UK and Britain in crisis from the 1970s to the present day

We currently live in a period often described, since 2022, as one of ‘permacrisis’. The last few years have certainly seen aspects of the ‘present crisis’ become more intensive, extensive and interlocked. This has been reflected in the experiences and often divisive debates and conflicts around Brexit, the Coronavirus pandemic, the poor state of the economy and people’s wellbeing, worsening inequality, very threatening climate change, nationalism and the future state of the United Kingdom.

This crisis, furthermore, shows no sign of easing or ending. The country is widely declared to be ‘broken’ and in need of urgent repair or transformation. But the two main political parties arguably are not in a fit state to accomplish either of these two things. 

This talk will focus on two books by Neville Kirk, A Nation in Crisis: Division Conflict and Capitalism in the United Kingdom (Bloomsbury, October 2023) and British Society and Its Three Crises: From 1970s Globalisation to the Financial Crash of 2007-8 and the Onset of Brexit in 2016 (Liverpool University Press, March 2024). His new book adopts a longer-term historical perspective than the previous one in relation to crisis and crises in Britain, demonstrating that Britain’s history from the 1970s onwards has, albeit with a relatively stable and largely prosperous twenty-year period from1987 to 2007, been crisis-ridden. 

In adopting this historical approach to the study of crisis, the book avoids the exaggerated ‘presentism’ and lack of historical awareness characteristic of many ‘instant’, media-based and some sociological accounts. It argues that a historical approach can help us to deepen and widen our knowledge and understanding of past and present crises, their links, points of comparison and relevant aspects of continuity and change over time.

Neville Kirk, Emeritus Professor of Labour and Social History at MMU, now lives in Golspie. He has taught and researched in the UK, North America and Australia. and published extensively in the fields of modern British, comparative and transnational history. He is editor of Liverpool University Press's series, Studies in Labour History

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