I'm reading a book titled
1997: The Future that Never Happened. It was written by Richard Power Sayeed and published in 2017, just in time for the 20th anniversary of Tony Blair's election.
Each chapter of the book deals with a major event that happened in the UK during the year 1997 (at least in part), but the basic focus throughout is on New Labour and how it was implicated in all the year's events. They range widely in nature, from the Stephen Lawrence inquiry to Britpop to Princess Diana's death to the Spice Girls.
I lived through these events as a sentient being, but I wasn't well-informed at the time and, more to the point, I'm from the USA, where international news is only visible in the glare of a bombing campaign. So given my low awareness of them, I've really been enjoying the author's explication of these events and how they played out.
As far as his argument, there is a main thesis that he hammers home repeatedly in each chapter, which is essentially this:
- The year 1997 saw various egalitarian or progressive movements (anti-racism, feminism, anti-monarchism) incorporated into the mainstream of British culture by elite actors -- quintessentially Tony Blair and the top echelon of New Labour -- who served their own interests in doing.
- This, in turn, opened up a broader audience for these movements' protest messages but, at the same time, it watered down the radical nature of their critiques to the point that they no longer insisted on transforming society.
It's hard to argue with that, IMHO, but at times he assigns too much power to nebulous entities like "the culture," which appears to act on its own initiative to defang movements of social protest. And although his need to reiterate the thesis gets overly didactic at times, it's a very well-written book overall. His insights are basically right, I think, and they do illuminate the era.
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