Bleak search for a `new moral vision'

Mr David Marquand, Principal of Mansfield College, explored the search for a new vision of Britain's political culture, in the first of this term's series of `Radical Theologies' lectures at Mansfield College. In his lecture, `Political Theology', Mr Marquand began by exploring the `sea change' in the current political climate. He argued that the Thatcher/Reagan wave of `unbridled free market capitalism' which dominated the 1980s, at least in the English-speaking world, had ended. There was a corresponding yearning for a new approach. Increasingly, politicians and commentators across the ideological spectrum sensed that a totally free market erodes the loyalties and mutual trust on which a sustainable capitalist system itself depends and also imperils the moral foundations of a pluralistic democracy. Despite the obvious differences, Douglas Hurd's talk of `active citizenship' and Will Hutton's advocacy of a `stakeholder society', exemplified this yearning for a new synthesis between market dynamism and social cohesion. Mr Marquand argued that the post-war, social democratic, mixed economy, the `Whig/Imperialist' vision of the nationhood exemplified by Winston Churchill and the high Tory vision of England exemplified by Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher, have each become untenable. The reason, he suggested, is that they do not address the reality of a post-imperial Britain in a proto-federal Europe and therefore cannot mobilise the kind of support that would be necessary for a new paradigm to come into effect. He concluded that no alternative would emerge until politicians were able to construct and articulate a vision of a British identity which would square with the identity of a multi-cultural society within a plural Europe. Remaining lectures in the series are Feminist Theology (21 February), Green Theology (28 February), Mystical Theology (7 March), and Multifaith Theology (14 March). All lectures are at 5 p.m. at Mansfield College.