Ben Jackson

Leslie Mitchell Tutorial Fellow in History; Professor of Modern History

I am a historian of modern ideas and politics, with a particular interest in how ideologies have shaped public policy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My research examines why there were such significant changes in this period in what was believed to be politically feasible. I study how the seemingly abstract theories of philosophers, economists and sociologists have been used (and misused) by political actors amid the rise of a more economically interventionist state after c.1900 and then the backlash against the state in the name of the market after the 1970s. I have chiefly worked on modern Britain, though I am also interested in international debates about the state and market in this period. I have also written about the intellectual and political history of modern Scotland as a case study of how nationalist ideas were claimed by the left.

Teaching

My teaching reflects my research interests in modern British history and the history of political thought. I teach courses on British History 1830-1951 for first years and on British History 1815-1924 and British History Since 1900 for second years. These courses give students a panoramic understanding of the political, social, economic and cultural changes that made modern Britain. The great advantage of their wide scope is that students can pursue their own pathway through them, selecting the topics that reflect their own historical interests.

I also teach specialist courses that draw on my research interests in intellectual and political history, such as Theories of the State for first years; Capitalism and its Critics: Political and Economic Thought c. 1848-1960 for second years; and the special subject War and Reconstruction: Ideas, Politics and Social Change, 1939-45 for third years. These courses allow students to engage directly with primary sources, predominantly key political texts that have exerted a huge influence on public debate and policy-making.

I supervise Masters and DPhil students who are working on topics in modern British political history, twentieth-century British social and economic policy, and the history of modern political and economic thought.

Research

I have worked on three main projects. First, the political thought of socialism and liberalism in Britain across the twentieth century, especially my first book, Equality and the British Left (2007), which investigated the debates about economic inequality that lay behind the rise of the welfare state.

Second, the political and economic ideas of the neo-liberal right from the mid-twentieth century onwards. I am interested in both the transnational networks that generated neo-liberal theory and the emergence of Thatcherism in the UK. I co-edited Making Thatcher’s Britain (2012), which was an early attempt to historicise the Thatcher government. I have also co-edited The Neo-Liberal Age? Britain Since the 1970s (2021), which debates how useful the concept of ‘neo-liberalism’ is for understanding recent British history.

Third, I have worked on Scottish history, focusing on the history and politics of Scottish nationalism. This led to my second book, The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland (2020), which traces the evolution of Scottish nationalist ideology from the interwar period to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

Selected Publications

‘Thatcherism on a European scale? The Lost World of British Pro-European Neoliberalism’, in G. Love and C. Egander Skove (eds.), Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the Dynamics of Transformation (Manchester University Press, 2025), pp. 255-79

‘“A Quite Similar Enterprise … Interpreted Quite Differently”? James Buchanan, John Rawls and the Politics of the Social Contract’ (with Zofia Stemplowska), Modern Intellectual History, 18 (2021), pp. 1010-1033

The Neo-Liberal Age? Britain Since the 1970s (co-edited with Aled Davies and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite) (UCL Press, 2021)

The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland (Cambridge University Press, 2020) [selected as one of the Five Best Books on Scottish Nationalism here]

‘Free Markets and Feminism: The Neo-Liberal Defence of the Male Breadwinner Model in Britain, c. 1980-97’, Women’s History Review, 28 (2019), pp. 297-316

‘Currents of Neo-Liberalism: British Political Ideologies and the New Right, c. 1955-79’, English Historical Review, 131 (2016), pp. 823-50

‘Freedom, the Common Good and the Rule of Law: Lippmann and Hayek on Economic Planning’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 73 (2012), pp. 47-68

Making Thatcher’s Britain (co-edited with Robert Saunders) (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

‘At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930-47’, Historical Journal, 53 (2010), pp. 129-51

Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900-64 (Manchester University Press, 2007, paperback 2011)