ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I give my analysis of important texts from the period of British politics from 1997 to 2005 during which the British Labour Party were elected to form the UK government. My analysis shall focus, in the main, on the manner in which local government-that is, levels of government which are effectively seen as subordinate to the national government and whose jurisdiction roughly corresponds to existing socio-geographic boundaries-was represented in terms of democracy. The chapter has two sections which deal with two distinct types of text, each of which holds of prominent place in the contemporary practices of government. The first section shows analysis and discussion of the way in which the Labour Party represented democracy in its national election manifestos. The manifesto, as a text-type, can be seen as the focal point for the processes by which a party of government is selected. Government White Papers are the subject of the second section. As my interest is in the representation of democracy, I selected those passages of the manifestos which directly referred to ‘Democracy’. Methodologically, this means that my claims relate to just that: the representation of democracy in these manifestos. The White Paper is a texttype which is produced and circulated as part of the processes by which changes to legislation are brought about. Section two gives my analysis and discussion of the White Paper ‘In Touch With the People’, in which the now elected Labour government construed changes to the way local government was structured. As the title implies, a major theme in this document is the relation that holds between the government and, in my terms, those who do not govern. This text was particularly significant as it gave the terms in which Area Forums were set-the new type of local area meeting which I discuss further in Chapter 5 . From this White Paper, I have selected those passages in which the claim to ‘improve democracy’ is made in terms of these Area Forums; in effect this chapter traces the textual origins of Area Forums.
