ABSTRACT
In any period of human history a culture and society are partly sustained by the tension between that which is thought to be of value, inherited from the past, and that which is the product of energetic, dynamic, and deliberate innovation. This book explores some of the characteristics of British culture in the 1980s in terms of this tension between inherited values and practices, and those which are created afresh, appropriate for the new times. The key words which we have chosen for this exploration are those of ‘heritage’ and of ‘enterprise’. And while we have no doubt that the agenda, pace, and direction of change in this decade have been largely set by the radical Right-Conservative and pro-capitalist-none the less the meanings of these terms, and of other key words of the decade: ‘choice’, ‘freedom’, ‘community’, and ‘competition’, have been at times bitterly contested. Moreover, what by the mid-eighties might have looked like an irreversible break with the past, appeared by the end of the decade to be a vigorous but not wholly successful challenge to the post-war principles of social justice and collective provision.
