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Wednesday, April 01, 2015

L3 Text commentary

There are many different ways of writing a text commentary well. But in every case, the aim is to show

  • that your English is good
- that  you have a good knowledge of important events and trends in British history, in particular of the events before and after the appearance of this document which help us to understand its effects and its scope.
- that you understand the aims and methods of the document you are presenting: what the document is doing

In every case, your commentary should begin and end with the document.


The following is not really a “corrigé”, just a series of ideas which it would have been good to weave in there.

Let us face the future

This is an extract from the Labour party manifesto from the 1945 elections. Its aim is to persuade people to vote Labour, despite the fact that the war has been won under the leadership of the Conservative, Winston Churchill.

The election campaign which includes this document will be successful in the view of those who wrote it.: Labour will win a major victory and introduce some of the most important welfare reforms, in health, education, housing  and elsewhere, in the entire history of Britain. The reforms will leave a lasting legacy, and will not be reversed when the Conservatives are again in government in the 1950s. After the disappointments of 1924 and 1931, the 1945 victory will soon be seen as the Golden Age for Labour party activists, in particular the more Left wing ones.

The first part of the document is aimed at reducing the risk that respect for Winston Churchill as “the man who won the war” will lead people to vote Conservative. The Conservative party for these elections did not issue a traditional manifesto, but a personal declaration by Winston Churchill, because they wanted to benefit from Churchill’s reputation as a national hero who was able, through very dark times (for example the bombing of the cities in the blitz, severe rationing, evacuation, and the risk of invasion) to remain determined and to direct the war in a way which made victory possible.

A number of tactics are used to do this, without directly attacking Mr Churchill (which would be politically risky). First it is stated that the people in general, and not “any one man or set of men” (that is, Winston Churchill and his fellow Conservatives) were responsible for the victory. Secondly, readers are reminded that the government which won the war, although it was led by a Conservative, was in fact a national government which included both Labour and Conservative ministers. What is more, it states that the formation in 1940 of the national government, and the fall of Chamberlain’s government, was at the initiative of Labour MPs. The message is clear : Labour ministers and  MPs  were part of the leadership of the nation, not simply working for Churchill. Because of this, readers are meant to conclude, Labour can be trusted to lead the nation in peacetime.

The second section deals with Labour proposals on health - both the health service itself (free hospitals, doctors  and dentists will be instituted in 1948, an extremely radical reform carried out against opposition from Conservatives and from doctors), and the “good food and good homes” which can help stop people becoming ill in the first place. Britain is still a place where chronic bad health is common: tuberculosis, bad teeth, indeed all the illnesses of poverty. In the context of an almost bankrupt country, these proposals are very ambitious.

In the last section, the claim is made that, not only is social insurance (against unemployment, sckness or old age) tremendously important and to be extended to all citizens (before the war only some had such insurance), but it is Labour who can be trusted to do this. Firstly, they say, because Labour has always pushed for such reforms whereas the Conservatives have always opposed them, and secondly because Conservatives would be likely to cut back on social spending as soon as the economy is in trouble. In fact, the reforms will be so popular that, for the most part, the Conservative government of 1951 will not reverse them. Indeed, in some areas such as housing, the Conservatives will do at least as much as Labour. It is not until the end of the long boom and the arrival of Thatcherism at the head of the Conservative party that determined attempts will be made to reduce social spending significantly.

If we look at the language used in this document, we see both solemn vocabulary and informal vocabulary. The solemn vocabulary “Victory is assured”, “sacred trust”, “high resolve” “fateful day” shows ther writers share in the national pride at victory, and the solemnity is supposed to be appropriate after a war which was victorious but also tragic form any who lost loved ones.  The informal vocabulary “mean and shabby”, “ a rainy day”, “proper conditions” “costly things” “runnning true to form” helps give the impression that the people who are writing the manifesto are ordinary people, using the same everyday conversational words that masses of voters would use.  To talk of “proper social security” is to present social security as a common-sense policy, one that could only be opposed by the unreasonable. The tone of the document is inclusive: “we” all agree on the need for government to do more to help people in difficulty.


PS: some favourite mistakes, generally to avoid in all text commentaries

“The government’s policy was efficient”. If you say this, you suggest that everybody agrees on the same objective, and the actions of this government successfully moved towards this objective. This may occasionally be a reasonable thing to say, but in almost all cases, politics is a realm where different forces and organizations *do not agree* on what is an appropriate objective (that’s why we have different political parties). You need instead to define precisely the objective. “The government’s policy was successful in raising more money from taxes and spending it on free health care, and this policy was so popular that the following, Conservative, government kept the system essentially as it was.”

“The government failed”. We see the same problem here : failed to do what, and in whose opinion? You need to be specific: “The Wilson and Heath governments failed in their attempt to significantly reduce the power of trade unions”. Similarly several people wrote “the Labour government of 1945-51 was a successful one”. This is a matter of opinion, so you must not write this. Margaret Thatcher and her supporters would not agree: they considered that Labour government, which nationalized many industries and increased income tax for the better off, as a very bad example. You need to write specific evaluations: “Attlee’s government was successful in instituting a free health service and launching the building of large numbers of council houses, both of which initiatives were very popular and were not reversed by the Conservative government of 1951”.

PPS: I have sometimes used a code when marking your scripts. G= grammar problem, V= vocabulary, S= style (too formal or too informal), Sp= spelling mistake  etc.

Information. Most people were not at all clear on the nature of the wartime government, even though this is clearly dealt with in all history books on the period. See background information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_war_ministry

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