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Modern British Histories
Thatcher's Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town
During the quarter of a century after the Second World War, the United Kingdom designated thirty-two new towns across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Why, even before selling council houses or denationalising public industries, did Margaret Thatcher's government begin to privatise these new towns? By examining the most ambitious of these projects, Milton Keynes, Guy Ortolano recasts our understanding of British social democracy, arguing that the new towns comprised the spatial dimension of the welfare state. Following the Prime Minister's progress on a tour through Milton Keynes on 25 September 1979, Ortolano alights at successive stops to examine the broader histories of urban planning, modernist architecture, community development, international consulting, and municipal housing. Thatcher's journey reveals a dynamic social democracy during its decade of crisis, while also showing how public sector actors begrudgingly accommodated the alternative priorities of market liberalism.
- GenresHistory
316 pages, Hardcover
Published June 27, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 18, 2023
It is *painful* reading these amazing plans for a monorail, serious public transit to allow spaces without cars and give the average person total mobility over the space, and then it's just "yeah those plans got junked" and suddenly some rich consultant from an upper class background who was friends with the ministers in charge gets the brief and he's talking complete nonsense about how having to travel 25 miles to the cinema by car is Freedom and how you shouldn't really plan anything properly because spontaneous development or whatever and how everything needs to be spread out and then he obviously plans this horrible car centric nightmare. The book doesn't touch on things like traffic planning which is a shame (but understandable) but god the absolute nonsense these people came out with to justify their stupid Los Angeles plan that was immediately proven idiotic by the oil crisis of 1973...
Overall a really fascinating book that I recommend if you have any interest in urban planning or UK housing policy postwar. It doesn't cover everything about Milton Keynes but focuses primarily on Milton Keynes Development Corporation, looking at how it started, how they planned the city, how they saw themselves as an intermediary between government and people, how they saw themselves internationally and acted as exporters of urban planning knowledge, how they looked at creating a community, the changes in housing policy... it's really good
Overall a really fascinating book that I recommend if you have any interest in urban planning or UK housing policy postwar. It doesn't cover everything about Milton Keynes but focuses primarily on Milton Keynes Development Corporation, looking at how it started, how they planned the city, how they saw themselves as an intermediary between government and people, how they saw themselves internationally and acted as exporters of urban planning knowledge, how they looked at creating a community, the changes in housing policy... it's really good
July 14, 2022
As I come to the end of a lockdown inspired spell living in Milton Keynes, it made sense to read Guy Ortolano’s highly thought of study of that most unfashionable of places, borrowed from the central library of the city itself. The book is a great overview of utopian beginnings and how they were converted to free market impulses as the fledgling city grew. Yes, Margaret Thatcher and her ilk sensed an opportunity for this to be a locus for private enterprise and untrammelled markets, but it was actually the Labour government of the 1970s that first grew cold on MK, preferring to concentrate on inner city regeneration rather than new town development instead (think Docklands).
There are regrets – early pioneers foresaw a monorail and much more public transport in general as well as more of a community feel. The way the ideals of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and modernism in general were exported to the developing world, including the new Nigerian capital of Abuja is also well told – the book is an academic monograph, written with career advancement and security in mind, but is still highly readable.
It’s a book about housing so MK’s main distinguishing feature – that it’s a city for the motor car – is not dwelt upon, while a further book charting more recent developments would be most welcome. The city has become gargantuan as a focus for warehousing in particular while Ortolano rightly identifies the development of ‘us and them’ neighbourhoods – the early modernist boxes of Netherfield, Fishermead and Beanhill are subject to social problems while newer suburbs (if MK can be said to have suburbs) are more well-heeled. You still need to send out a search party for a non-chain restaurant and the way MK Dons were founded casts a shadow but it’s a people where the majority of residents like living there. Ortolano’s study is an expertly balanced view even if at one point he suggests that he would no more persuade you to live in MK than go back to the time of the French Revolution’s Committee of Public Safety.
There are regrets – early pioneers foresaw a monorail and much more public transport in general as well as more of a community feel. The way the ideals of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and modernism in general were exported to the developing world, including the new Nigerian capital of Abuja is also well told – the book is an academic monograph, written with career advancement and security in mind, but is still highly readable.
It’s a book about housing so MK’s main distinguishing feature – that it’s a city for the motor car – is not dwelt upon, while a further book charting more recent developments would be most welcome. The city has become gargantuan as a focus for warehousing in particular while Ortolano rightly identifies the development of ‘us and them’ neighbourhoods – the early modernist boxes of Netherfield, Fishermead and Beanhill are subject to social problems while newer suburbs (if MK can be said to have suburbs) are more well-heeled. You still need to send out a search party for a non-chain restaurant and the way MK Dons were founded casts a shadow but it’s a people where the majority of residents like living there. Ortolano’s study is an expertly balanced view even if at one point he suggests that he would no more persuade you to live in MK than go back to the time of the French Revolution’s Committee of Public Safety.
January 18, 2026
I found this an exceptionally interesting read as a resident of Milton Keynes in the 21st Century. It serves both Milton Keynes and its narrative around the UK's ideological transition, with Milton Keynes an excellent case study for the mechanisms and realities through which the transition happened.
Acknowledgements should also be given for the excellent collation of sources and information around Milton Keynes, which I recall earlier parts of the book attributing to previously underutilized archives.
I read this for non-academic reasons and really enjoyed it. Definitely recommended for any one with ties to Milton Keynes. I often derided my home town, its design, and its character, and through reading this I developed a deeper appreciation of what it has always been and how it has endured.
Acknowledgements should also be given for the excellent collation of sources and information around Milton Keynes, which I recall earlier parts of the book attributing to previously underutilized archives.
I read this for non-academic reasons and really enjoyed it. Definitely recommended for any one with ties to Milton Keynes. I often derided my home town, its design, and its character, and through reading this I developed a deeper appreciation of what it has always been and how it has endured.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews