ABSTRACT
During a lecture broadcast by the BBC in November 1945, the historian A.J.P. Taylor offered an interesting, and at the time entirely original, analysis of the ideological panorama of post-war Europe (in which, incidentally, he did not include Great Britain). 2 But the most novel feature was not Taylor's description of the change then taking place in political parties of Marxist, socialist or communist inspiration, which he viewed as offering a broad range of catch-all ideological proposals:
They want a strong government which will run economic life; but they want also to be able to grumble against it. They want the state to do things for the good of individual human beings; they do not want individuals to have to do things for the good of the State. In other words, they want socialism, but they also want the Rights of Man.
