British political culture and the idea of 'public opinion', 1867-1914 / / James Thompson [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910463114703321
• Autore: Thompson James <1973->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2013
• ISBN: 1-107-27250-5; 1-139-88935-4; 1-107-27189-4; 1-107-27847-3; 1-107-27398-6; 1-107-27522-9; 1-139-20861-6
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (viii, 293 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Disciplina: 306.20941/09034
• Soggetti: Political culture - Great Britain - History; Public opinion - Great Britain - History; Press - Great Britain - History; Great Britain Politics and government
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Acknowledgements -- Introduction: rethinking public opinion in late nineteenth-century Britain -- 1. An open demos? The public and the question of membership -- 2. The ghost in the machine: locating public opinion -- 3. The mind of the nation? Reason and the public -- 4. Political economy and the idea of 'public opinion' -- 5. Representing labour: the labour movement, politics and the public -- 6. Conclusion: 'public opinion' and political culture in Britain, 1870-1914.
• Sommario/riassunto: Newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and books all reflect the ubiquity of 'public opinion' in political discourse in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Through close attention to debates across the political spectrum, James Thompson charts the ways in which Britons sought to locate 'public opinion' in an era prior to polling. He shows that 'public opinion' was the principal term through which the ; link between the social and the political was interrogated, charted and contested and charts how the widespread conviction that the public was growing in power raised significant issues about the kind of polity emerging in Britain. He also examines how the early Labour party negotiated the language of 'public opinion' and sought to articulate Labour interests in relation to those of the public. In so doing he sheds important new light on the character of Britain's liberal political culture and on Labour's place in and relationship to that culture.