ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 it was argued that the economic crisis beginning in the late 1960s underpinned a much broader political and social crisis that developed in the 1970s. The signifi cance of this ‘organic crisis’ (Gramsci 1971) was that it represented a rupture from the Keynesian and welfarist policies that had dominated the agendas of governments in the advanced capitalist economies in the post-war years. This period witnessed class and social forces re-alignment and the ideas associated with neo-liberalism assumed hegemonic signifi cance. Rather than seek an accommodation with labour, in the way that capital had attempted since 1945, there was a more concerted attempt to directly challenge labour, and particularly in its organised form, trades unionism (Devine et al. n.d). As part of this strategy, there was also an attempt to roll back the frontiers of the State, and to weaken and undermine many of the public institutions that labour had campaigned for, both to enhance the social wage and to create institutions that might challenge social inequality. Whilst some countries, particularly those on mainland Europe, appeared more insulated from these developments, other countries such as the UK and New Zealand developed these ideas with particular enthusiasm, and education reform quickly emerged as a key battle ground in the struggle between the old and the new (Tomlinson 2001).
