Préparation agrégation anglais civilisation 27

Le Royaume Uni à l'épreuve de la crise 1970 - 1979

Election manifestos

Before each general election, the major parties issue a manifesto. You need to be familiar with the most important points in the Conservative and Labour manifestos for the elections of 1970, of 1974 and of 1979. All of the manifestos can be found online here :

http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man.htm

It is better to read them after you have a general understanding of the period. Manifestos can be a little difficult for students to follow. This is because they are aimed at a very precise audience. At election time the priority of the manifesto is to win over people who might not vote for your party. Take the Labour manifesto for example: the priority audience is not people who have always voted Labour (they will probably vote Labour anyway); the priority is not, either, people who have always voted Conservative (they will probably never be convinced to vote Labour). The priority is the people who are in the middle. This is why manifestos almost always sound very measured.

If you would like a robot to read the manifestos for you, copy the text into a word file, and then use an online converter like zamzar to convert it into an MP3 file that you can listen to while doing the gardening.