A conference examining the legacy of the Blair years will be held in Birmingham next week.

Speakers at the day-long event include Ladywood MP Clare Short - who resigned from the former Prime Minister’s Government in protest against the Iraq War - and former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg.

A number of other social, cultural and political commentators and scholars will also speak at the conference to be held at Aston University on Friday June 27.

It has been arranged to coincide with the first anniversary of Tony Blair’s departure from Number 10.

Organiser Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya, from the university’s sociology department, said it aimed to put New Labour, the “Third Way” and Blairism into its historical context.

“It is an academic conference out of the sociology group in Aston to try and think about how we understand what happened during the Blair years,” said Prof Bhattacharyya.

“There was a lot of speculation after Thatcher yet we haven’t quite got to that point with the Blair years even though so much has happened since.”

Prof Bhattacharyya said her own view was that one of the main effects of the Blair administration was that it “increased our tendency to be very individualistic”.

“There has been quite good stuff about thinking about rights and responsibilities,” she said.

“But I think it has just added to the way we don’t think about any bigger group. It is just more and more choice. There are things about the Blair Government that increased that tendency.

“The Government decided to speak to us as consumer and give us our consumer choice. That has made us more lonely.
“It didn’t challenge the bad values of Thatcherism enough.”

The conference will look at the optimism surrounding Labour’s landmark 1997 victory after 18 years of Conservative rule.

“People thought it would be a more collective, carrying society instead of fighting each other for resources, which was the feeling of Thatcherism,” said Prof Bhattacharyya.

“Sadly after the initial optimism a lot of the key initiatives of the Blair years consolidated what Thatcher was.”

Ms Short, MP for Ladywood, resigned from the Cabinet in 2006 in disagreement over the Iraq conflict and has since stood as an independent for the Birmingham ward.

Prof Bhattacharyya added: “The danger is she will take over the whole event because clearly that is a huge part in her life and a hugely antagonistic one.

Moazzam Begg spent nearly three years in Guantanamo Bay as a suspected terrorist. He was released in January 2005 without charge.
Also speaking at the event will be Prof Bill Bowring, an expert on civil liberties, Wilf Sullivan, who will talk about New Labour in relation to trade unionism, playwright David Edgar and activist Selma James.