Austerity Britain - David Kynaston

David Kynaston – Austerity Britain, 1945-51 (2009)
History – 640 pages – my copy (paperback) a present from the true gentleman, Mr Mooney, Xmas 2009
- 4 nods

‘A marvel’, notes the Sunday Telegraph; ‘Exemplary’, says the Mail of Sunday; whilst the Guardian has no bones about hailing it as ‘a classic’. All hail the historian David Kynaston indeed! Austerity Britain is the culmination of tremendous devotion and a great deal of research – two books sandwiched together – to create this mammoth read for the delight of any layman and student interest in post-war politics.

Why all the praise? Quite simply, it leaves no stone un-turned. The period 1945-51 is well noted for being the first majority Labour government: the time of Attlee and of Bevin; of the rise of the NHS and of Keynes; of fiscal tightening and the rebirth of modern Britain. Kynaston notes of all of this, but also so much more: housing gripes, the rise of multi-media, writers and scoundrels, sport and communism.

Kynaston’s range of sources is simply breathtaking, earning many compliments from the Book Worm. However, this praise is also its chief failing. Kynaston commits to all and sundry, leaving the reader to trawl through page after page of housing policy, both unrelenting and never ending.

Whilst the second notable flaw of Austerity Britain is its lack of analysis. Kynaston is great at throwing quote after quote and reference after reference upon the reader, a seeming orgy of the statistic. Yet what of the rolling up the sleeves, of adding his own comment, of perhaps, staking his flag upon the ground. Of course, Mr Kynaston could be saving such energy for later books – he has been commissioned a whole series to conclude at the accession of Thatcher in 1979 – however, after surmounting over six hundred pages, the reader feels a little cheated at having to continue onwards to Family Britain, a cliff-hanger for our eyes.

The Worm highly recommends this book to all who want to know what it was actually like in this changing period. Britain had won the war, yet it had a battle in order to win the peace. A battle that rages to today. The Worm will continue on with Kynaston’s series, a sequence for all serious history buffs and fans alike. Hail Mr Kynaston, indeed – but the prince has yet to show himself a true king.

Green Hopes - Alan Lipietz

Alan Lipietz – Green Hopes (1993)
Politics – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) bought for 50p from Plymouth Library, late 2009
- 3 nods

The subtitle of Green Hopes – The Future of Political Ecology – interests the reader of 2010 primarily due to the book’s age. Written in 1993, detailing the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the reader of 2010 can look back on the past two decades to see if Lipietz’s predictions have come true. The early 1990s was a different world in so many ways: before Blair, before 9/11, before the spin and the scandal. Yet one thing remains true, the Greens in politics remain a small, yet committed group, predicting their eventual flowering.

Translated from French, Lipietz’s book is one for all European Greens. It notes the then high point of Green feeling, before its dip later in the 1990s, calling itself a ‘New Political Force’. So much of the print resounds today: not enough people listen to the Green viewpoint, too few people worrying about the planet’s future. For the failure of the Rio Conference, we have the modern Copenhagen setting; for the fears of the Maastricht treaty, today we have the Lisbon agreement.

Lipeitz constantly refers to the old Left – the Reds – in an attempt to reconcile those disillusioned into the new Green movement. Political Ecology, he states, is the future of the Left, as are its values: Solidarity, Autonomy, Ecological Responsibility and Democracy. The writer forever drums in the message that ‘the environment is other people!’ (p.8), and although much is inspirational, there is also much within these pages that is stilted, some of its comparisons and references grown old and grey with age.

The Green reader of today will find much of the reading tough going – so much failure and unfulfilled hope. But the Green marches, or perhaps, struggles onwards – waiting for the day when the march will have its accompanying trumpets and fanfare. As Lipietz concludes himself: ‘Political ecology – the modesty of reason, the ambition of will’ (p.151).