{"product_id":"the-radical-fifties-activist-politics-in-cold-war-britain-9780198915652","title":"The Radical Fifties: Activist Politics in Cold War Britain","description":"The 1950s are usually portrayed as conservative, conformist, and apathetic, but was there more to this much-maligned decade than that? In Britain, the convergence of conflicting political moments-the Cold War, the Bomb, the rise of America, the decline of the empire, welfare, and affluence- compelled a rapid rethinking of what it meant to 'be political' along with a series of experiments in democracy and democracy education. \u003cem\u003eThe Radical Fifties\u003c\/em\u003e examines the distinctive 'activist politics' emerging from this by focusing on the entwined histories of its main protagonists: the Freedom Press anarchists, the New Left Club socialists, and the Direct Action Committee pacifists. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eInstead of gaining or influencing power in a traditional sense, these groups wanted to dispense with it all together and transform democracy into a whole way of life, a quality of interaction between people. While this upturned conventional political thinking, it also posed a dilemma: conceding the practice of democracy also meant conceding the ability to determine its ends and direct it activities. In contrast to the assertive radicalism of the sixties, this appeared dismally unambitious, yet it confronted more directly and seriously the defining questions of the times: could democratic means produce democratic ends? If not, was it still democracy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSophie Scott-Brown, \u003cem\u003e Fellow of the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSophie Scott-Brown is currently affiliated to the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. Prior to this, she taught political philosophy at the University of East Anglia and was a Programme Director for the Europaeum, a network of nineteen European universities run as an 'university without walls'. She is well-known for her historical work on radical political thought. Her publications include \u003cem\u003eThe Histories of Raphael Samuel: A Portrait of a People's Historian\u003c\/em\u003e (2017), \u003cem\u003eColin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchism\u003c\/em\u003e (2022) as well as numerous articles in leading academic journals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51661231259922,"sku":"9780198915652","price":114.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_dd0705d6-cce0-43ec-9043-5e5224d13fd3.jpg?v=1760438381","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-radical-fifties-activist-politics-in-cold-war-britain-9780198915652","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}