These are ideas which have not yet matured into coherent essays but are turning over in my mind for long enough that they will probably receive a full treatment eventually
I've recently finished 8000 words on Curzon myself, published an extract on here a few weeks ago. Endlessly fascinating chap - I look forward to seeing what you've written.
Wouldn't the main reason for Blairs type shadowing the Home Sec being a springboard not a graveyard be attributed to the fact that the time he filled that role was the exact time that he and Labour were pivoting back to being in line with public opinion on law and order after a period of being seen as the soft on crime party? So it perfectly matched not just what was needed in that portfolio but reinforced the image of Blair as a moderniser helping drag his party back to sanity?
Yes, I think that’s probably an important element, and of course Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” line in 1993 was a communications masterstroke.
Yep, threw a bone to the civil libertarians in the Labour Party while also making it clear to the Tough on Crime crowd that he heard their concerns that Labour was focused too much on the rights of criminals and not those of victims, plus, and maybe I am remembering wrong here, but didn’t that awful incident with the children killing that kid on the train tracks happen while was in the role also, with Blair using it to boost his profile (An unfair way of wording it I guess, but I think you know what I mean)
Yes, poor James Bulger was killed in February 1993. There was one of society’s recurring panics about “children that kill”, and Child’s Play 3 had been released only a couple of years before. It may not be wholly coincidental that na 1993 edition of Real-Life Crimes magazine had featured Mary Bell.
I've recently finished 8000 words on Curzon myself, published an extract on here a few weeks ago. Endlessly fascinating chap - I look forward to seeing what you've written.
Wouldn't the main reason for Blairs type shadowing the Home Sec being a springboard not a graveyard be attributed to the fact that the time he filled that role was the exact time that he and Labour were pivoting back to being in line with public opinion on law and order after a period of being seen as the soft on crime party? So it perfectly matched not just what was needed in that portfolio but reinforced the image of Blair as a moderniser helping drag his party back to sanity?
Yes, I think that’s probably an important element, and of course Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” line in 1993 was a communications masterstroke.
Yep, threw a bone to the civil libertarians in the Labour Party while also making it clear to the Tough on Crime crowd that he heard their concerns that Labour was focused too much on the rights of criminals and not those of victims, plus, and maybe I am remembering wrong here, but didn’t that awful incident with the children killing that kid on the train tracks happen while was in the role also, with Blair using it to boost his profile (An unfair way of wording it I guess, but I think you know what I mean)
Yes, poor James Bulger was killed in February 1993. There was one of society’s recurring panics about “children that kill”, and Child’s Play 3 had been released only a couple of years before. It may not be wholly coincidental that na 1993 edition of Real-Life Crimes magazine had featured Mary Bell.