after 1994 the political heir to the SDP? (My Answer: No way, dirty Lib Dem scum. And anyway, half the cabinet worked for Kinnock.)
These weren't really the best questions that could have come up for me - I was kind of hoping to be asked a comparative question between Thatcher and Blair, Something about Macmillan and the Economy, and Something about the extension of the Franchise in 1918. But if you could pick your questions I suppose they wouldn't really be exams would they?
Exams trundling along anyway. Only three more to go and I'm really getting that low 2.2/3rd feeling.
A Desmond or a Douglas?
I answered these three questions, which I thought might provoke a bit of debate (I'm paraphrasing since I've lost the copy of the exam paper which I stole):
1. Could the "Progressive Alliance" before 1914 accomodate the sectional interests of the Labour Party and the Radicalism of the New Liberals? (My Answer: yeah but no but, probably not forever)
2. Is there evidence of Thatcherism before 1974? (My Answer: Sort of Heath tried but failed, but actually Enoch Powell in the 1950s, and Callaghan killed crap Keynesianism first)
3. Is the Labour Party after 1994 the political heir to the SDP? (My Answer: No way, dirty Lib Dem scum. And anyway, half the cabinet worked for Kinnock.)
These weren't really the best questions that could have come up for me - I was kind of hoping to be asked a comparative question between Thatcher and Blair, Something about Macmillan and the Economy, and Something about the extension of the Franchise in 1918. But if you could pick your questions I suppose they wouldn't really be exams would they?
Exams trundling along anyway. Only three more to go and I'm really getting that low 2.2/3rd feeling.
A Desmond or a Douglas?
posted by Pickles @ 3:04 am
5 Comments:
At 10:11 am,
Anonymous said…
"2. Is there evidence of Thatcherism before 1974?"
Salisbury.
At 11:39 am,
Pickles said…
Exam title "British politics and government since 1900"
Much of his rule was pre-1900 and I'd thus have been struggling to build a case from 1900-1902. I think that's putting myself under unecessary constraints
At 8:21 pm,
Anonymous said…
2:1 mate. Easy.
At 11:38 pm,
Anonymous said…
I did a very similar SDP question in my history paper:
Answer: yes in terms of "tough and tender" policy (thanks Wikipedia the night before). No in personnel (Sainsbury Adnois, etc excempt). Yes as necessary to create the big election fuckups that allowed the party to become so shit as to allow Blair to create New Labour.
I am paraphrasing a bit..
At 1:04 am,
Pickles said…
Hmmm... see It must be in the wording of the question - I can't remember it exactly but I don't think I could have got away with using that stuff. However - the fact that I spent most of the essay talking about the "New Liberalism" and how they actually shared a common strand of heritage from that, and from Crosland's revisionism, and that there were therefore similarities but that's not the same as heritage since New Labour would have happened anyway in some form or another.
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