Begun, Continued: A Personal and Political Memoir

Alan Howarth writes about British politics from a unique perspective. He sat on both the Conservative and Labour benches in the House of Commons, represented a rural seat in England and an industrial seat in Wales, served as a minister in Tory and Labour administrations, and has been a member of both Houses of Parliament.

Begun, Continued evokes a vanished world of hopes and fears in the 1950s and '60s before chronicling the fifty years of politics stretching from the vexed era of the 1970s to the turmoil of the Brexit years.

There is much to stimulate thought in this book as Howarth discusses issues with which he has been engaged during his political lifetime:

• The end of empire and new ideas of nationhood, the impact of immigration and Britain's endless quest for the right relationship with Europe.
• The advent of neoliberalism, its excesses, its divisive effects, the stagnation of productivity and living standards and embattled public services.
• Democracy's inability adequately to address the paramount issue of climate change.
• Disaffection from politics, experiments with constitutional change, anxieties about corruption and the difficulties of practising democratic politics in a postmodern culture.

He offers his reflections on the challenges for the future of western democracy with the rise of populism across Europe, even before the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the USA.

ALAN HOWARTH spent some years in research, writing and teaching before becoming a senior Conservative Party official during Margaret Thatcher's opposition years. He entered parliament as Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon in 1983. He witnessed with deepening unease the widening of social division in the 1980s. He was a government whip and an Education Minister in the late 1980s and early '90s. He illuminates the interaction between Westminster and Whitehall and the processes whereby he was able to extend opportunity in higher education.In 1995, despairing of the Conservative Party's indifference to the social and economic damage caused by its uncritical espousal of neoliberalism, Alan crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join Labour - the first Conservative MP ever to do so. Elected as Labour MP for Newport East in 1997, he served in the Blair administration as Minister for Employment, implementing a more humane and constructive deal for the unemployed; as Minister for Equalities, working to strengthen civil rights for disabled people; as Minister for the Arts, advancing a broad agenda to improve provision for the arts and culture and access to them. In 2005, he was appointed to the House of Lords as Lord Howarth of Newport. Unusually among Labour politicians he supported Brexit. For many years, Alan has campaigned to gain better recognition and policy support for practitioners of the arts in healthcare.