❑ ROB ATKINSON

University of Portsmouth

Narratives of policy: the construction of urban

problems and urban policy in the official discourse of
British government 1968–1998

Abstract
The central concern of this article is to examine and investigate the
assumptions underlying the development of post-war urban policy in
Britain. The essential presumption underlying the article is that in order
to situate and analyse policy responses, it is first necessary to understand
the ‘problems’ to which policy is responding. This involves asking why,
and how, a particular issue (i.e. a facet of reality) comes to be defined as
a problem. Additionally it is argued that the definition and construction
of a ‘problem’ contains within it the ‘solution’ to that problem.
Moreover, the construction of a ‘problem’ (and its ‘immanent solution’)
involves the development of a particular discursive narrative (a ‘story’)
depicting/portraying the evolution and causes of the problem. Drawing
upon work in discourse and narrative analysis and recent developments
in policy analysis, this article investigates the ways in which urban prob-
lems have been constructed over the last 30 years, providing a
periodization of urban policy based upon the distinct modes in which
urban problems have been constructed and the immanent policy
responses to those problems.
Key words: discourse analysis, New Labour, social problems

Introduction: a theoretical preamble

In all research, the choice of object is primary and decisive. This refers to the
set of concepts which determines the delimitation among the totality of
phenomena of those selected as objects of analysis. Is not the fundamental
illusion of empiricism precisely that of conceiving the object as given by

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212 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

the self-evidence of common sense? Thus the state has apparatuses

charged with elaborating a . . . policy, and produces a discourse which
states and legitimises this policy. . . . It goes without saying, therefore,
that . . . policy exists, that it is a self-evident object of study. . . . A
minimum of epistemological vigilance requires us to question the nature
of what the state baptizes as . . . policy. What are these practices and on
what do they act? And what if they are not what official ideology claims
them to be? What if we were to cease working within the limits decreed
by the state? (Topalov, 1979: 446)

In many ways the above quote foreshadows much of the interest which
was to emerge during the 1980s and 1990s with the development of
new critical ways of understanding the policy process. At the time
Topalov was writing, the importance of discourse analysis had not been
generally recognized; 20 years later there is a wider recognition that
discourse analysis has much to offer to our understanding of policy.
However, as interest in discourse analysis has grown, so too, perhaps
inevitably among those using these concepts, there have emerged
differences regarding the implications of this approach for our under-
standing of ‘what the world is like’ and how we acquire knowledge of
that world. There are clearly important ontological and epistemolog-
ical differences here. To simplify matters somewhat, the most obvious
division is between those who adopt a social constructivist approach
which asserts that the world is a discursive construct (i.e. nothing
exists outside of discourse) and those who maintain the importance of
the non-discursive (material) realm (the Real) as the basis for the exist-
ence of discourse(s). The position which I adopt in this article, drawing
on earlier work (Atkinson, 1999a), is one which maintains the import-
ance of the latter position while accepting the significance of discourse
in terms of structuring our understanding of the Real, having material
effects on the Real and of discursive practices becoming materialized
and embedded/institutionalized, through discursive practices, in the
Real and thereby changing that reality. To put matters somewhat
simplistically—there is a dialectical relationship between the discur-
sive and the non-discursive such that one cannot exist (or be thought)
without the other. Moreover, I contend that the use of discourse
analysis does not entail the abandonment of more traditional
approaches (e.g. Lindblom’s (1959, 1979) incrementalism) to the
understanding of policy and the world: it is one of a number of
approaches which we can draw upon.

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 213

In this article I draw on one aspect of a discourse approach, the

notion of narratives (or stories) as an element in the policy process. The
notion of narrative which I draw upon derives, in a general and rather
loose sense, from the work of Jameson (1989). There are of course
other, equally valid, ways of utilizing narrative to understand urban
issues (see Finnegan, 1998). Jameson conceptualizes narrative as a key
epistemological category through which we gain knowledge of the
world, and much of what we learn comes in the form of stories.
Narratives are thus a way of presenting and re-presenting the world, or
particular aspects of it, in textual forms which interpret that world in
a particular way. For Jameson, individual narratives do not exist in
isolation, but reflect (and simultaneously conceal) a deeper more perva-
sive narrative linked to particular social (class or group) interests (i.e.
to ideologies, see also van Dijk, 1995). Narratives, therefore, are never
‘innocent’, nor are their underlying ‘master codes’ immediately access-
ible. Thus the issue of interpretation is crucial to narrative analysis and
it is essential to:
[F]oreground the interpretative categories or codes through which we
read and receive the text in question. . . . Interpretation is here construed
as an essentially allegorical act, which consists in rewriting a given text
in terms of a particular interpretive master code. ( Jameson, 1989: 9–10;
see also Dowling, 1984, esp. ch. 5)
This means we must attempt to identify different layers of
meaning within a narrative and the ideology (or master code) which
underlies it. Narratives attempt to project a particular version of
reality, seeking to organize it in a certain manner while simultaneously
attempting to mask or deny contradictions within that reality and
limit our perception of such contradictions—a form of closure or what
is termed a strategy of containment. In this sense what is absent from
a narrative may be as important as what is present.
Such an approach cannot exist on its own and in what follows I
build on earlier work (Atkinson, 1999a) especially with regard to how,
in relation to policy, particular narratives structure and limit what may
be told (or said) and how reality is thought, re-presented and acted
upon. Furthermore it is important to recognize that neither discourses
nor narratives are free floating, that at the very least we need to link
them to specific political formations and institutional/organizational
forms (see Clegg, 1989). Here the work of Hajer (1993) seems to me
to be particularly useful. Hajer argues that ‘Whether or not a situation

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214 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

is perceived as a political problem depends on the narrative in which it

is discussed’ (Hajer, 1993: 44). What is being argued here is that the
particular aspects of reality which come to be defined as a ‘problem’ are
rarely self-evidently problems as such. For an aspect of the real to be
defined as a ‘problem’ it needs first of all to be constructed and articu-
lated as an object amenable to diagnosis and treatment in and through
a narrative discourse which carries with it an ‘authority’, or in
Bourdieu’s (1991) terms is enunciated by an individual or organization
possessing the relevant symbolic capital to make performative utter-
ances, i.e. to develop a narrative which will be ‘listened to’ and heeded.
As Stone (1989: 282) has argued:
Problem definition is a process of image making, where the images have
to do fundamentally with attributing cause, blame, and responsibility.
Conditions, difficulties, or issues thus do not have inherent properties
that make them more or less likely to be seen as problems or to be
expanded. Rather, political actors deliberately portray them in ways calcu-
lated to gain support for their side. . . They compose stories that describe
harms and difficulties, attribute them to actions of other individuals or
organizations, and thereby claim the right to invoke government power
to stop the harm. (Emphasis in original)
The development of this problem definition process requires the
existence of what Hajer terms a discourse coalition composed of ‘a
group of actors [or organisations] who share a social construct’ (Hajer,
1993: 45) about the world, or an aspect of it, and how that world func-
tions. In turn this discourse coalition will draw upon pre-existing
notions of action, i.e. how similar problems have been dealt with in the
past or are currently being dealt with, what Clegg (1989) terms a
‘mode of rationality’. Generally speaking, dominant discourses and
discourse coalitions will have been institutionalized within specific
institutions/organizations governing their operating procedures,
modes of conceptualization and forms of action. Thus they operate
from within a particular structure of power which provides a stage
from which to frame the way that a problem is constructed and guar-
antees an ‘audience’ which will listen.
During this process, a ‘problem’ is constructed in a particular way
which is congruent with the activities of a dominant discourse coali-
tion and a story is told about its genesis that entails a ‘solution’ which
complements the existing thought and actions of the discourse coali-
tion. Thus there is present within the narrational genesis of a particular

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 215

problem an ‘immanent solution’ which complements the story of how

a problem was created and specifies answers to questions such as ‘Who
is responsible? What can be done? What should be done?’ (Hajer,
1993: 45). Moreover such narratives attempt to make ‘it seem as
though they are simply describing facts’ (Stone, 1989: 282). Thus
particular narratives attempt to portray ‘problems’ as if they have their
origin in ‘natural forces’ and must be accepted and responded to in the
particular manner specified by the policy narrative. By presenting a
‘problem’ in this manner, a narrative attempts to foreclose debate and
prevent a ‘problem’ from being thought of in ways that are not
congruent with the dominant discourse from which the narrative is
derived.
As Hajer recognizes, such an approach also adds a new dimension
to our understanding of the ‘mobilization of bias’ (Bachrach and
Baratz, 1970) by which particular issues are kept off the agenda or
allowed onto it (see also Clegg, 1989). When new issues emerge onto
the agenda they do not do so in a neutral manner; they are always
constrained by pre-existing organizations/institutions and their narra-
tives, discourse coalitions and modes of rationality which attempt to
develop discursive narratives about new problems that broadly corre-
spond with this pre-existing structure. Particular policies thus emerge
from pre-existing situations of discursive structuration (Hajer, 1993)
that determines what can legitimately be thought about, how an object
can be conceptualized and the appropriate mode(s) of action. Thus as
Stone (1989: 283) contends:
The different sides in an issue act as if they are trying to find the ‘true’
cause, but they are always struggling to influence which idea is selected
to guide policy. Political conflicts over causal stories, are, therefore, more
than empirical claims about sequences of events. They are fights about
the possibility of control and the assignment of responsibility.

Narratives of urban policy

The remainder of this article focuses on British urban policy and the
narratives operating within that policy area. However, given that the
article covers 30 years, two episodes are selected for treatment to illus-
trate the more general arguments outlined above. The empirical aspect
of the article in turn draws upon other analyses of urban policy devel-
oped elsewhere (Atkinson and Moon, 1994a, b; Atkinson, 1995, 1998,

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216 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

1999b). For reasons of space, the episodes selected for analysis are the
‘origin’ of urban policy in 1968, with the Urban Programme (UP), and
the most recent development in urban policy, Bringing Britain Together:
A National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (Social Exclusion Unit,
1998).

The origin of urban policy—the urban programme 1968

In a sense the setting up of the urban programme (UP) should have
(could have?) provided the opportunity for government to engage in
new thinking about the nature of the problems facing Britain’s cities,
yet as has been widely acknowledged (McKay and Cox, 1979:
237–48; Higgins et al., 1983: ch. 3; Atkinson and Moon, 1994a: ch.
3) this did not occur. The relevant questions are: why was the UP
created, and why did the thinking behind it and its scope of action
remain so limited? The context for the creation of the UP has been well
documented (McKay and Cox, 1979; Higgins et al., 1983; Atkinson
and Moon, 1994a), but some of this bears repeating.
At the time, the British government was undergoing one of its peri-
odic bouts of administrative soul searching. At central government level
consideration was being given to how to develop a more coordinated
(corporate) approach (i.e. cross-departmental) to social issues based on
notions of rational policy analysis. Much of this discussion revolved
around a key group of civil servants located in the Departments of Social
Services, Education and Science and the then Home Department. The
experience of the United States with the ‘Great Society’ and ‘War on
Poverty’ programmes and outbreaks of urban unrest also influenced
British thinking (see Higgins, 1978). Two of the outputs of these intra-
governmental debates which influenced the development of early urban
policy were the reports of the Seebohm Committee and the Plowden
Committee (McKay and Cox, 1979: 235–40). At local government
level there were concerns over the efficiency and effectiveness of manage-
ment systems (see the Maud Report, 1966) and the structure of local
government (see Redcliffe Maud, 1969; see also Dearlove, 1979, for a
general overview of these debates). Taken together these developments
created a context which might have appeared conducive to radical
thinking. However, with regard to urban policy the outcomes were rela-
tively modest and did little to break with existing policy and its
underlying assumptions. Why was this? Here the use of discourse
analysis can provide useful insights.

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 217

There exists a hierarchy of discourses with the most general soci-

etal discourses creating the context within which lower level discourses
exist and within which they operate. This is not to suggest that there
is a one-to-one correspondence between higher level and lower level
discourses, merely that the latter internalize certain basic assumptions
from the former which set the boundaries within which they operate.
In this sense, we can distinguish a dominant general societal discourse
prevailing at the time which is perhaps best summed up by the notion
of the Keynesian Social-Democratic consensus (Gamble, 1974; Jessop,
1980) that legitimated particular forms of state intervention, most
notably to achieve full employment and a ‘universalist’ welfare state.
The dominant belief within the British political elite was that by the
mid-1950s full employment and the welfare state had eradicated the
social conditions which characterized the inter-war period, and that
problems of poverty had largely been abolished. Thus there could not
exist in Britain the conditions which would have justified a large-scale
programme to counter urban problems such as widespread and ‘struc-
tural poverty’. This general view was most clearly expressed in the
writings of Tony Crosland (1964) who argued:
Primary poverty has been largely eliminated; the ‘Beveridge revolution’
has been carried through; and Britain now boasts the widest range of
social services in the world, and, as a result the appellation ‘Welfare
State’. It is true that considerable areas of social distress, not mainly due
to primary poverty and of a character not always foreseen by pre-war
socialists, still remain. But this is a new and different question. The
historic objective has, in Britain largely been attained; and the
traditional means of universal, indiscriminate social services are in any
case not always the most appropriate to the more subtle social problems
which remain. (Crosland, 1964: 59)
The narrative which this particular quote, and Crosland’s book
more generally, enunciates is one of great success in tackling the
problem of ‘primary’ poverty through the welfare state (and full
employment) and of the existence of new problems contained within
specific communities and areas composed of populations who had
failed to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by full employ-
ment and the welfare state. Therefore, with regard to urban areas, what
was required was a more intensively targeted social work approach
which would change the behaviour of the relevant groups/individuals.
As a result the object of urban policy (i.e. the problem) was conceptu-

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218 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

alized in terms of the social pathology of particular groups of people

limited to relatively small areas of Britain’s cities. The ‘immanent
solution’ within this narrative therefore suggested a small-area
approach largely designed to provide small-scale additional financial
assistance to relevant local authorities who would be encouraged to
spatially target their existing resources on these areas.
Thus what we might term the ‘master’ discourse ruled out certain
courses of action. This existing higher level discourse structuration
meant that even with regard to situations where attempts were being
made to identify and deal with ‘new problems’, to establish new
approaches to these problems and to develop new discourse coalitions
(e.g. around Seebohm and Plowden), the pages on which these ideas
were developed were not blank. A further discursive constraint on the
development of the UP lay in the manner in which urban problems had
been conceptualized since 1945. This derived from the dominant plan-
ning discourse which constructed the problem in a largely physical
sense concerned with issues of the poor quality of the urban built
environment and its physical redevelopment, overcrowding and the
needed to disperse industry and population from congested cities
to New Towns and declining regions (see Atkinson and Moon, 1994a:
ch. 2).
Another key element in the contextualization of urban policy in
this period was what Solomos (1989) termed the ‘racialization’ of
British politics. During the 1950s and 1960s the presence of racial
minorities in cities, through post-war processes of immigration and
labour force migration, was constructed as a problem to be dealt with
by tighter controls on non-white immigration (Atkinson and Moon,
1994a: ch. 10). The presence of racial minorities in Britain’s cities was
widely perceived as a problem by both the Conservative and Labour
parties, as well as among significant sections of the white population.
This situation was considerably exacerbated by Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers
of blood’ speech in 1968 which acted as a catalyst in initiating the UP.
Finally there was one other, more conjunctural, factor which needs
to be borne in mind with regard to this period. In 1967 the Wilson
government had been forced to devalue Sterling and effectively end its
use as a reserve currency. This was a major psychological blow for the
government and gave rise to one of Britain’s recurrent ‘crises’ of public
expenditure, i.e. the need to control and reduce spending, although a
relatively minor one by the standards of the 1970s and 1980s (see
Heald, 1983).

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 219

In this situation the Secretary of State for the Home Department,

James Callaghan, bearer of the symbolic capital necessary to make
performative utterances (Bourdieu, 1991), announced the launch of the
UP in July 1968. Although not always explicitly present, the context
outlined above clearly structured much of what Callaghan, and the
ensuing debate, had to say in the House of Commons (Hansard, 22 July
1968, cols. 40–9). Callaghan began by stating:
The Government have now completed the first stage of their study of
urban areas facing acute social problems in the fields of education,
housing, health and welfare. Many of these areas include concentrations
of immigrants. (Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 40)
His narrative, maintaining consistency with the higher level discourse,
then went on to suggest that, although these mainstream policies were
generally achieving their objectives:
[T]here remain areas of severe social deprivation in a number of our cities
and towns—often scattered in relatively small pockets. They require
special help to meet their social needs and to bring their physical services
to an adequate level. (Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 40)
Once again we see that discourse structuration is at work
containing and limiting the ‘problem’ to ‘pockets’ in some urban areas
where communities need special help to solve their problems. Nowhere
in the entire debate is there any attempt to link these problems to a
wider societal analysis, such an attempt being ruled out by discursive
fiat.
But perhaps what is most striking about the debate is the way in
which the ‘immigration issue’ is both simultaneously affirmed and
denied. Having referred to concentrations of immigrants early in his
speech, Callaghan then went on to justify the UP in the following
manner:
The purpose of this programme is to supplement the Government’s other
social legislative measures to ensure as far as we can that all our citizens
have an equal opportunity in life. (Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 41,
emphasis added)
In his reply the Opposition front bench speaker, Quentin Hogg,
stated:
I welcome the fact that the statement contains, not a direct relationship
to race, but to an equal opportunity in life for all our citizens? Will the

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220 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

right hon Gentleman also accept that if this is to have its optimum effect
where we hope it will he will have to satisfy the country that he has
adequate control [the Home Department being responsible for immigra-
tion control] over inflow into the country as regards possible abuse, terms
of entry and orderly settlement where reception can be possible? Does he
recognise that much of the present unrest is due to disquiet about these
matters? (Hansard, 22 July 1968, cols. 41–42)
Callaghan’s reply stated:
As regards the separate but related question of immigrants—and it is
separate, although obvious[ly] related—I agree that there must be
continued control over the inflow of immigrants. (Hansard, 22 July
1968, col. 42)
This exchange clearly highlights what Solomos (1989) termed the
racialization of British politics, but also reflects, without direct refer-
ence, concerns raised by Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech made a few
months earlier in April 1968. It is as if both of these senior politicians
were at one and the same time attempting to say ‘look we are trying to
do something to relieve the plight of immigrants in the UK’ (the sop
to liberals in exchange for supporting tighter immigration controls)
while simultaneously denying this by using the rhetoric of citizenship
and equal opportunities. This collusion between the leadership of the
two parties is particularly striking.
The other crucial issue in Callaghan’s justification is the use of the
word ‘supplement’, suggesting that the UP is an add-on to existing
mainstream policies to help those who had fallen through the gaps, a
fact reflected in the relatively small sum of £20 to £25 million allo-
cated to the programme over a four year period. Indeed Callaghan
makes the point that those areas in receipt of Section 11 Grants under
the Local Government Act 1966 would receive expenditure on health
and welfare, child care, housing and education amounting to £860
million in 1968–69 (Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 44). This, uninten-
tionally, illustrated just how insignificant the UP funding actually
was, particularly bearing in mind that more areas were likely to qualify
for UP funds than for Section 11 funding.
From the above it can be seen that the dominant political narrative
restricted urban problems to discrete pockets of poverty in urban areas.
Thus all that had to be done was to identify these areas and then target
the ‘deviant’ populations in the areas and modify their pathological
behaviour. The causes of the problems were therefore deemed to orig-

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 221

inate within the areas concerned and thus did not require the consider-
ation of wider societal forces. This approach also had the advantage of
being inexpensive, requiring little in the way of additional resources;
it was largely a matter of better targeting of existing resources.
Clearly there is no one-to-one correspondence between the devel-
opment of the early urban initiative and a single discourse and/or
narrative. However, even in the situation of relative indeterminacy
surrounding the UP, clear limits were placed on what could be done.
The prevailing narrative, that the welfare state and full employment
had eradicated the most serious social problems, created a dominant
discourse coalition and structuration of thinking which meant that
urban problems could only be conceptualized in terms of ‘pockets’ of
poverty that required small-scale supplementary action to remedy any
deficiencies, the outcome being the area-based approach of the UP (and
subsequent urban policy). At the same time, the UP was also struc-
tured by the prevailing racialization of British politics and the
attendant ‘immigration problem’ which set limits on the thinking of
those in government and the presentation of the UP. While this clearly
involved elements of political/electoral calculation on the part of poli-
ticians, it does illustrate how powerful were (and remain) the narratives
relating to notions of ‘immigrant workers taking the jobs of indige-
nous white workers’ and threats to ‘British culture’. Without explicitly
saying as much, the presence of non-white immigrants in Britain’s
urban areas was constructed as part of a wider ‘problem’ for British
society and the UP was part of a ‘deal’ involving the tightening of
immigration controls. It represented (along with the 1965 and 1968
Race Relations Acts) an attempt to appease the liberal conscience of the
Labour Party.
In a more conjunctural sense the economic crisis in the aftermath
of the 1967 devaluation created a context in which government felt
constrained to limit any new public expenditure, particularly on rela-
tively marginal programmes such as the UP. In many ways this is
typical of urban policy’s history, one which has been consistently
subordinated to wider mainstream programmes, acting as a
supplement to their activities, mopping up the fallout from their fail-
ures and attempting to limit the damage caused by such failures.
What is most interesting, and perhaps surprising, about the narra-
tives surrounding the launch of the UP is the extent to which, in
political terms, it was dominated by the issue of race and immigration
while leading figures in both parties simultaneously attempted to

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222 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

undermine the link between the two. Indeed this is typical of the
development of the UP in particular and urban policy more generally
where race has been a key structuring factor in the development of
policy, but has tended to play an almost subliminal role. At times it
has erupted to the surface in dramatic fashion and then sunk out of
sight for a while (see Atkinson and Moon, 1994a: esp. ch. 10; Moon
and Atkinson, 1997).

Bringing Britain together: a national strategy for neighbourhood

development
This section focuses on a recent development in urban policy, Bringing
Britain Together: A National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (Social
Exclusion Unit, 1998), an attempt by the new Labour government,
launched in the summer of 1998, to develop a new approach to urban
regeneration, building upon the existing Single Regeneration Budget
(SRB) (for overviews of developments until late 1998 see Atkinson
1995, 1998 and 1999b).
Before turning to this document, it is necessary to say something
about the key notions which operate as a form of discursive structura-
tion and strategy of containment with regard to the current
government. There are certain difficulties in contextualizing the
approach of the Labour government to urban policy, not least because
of the difficulty of identifying exactly what constitutes the dominant
ideas of the current government. For instance, are we faced with a
version of ‘Thatcherism with an even more human face’, a British
version of Christian Democracy, a ‘modernized’ New Liberalism, or
perhaps some combination of all three? (see Marquand, 1998; Marr,
1998). Despite this difficulty, what is clear is the government’s
commitment to markets and competition, a belief in the need to pursue
a policy of low direct taxation, a rejection of Keynesian demand
management techniques, a stress on duties/responsibilities linked with
an emphasis on the role of communities and an apparent belief in decen-
tralization while retaining strong central control of public expenditure.
However, in this ‘non-ideological’ pragmatic approach, as claimed by
New Labour, the market occupies a primary role. As argued in the
Labour Party Manifesto for the 1997 general election, ‘Government and
industry must work together to achieve key objectives aimed at
enhancing the dynamism of the market, not undermining it’ (emphasis added).
In a recent attempt to justify the ‘Third Way’ Blair argued:

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 223

The Third Way in essence seeks to combine economic dynamism with

social justice. Indeed, it does more, it avows that the one depends
crucially on the other. If a country generates no wealth, it cannot afford
social justice. (Blair, 1999; see also Blair, 1996: esp. ch. 11)
In turn, Blair accepts that for a market to work it requires a degree
of social justice (primarily defined in terms of equality of opportunity).
However, in a manner entirely congruent with Thatcherite orthodoxy,
there is an unwillingness to intervene in the distributional outcomes of
markets, the primary area of intervention is to be through equality of
opportunity (particularly in terms of education and health care) rather
than outcomes, and even this is dependent upon the economy gener-
ating a surplus sufficient to the task. Blair goes on to argue:
The driving force behind the ideas associated with the Third Way is
globalization because no country is immune from the massive change
that globalization brings . . . what globalization is doing is bringing in
its wake profound economic and social change. (Blair, 1999; see also
Blair, 1996: ch. 12)
In this particular narrative, globalization functions as a (if not the)
key operating principle structuring the contemporary world—nothing
can be done about it, other than to accept it, and the only way to cope
with it is through market dynamism and a process of constant adap-
tation to its dictates. Globalization thus takes on the status of an
immutable ‘natural force’ beyond human control. In New Labour’s
rhetoric, under the ‘narrative cloak’ of a particular interpretation of
globalization and its implications, the market operates as the master-
code regulating and limiting the actions of government and justifying
the belief, inherited from the Thatcher years, that in general markets
remain the most efficient and effective means of allocating resources
and facilitating freedom and choice. It is only when markets are
palpably seen to be failing that the state should step in and even then
only to help create conditions for the effective functioning of markets.
Jameson (1991: ch. 8) has clearly identified what is at stake here
arguing:
[T]he rhetoric of the market has been a fundamental and central compo-
nent of . . . ideological struggle. . . . The surrender to the various forms of
market ideology . . . has been imperceptible but alarmingly universal.
Everyone is now willing to mumble . . . that no society can function
efficiently without the market and that planning is obviously impossible.
( Jameson, 1991: 263)

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224 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

Moreover:
[The] market as a concept rarely has anything to do with choice or
freedom, since those are all determined in advance, whether we are
talking about new model cars, toys or television programmes: we select
among those, no doubt, but we can scarcely be said to have a say in actu-
ally choosing any of them. ( Jameson, 1991: 266)
The very acceptance of the centrality and inescapability of markets
thus commits us to the acceptance of the ultimate determinacy of ‘the
market’ and its outcomes and our inability to change them. Thus it is
a ‘Leviathan in sheep’s clothing: its function is not to encourage
freedom . . . but rather to repress it’ ( Jameson, 1991: 273). The domi-
nance of this particular discourse (or ideologeme, as Jameson terms it)
acts as a form of closure, the master strategy of containment, making
it difficult, if not impossible, to think of alternative ways of organizing
society and tackling problems.
It should be noted that Bringing Britain Together (the very title of
which suggests a classless ‘one-nationism’) is the first step in a wider
process of cross-departmental policy reviews designed to develop a
more coherent and effective urban policy scheduled to be announced in
the Spring of 2000. In what follows it will be advisable to bear in mind
that this initiative is the latest in a long line of attempts to develop a
more ‘effective’ urban policy. Indeed, when SRB was announced in
1993 it was portrayed in a similar manner by the then Conservative
government, and the then Labour opposition broadly welcomed SRB
(Hansard, 4 November 1993, col. 517). What appears to differentiate
the new initiative from its predecessors is the range of issues covered
and its apparent determination to actually link urban policy into a
whole range of mainstream (social and economic) policies (its ambi-
tions bear a strong resemblance to the 1977 White Paper Policy for the
Inner Cities, Cmnd 6845; see Atkinson and Moon, 1994a: ch. 4). I first
provide a brief outline of the document and its main aims.
In many ways this document contains a remarkably frank acknowl-
edgement of urban policy’s past failures, arguing that these include:
[T]he absence of effective national policies to deal with the structural
causes of decline; a tendency to parachute solutions in from outside,
rather than engaging local communities; and too much emphasis on
physical renewal instead of better opportunities for local people. Above
all, a joined up problem has never been addressed in a joined up way.
Problems have fallen through the cracks between Whitehall depart-

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 225

ments, or between central and local government. And at the neighbour-

hood level, there has been no one in charge of pulling together all the
things that need to go right at the same time. (Social Exclusion Unit,
1998: 9)
In the first year of its operation (1999–2000) 17 New Deal for
Communities Pathfinders projects will be established, with more to
come in later years, and they will provide a test-bed for the develop-
ment of a new integrated approach which can then be assessed and the
lessons generalized. Furthermore, it is intended that a whole series of
working groups be created to assess policy problems and gaps and
produce a report in the Spring of 2000 which will establish:
[A] coherent national strategy. The aim will be that not only should
Government Departments commit themselves to this, but also local
authorities, and other key public agencies as well as business, the volun-
tary sector and others working in poor communities. (Social Exclusion
Unit, 1998: 11–12)
The clear intention is to create a comprehensive and coordinated
approach in which all the pieces of the urban regeneration jigsaw will
actually fit together and which according to Tony Blair ‘will set out a
ten to twenty year plan to turn round poor neighbourhoods’ (Social
Exclusion Unit, 1998: 8). The report argues that in the past urban
policy, as well as more general policies, have tackled symptoms rather
than causes and there had been an assumption that run-down urban
areas could be tackled in isolation. Indeed government policies may
actually have increased the social isolation of such areas and inadver-
tently played a role in creating the concentration of social exclusion.
Furthermore, the report clearly acknowledges the existence of racial
discrimination (Social Exclusion Unit, 1998: 30–1), although whether
any serious attempts to tackle the issue, other than in terms of equal
opportunities, emerge from the review is a matter for debate. As I have
already suggested these, laudable, aims are by no means new.
Central to the narrative contained in Bringing Britain Together is the
argument that processes of industrial change and decline, forces
beyond human control, along with the rise of the service sector have
destroyed the economic basis of many local communities by removing
unskilled entry-level manufacturing jobs. At the same time social
changes, such as the decline of the family, have undermined the social
basis of communities in these areas. This situation has been exacer-
bated by inappropriate government policies (i.e. human actions),

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226 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

particularly with regard to housing which have concentrated ‘the poor

and unemployed together in neighbourhoods where hardly anyone has
a job’ (Social Exclusion Unit, 1998: 9). In essence, a story is being told
of how forces beyond government control have, in combination,
created a situation which government has made worse by inappropriate
policies. Responsibility thus largely lies with an external (non-human)
unquestionable and unavoidable force, the economic market place, and
with the government’s predecessors (both Labour and, although
largely, Conservative governments). Given this the report attempts to
construct a balance between realism (what can be and cannot be done)
and optimism consistent with New Labour’s image as a party of the
21st century. In terms of what can be done, strict limits are placed on
action by two factors. First, confirming Jameson’s arguments, a belief
that ‘government cannot buck the market’, that it must work with the
market not against it. Thus, initiatives, following 1980s orthodoxy,
are largely limited to interventions in the supply-side of the labour
market. Second, and following on from this, a notion of ‘fiscal recti-
tude’ based on the view that public expenditure deprives markets of
investments, supports ineffective actions and denies people choice. In
addition, government assumes that strategic thinking, better inter-
organizational coordination (i.e. through partnerships) and more
effective management will allow more to be extracted from the same
resources (the ideas of partnership and synergy being particularly
important).
However, we need to take these managerialist assertions with a
‘pinch of salt’, as the rhetoric of both New Labour and its Conservative
predecessors suggests that a solution to the problems of urban areas is
possible. Oatley (1998: 3) recounts how ‘Recently, I even heard a
senior civil servant define “urban regeneration” as “managed decline”.’
In this sense urban policy may also be a form of symbolism (Edelman,
1977) designed to give the impression of doing something to ‘solve’ a
problem about which relatively little can actually be done under the
prevailing social system (see Oatley, 1998). Why then should govern-
ment bother to develop an urban policy and spend time and money
suggesting problems can be solved? Part of the answer is provided by
Pickvance (1990: 20) who argues:

‘[I]nner city’ refers not only to a particular location but also to its
symbolic connotations: poverty, housing stress, unemployment and
racial tension. These perceptions are present in the public mind and

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 227

explain why no British government can afford not to have an inner city
policy of some kind.
Even the Thatcher governments felt unable to completely abandon
the ‘inner city’, while the Blair government, which enunciates a revi-
talized form of ‘one-nationism’ cannot afford to be seen to neglect these
areas. The point is not that all politicians and policy-makers act in bad
faith, no doubt many genuinely believe that things can be turned
around, but that urban policies, however well meaning, are constrained
by higher level narratives. The ‘urban’ narratives which are developed
are dependent upon and subordinated to these, such as narratives of the
inescapability of globalization’s effects and the superiority of markets,
and the need for people in declining urban areas (and outside of them)
to constantly adapt to these, ‘narratively constructed’, dictates. The
best that can be done is to ‘tinker at the margins’, to make the market
system work more efficiently and effectively, perhaps with a slightly
greater element of social justice, and to better prepare people, through
the educational system, to take their place in the market. Thus, as
Oatley (1998: 3) has argued:
In the wake of the election . . . a consensus has emerged about the desir-
able form of urban policy. This consensus is based on a ‘new
pragmatism’, uncritical of the broader economic system that is causing
the problems, and based on a philosophy of learning the lessons from the
mistakes of the past. These lessons consist of a combination of new insti-
tutional fixes and a resurrected managerialism. There is an assumption in
much of this discussion that ‘policy learning’ is a technical exercise. . . .
However, this ignores the point that policy is intensely ideological and
conventional political processes can often block learning because
ideology overrides evidence or vested interests resist policy evaluation
and change.

Conclusion

Comparing the two examples used here, 30 years apart, one is struck
by a number of similarities and differences. Both conceptualize urban
policy as a supplement to existing mainstream programmes and stress
the importance of better managerial systems and coordinated inter-
organizational actions. Both initiatives were constrained by wider
concerns over public expenditure, although in the intervening period

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228 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

public expenditure took on much more negative connotations

becoming associated with bureaucracy, waste and an anti-enterprise
culture. This view in turn has been accentuated in the 1990s by the
narrative of globalization which further reduced the scope for state
intervention in social and economic problems.
One significant difference relates to the notion of partnership,
especially with regard to the private sector, which has become much
more prominent, particularly during the 1990s, under New Labour. It
seems to have achieved an almost mythical status as the panacea for all
problems. Contemporary notions of partnership embody a narrative of
‘working together’ to solve ‘common problems’, while simultaneously
denying conflicts of interests between the partners. More generally, the
private, community and voluntary sectors have all been allocated
increased roles at the expense of the public sector. In part this reflects
the ‘grand narrative’ of the last 20 years that the state cannot solve
problems, indeed the consensus which seems to have emerged from the
1980s was that the state actually made matters worse—the new
mantra is ‘private good, public bad’.
What the two episodes in urban policy illustrate about the nature
of policy-making is the extent to which it is structured and constrained
by higher level discourse and the need for specific urban policies to
develop narratives which are consistent with those higher level
discourses. In 1968 the UP was clearly structured by the Social
Democratic consensus, while in 1998 urban policy was structured by
the consensus which emerged from the 1980s based upon the primacy
of markets and the ineffectiveness/inefficiency of state intervention.
Ironically in 1968 there was greater room for legitimate state inter-
vention, but this possibility was foreclosed in the urban arena by the
belief that urban problems were residual and had their origins in
dysfunctional populations found in particular spatial locations. All that
was required to solve the ‘problems’ constructed was to ensure better
targeting and management of resources in combination with changes
in the behaviour of those affected. The UP was also structured by the
interparty understanding that race and immigration were a problem.
This meant the issue had to be played-down while simultaneously
hoping that Britain’s Black population, because of its concentration in
run-down urban areas, would automatically benefit from the small
amount of additional resources made available through the UP.
By the time of the late 1990s many similar concerns remained
present although with greater intensity. The belief in the effectiveness

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 ATKINSON—URBAN PROBLEMS AND OFFICIAL DISCOURSE 229

of managerial solutions had actually intensified, although now the

emphasis was much more on a reduction in the state’s role and a greater
emphasis on private management methods combined with decentral-
ization and an apparently increased role for the community and
voluntary sectors. But, by the 1990s, the state had surrendered key
functions, such as employment creation, to the market. At best the
state could intervene to facilitate the more efficient operation of the
labour market through supply-side interventions. In a sense the Labour
government had accepted the Thatcherite narrative that some urban
areas, or parts of them, were run-down because they had failed to adapt
to the opportunities offered by the market and thus had been by-
passed. The solution, therefore, was to ensure that these areas and their
inhabitants could compete in the market place.
While the UP and Bringing Britain Together both allocated a key
role to the area-based approach, there are differences between them in
terms of the rationale for spatial targeting and the roles such an
approach plays. As pointed out above, the UP’s area focus was largely
determined by the particular ‘urban’ narrative at the time which saw
urban problems as relatively isolated, i.e. not caused by wider struc-
tural forces. It is no longer possible to maintain this particular fiction,
yet at the same time it still remains impossible for government to
develop a narrative of urban problems which links them to wider struc-
tural forces central to the operation of contemporary capitalism.
However, in the intervening period a new narrative developed which
argues that urban problems continue to exist because many main-
stream policies, due to bureaucratic (note not market) failures, have
failed to ‘reach those most in need’. Thus there has been a progressively
greater emphasis on integrating urban policy with mainstream
programmes and the need to achieve better spatial targeting of the
mainstream programmes. This process began with the 1977 White
Paper and has progressively intensified, along with the growing belief
in managerial/institutional ‘fixes’, as public expenditure has taken on
increasingly negative connotations. New Labour appears to believe
even more strongly in this approach than its predecessors as demon-
strated by the setting up of cross-departmental working teams to
develop a more ‘strategic’ approach to social exclusion and urban
decline (see Social Exclusion Unit, 1998: 57–77).
What both of our examples suggest is that we need to examine
(urban) policy in a critical and historical sense and not simply accept
government’s assertion that it has a policy. Nor should we accept

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230 CRITICAL SOCIAL POLICY 20(2)

government’s own assertions about the objectives of ‘policy’; these need

to be critically interrogated. Part of this process involves identifying
the narratives which structure ‘policy’ development and the ‘immanent
solutions’ contained within those narratives and their links to specific
interests, both inside and outside of government. Finally there is a need
to identify and analyse the discourse coalitions and processes of
discourse structuration affecting ‘policy’. Only then can we begin to
make sense of what a policy is (i.e its objects) and what it is actually
attempting to achieve, in terms of the ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ of
those objects, and whether or not those objects are likely to respond in
the desired manner. Furthermore, discourse analysis can help us to
interrogate the very notion of ‘a policy’ as presented by the state, to
question if this ‘policy’ is actually doing what the state portrays it as
doing and to begin to speculate about the ‘real’ intentions of policy.

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❏ Rob Atkinson is a Director of Urban Research in the Cities Research

Centre, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of the West of
England, Bristol. He is co-author of Urban Policy in Britain (1994, a new
edition of which is in preparation), co-editor of Public Policy in Britain (1994)
and of Public Policy Under Blair (forthcoming). His research interests are
primarily in the field of urban policy/regeneration, urban social exclusion,
community participation in urban regeneration partnerships and develop-
ments in European Urban Policy. He has published widely on all of these
topics. ❏

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