Introduction
For anyone studying deprived neighbourhoods policy, Harold Wilson’s speech of 5 May 1968 is an unavoidable landmark. It marked the first recognition by central government of the problems affecting certain deprived areas and the entry of area-based policies into its agenda. It also provides a revealing snapshot of a broader societal, political, and socio-economic context that resonates strongly today.
Fifty-eight years later, on 5 February 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered a speech on community cohesion following the extension of the Pride in Place programme, the central government’s main policy targeting deprived areas, amid growing concern for “left-behind areas”. This speech evokes a strong sense of “déjà vu”, as many parallels can be drawn between 1968 and 2026.
While “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”, with similar issues regularly re-emerging across different contexts, comparing these two speeches helps identifying both continuities and changes, clarifying what distinguishes today from yesterday and informing reflections on tomorrow. The analysis first compares the structure and content of the speeches, before examining their respective contexts to highlight convergences and divergences.
The article proposes a way to analyse the present from an historical perspective. In line with sociohistory methodology, it combines historiography and political science. For the Wilson period, it draws on an unprecedented corpus of official and unofficial central government archives: speeches, press releases, working papers, minutes, notes, correspondences, drafts, etc. For the Starmer period, in the absence of archives – that don’t yet exist as they still are closed working documents –, it relies on publicly available sources, such as speeches, press releases, reports and newspaper articles.
Two speeches that echo?
On 5 May 1968, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson delivered in Birmingham a major speech outlining the driving force behind his action: his vision of a society based on “equality of opportunity” and a “classless society”, while refusing to “divide this nation into first and second class citizens […] whatever their colour, […] their creed”. Responding to the Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of April 1968, Wilson denounced “the reasoning of those who in the past days have marched from Smithfield and the docks to the House of Commons, to proclaim the doctrines of a new racialism”. He warned that the “future of every child, white or black or brown” and even the “survival of this nation” were at stake and called for a response “in each of our cities and towns, in Birmingham and Smethwick, in Wolverhampton, in Bradford, in Huddersfield, and in the metropolitan boroughs”.
Acknowledging the difficulty to “catch up in so short time with the long years of drift and neglect”, “despite the most massive provision of resources for social advance we have had in our history”, Wilson proposed a three-part plan.
He first argued for immigration control “to ensure that those coming into our cities and towns do not run further ahead of the capacity of those areas to absorb them”.
Then, he rejected controversial claims that social strain was caused by immigrants and reaffirming the principle that settled immigrants are “in every sense British citizens, entitled as of right to equality with all other British citizens”.
Finally, stressing that “still more has to be done” to address the “social problem presented for nearly 60 of our cities and towns”, Wilson announced to the general surprise that his Government was “ready to embark on a new Urban programme”, a new area-based social policy in line with the recent “authorised special help in education” and whose details the “Home Office will be in charge of working out”.
Fifty-eight years later, on 5 February 2026, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered a speech in Hastings to give concrete expression to the extension of his area-based social policy, the Pride in Place programme. Like Wilson, he framed his address around the “nation”, but focused not on race or equality, but on “pride” as “the key […] not only for uniting our country but also for finding, in each other, the strength to create […] a Britain built for all”. Acknowledging policy failures, he stated that “we cannot be blind to the reality” that “we’ve taken our eyes off the ball”, pointing to the erosion of the “social contract”, due to the poor practice of its values. As in 1968, Starmer denounced those “who want to divide” the country by “selling lies”, “exploiting the social scars” and claiming “that entire cities and towns […] are ‘wastelands’, ‘no go zones’ and worse”, implicitly referring to far-right discourse.
The Prime Minister argued that the “test of our times” is “no longer about left or right but a contest between renewal and grievance”, presenting in a four-stage argument “the path of unity” as the “only way [to] change Britain”.
After outlining first his socioeconomic measures to “strengthen our society […] across the entire country” and to “restore hope in Britain”, the Prime Minister insisted then on the need “to reform the State so that it recognises contribution as the common sense basis for integration”.
Unlike Wilson who moved from a restrictive emphasis on immigration controls towards a more positive one, Starmer reversed the order of argument by first emphasising contribution of those who “rebuild this country” and “become not just citizen, but neighbours, friends, equals… part of us”, recalling the “Windrush” generation. He then addressed the sensitive issue of “migration”, warning as in 1968 against those “who think whiteness is the same thing as Britishness” and against “any form of extremism” from “extreme right” and “Islamist ideologies”. He called for clarity both about the rights and duties incumbent upon those who belong to the nation as well as on measures required to address the “failures in Britain’s migration system”.
Finally, while Wilson used the Urban Programme to give substance to his vision (while remaining vague on its details), Starmer gaves coherence and concrete embodiment to his, through the already-established Pride in Place scheme, which he presented as offering a tangible solution for reviving civic pride. Without focusing on immigration, the emphasis was the same: to address the “devastating decline [of] communities” in certain areas. Initiatives like investing in “the youth centre in Rhyl”, running “bingo nights in Colerain”, and creating “better sports facilities in Hastings” were all, according to the Prime Minister ways to “reverse the decline […] in 284 neighbourhoods” by empowering communities to “take control of their own fate” and “change what matters to them”.
Like the Urban Programme, Pride in Place has a central role in the Prime Minister’s broader political project. It enables him to revive integration by valuing the diversity of the “four nations” and “local identities” and to stimulate national cohesion by joining his proposed “partnership of pride”, that “social glue”, that “force that holds together a community and a country” and allows citizens to “run through the fire together” “for the renewal of this great nation”.
Two periods that mirror one another?
From Wilson to Starmer: Recurrent structural dilemmas and policy responses of Labour in Government
Beyond their shared concern for national cohesion, Wilson and Starmer governed in periods that display strong parallels, both confronting comparable political, social and economic challenges and advancing similar policy solutions.
Politically, a first similarity lies in the rise of far-right populism.
In April 1968, at a Conservative Political meeting in Birmingham, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence Enoch Powell warned that “whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England” would be transformed by immigration, invoking the image of the “River Tiber foaming with much blood” and denouncing a “tragic and intractable phenomenon”. Despite sacking Powell from the Shadow Cabinet, the Leader of the Opposition (and former Prime minister), Edward Heath echoed some of Powell’s sentiments at a speech in Dudley on 24 April relayed by the Times, alerting of fears of “overcrowding and shortage in housing, […] insufficient school places and inadequate teaching facilities, and […] health and other social services breaking down under the strain”. He called for “special efforts of the central government concentrated on the areas of the greatest need”.
After Brexit, similar rhetoric re-emerged with far-right ideas of Reform, whose leader, Nigel Farage, described at a press conference on 23 August 2025 a country in “total despair”, coping with an “invasion” of migrants which constituted a “massive crisis […] posing a national security threat [and] leading to public anger […] not very far away from civil disorder”.
A second political parallel concerns crisis of confidence in the State.
In 1968, this took the form of questioning the twenty years old Welfare State after the “rediscovery of poverty” and declining confidence in existing policies. Despite rising living standards, multiple deprivation persisted for a minority.
In 2026, the distrust extends beyond State inefficiency to governing elites perceived as disconnected. Echoing Labour’s 1960s efforts to rationalise and improve coordination in State action, Keir Starmer similarly issued a call to “reform the state”, a central pillar of his Plan for Change and his idea of a “mission-driven Government”.
Immigration constitutes a third politically explosive issue.
In 1968, amid rising racism and xenophobia, immigrants and their descendants were accused, as noted by Rex, of “making the housing shortage worse, [being] persistently unemployed and living off public assistance”. In line with the 1965 White Paper, the Government response combined controls in the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act with measures “compensating” according Edwards and Batley “some of the transitional problems” caused by their presence, alongside the development of a new subject: race relations policy. Powell’s speech also occurred amid debates over the Race Relations Bill and controversy surrounding the Kenyan Asians. The Cabinet Office in a note from 1984 described this period as marked by “political storms surrounding the levels of Commonwealth immigration revealed by the 1966 Census […] and by Mr Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech”.
In 2026, immigration remains highly contentious, exacerbated by the unfulfilled promises of the Brexit campaign of stricter entry controls, increasingly framed through a security lens.
These political tensions are closely linked to similar socio-economic crises.
In 1968, post-devaluation difficulties led to austerity and to a “Welfare blacklash” that weakened Labour electorally. In 2026, the cost-of-living crisis, globalisation, and the legacies of the 2008 financial crisis and Covid pandemic produce comparable issues. Both crises were expressed spatially by widening territorial inequalities and worsening conditions particularly in local concentrations of deprivation.
In the 1960s, this spatial dimension of poverty was highlighted by reports and the 1961 Census analysis, with politicians warning during the 1968 Housing Bill debate about the unpopularity and dysfunctions of high-rise social housing. In 2026, similar concerns are at the core of debates around the Grenfell tragedy and the emergency of “geography of discontent” from “left-behind areas”.
Beyond shared challenges, both Prime Ministers mobilised similar migration policy solutions and identified advantages in area-based approach to social problems.
As Higgins and al. explained, the 1960s marked the moment when “social policy goes spatial”, influenced by the US War on Poverty and concerns among central government over the “uneven geographical distribution of family breakdown and its symptoms”. Policymakers assumed, according McKay and Cox, that remaining deprivation was residual and that “the route was not through universalism” but through a positive discrimination.
Already observed in past social or economic policies, the novelty lay in the State’s territorial application of this approach, using instruments such as the 1966 Section 11 special grant or the 1968 Educational Priority Areas (EPAs) to “concentrate attention and resources on geographical areas”. In both 1968 and 2026, the Urban Programme and Pride in Place illustrate how area-based policies offered Prime Ministers an instrumental and presentational tool, allowing the State to visibly and spatially embody its narrative while fulfilling its missions of national solidarity and socio-territorial cohesion. Furthermore, by operating in favour of a residual portion of areas and people at the margins of mainstream programmes, it delivers quick, low-cost and tangible outcomes.
Wilson vs Starmer: Distinct governing strategies in changing agenda-setting and policymaking contexts
Despite strong parallels, 2026 is not 1968. Contexts, stakes and policy instruments have evolved, and each period must be understood within its own temporal framework. While similarities exist, the challenges and the settings in which each Prime Minister’s speech is delivered differ in three respects.
Firstly, the stakes are not of the same kind.
In 1968, Wilson sought to prevent national disintegration caused by racial fragmentation and ghettos, drawing on American examples. At the time, Powell position remained relatively marginal. In 2026, by contrast, Starmer faces a far more immediate threat from populist and extremist ideology, with Reform posing a direct political risk echoing developments observed in the United States under Donald Trump.
His speech can be read as a response to the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods’ final report “No Short Cuts” on 28 January, but also as an attempt to distance himself from criticism of his June 2025 immigration speech which was seen as echoing the “Rivers of Blood” rhetoric.
The challenge is also more personal for Starmer, whose leadership is openly contested, unlike Wilson’s. Indeed, his position has been repeatedly weakened by political scandals, notably the Peter Mandelson affair, which disrupted his agenda on 5 February 2026. Ironically, Mandelson was the Minister who announced on 14 August 1997 the creation of the Social Exclusion Unit working on deprived neighbourhoods under Blair administration. This controversy diverted attention from Pride in Place and from Starmer’s attempt to promote an alternative to a “Broken Britain” narrative. As reported by the BBC, the Prime Minister was frustrated that “tomorrow’s front pages are unlikely to be about the scheme, despite its potential to affect millions of lives” and his orchestrated sequence this week to focus attention on it with High Streets Strategy announcements and English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill debate.
Such agenda displacement is not new in neighbourhoods policy under this administration. It had already occurred on 25 September 2025 during the National Party Conferences, when Starmer’s announcement of the Pride in Place programme, as part of his Plan for Neighbourhoods, was overshadowed by controversies surrounding his digital IDs proposal and media attention to Farage’s speech. This muted promotion was further weakened by the absence of any mention of the £5bn scheme in his speech at Labour Party Conference.
Secondly, the policymaking processes behind the Urban Programme and Pride in Place diverge sharply, as each emerged from distinct political and institutional contexts.
Although the origins of Pride in Place remain difficult to reconstruct in the absence of archives, the programme clearly reflects Labour’s ambition of “national renewal” and its intention to “mark the turning of the page” of what the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) termed “lost decade” of 2010s Conservative rule. That era, marked by the financial crisis and riots, saw the end of central government neighbourhood policies in favour of more localist and city-centred approaches. The Labour Government now seeks to reconnect with the “golden period” of area-based policy, drawing on New Labour’s New Deal for Communities and “the community development policies of Wilson and Callaghan”.
Nevertheless, Pride in Place appears largely to be shaped by an exogenous process of agenda setting, reflecting a policymaking model driven by sustained lobbying from organised socioeconomic interests. Indeed, since 2012, the charity Local Trust has led the Big Local experiment for the National Lottery Community Fund. From 2019, it promoted with the Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI) evidence on left-behind areas through a new Community Needs Index and, within the Community Wealth Fund Alliance, called in September for the Government to “allocate an appropriate proportion of the Stronger Towns Fund and the proposed UK Shared Prosperity Fund” to “double-disadvantaged areas”, as well as “to establish a joint cross-government/civil society task force”. This led to the creation in June 2020 of an informal All-Party Parliamentary Group for left-behind areas, which published in October 2023 its final report, “A Neighbourhood Strategy for National Renewal”, in response to the 2022 Levelling Up White Paper. In June 2024, after encouraging the new Labour government to a new commitment with its Neighbourhood Manifesto, Local Trust has since September 2024 supported the ICON chaired by the former Blair’s Minister, Hilary Armstrong.
By contrast, the Urban Programme resulted from the internal reflections of central government.
First, from 1967, Dereck Morrell, Head of the Home Office Children’s Department, influenced by the Plowden Committee, the American experience and the intellectual rise on prevention and community development, proposed Community Development Areas (CDAs) in the “follow-up” to the 1965 White Paper on The Child, the Family and the Young Offender. Instead of being included in the Government’s response to juvenile delinquency, CDAs were presented in December 1967 as anticipating the Seebohm report.
In early 1968, an interdepartmental working party assessed the “desirability and feasibility” of such a programme described as action-research experiments to “discover how better to offer [to broken communities in high-risk areas] support and strengthen their sense of belonging” by “organising a joint attack on the social problems arising”, redistributing resources “to meet the needs of decaying city areas” and involving people in “self-help and community service”.
CDAs reflected broader 1960s concerns about the need to resolve the issues of the “vertically organised” Welfare State by a “coordinated” and “holistic approach”, and of the “gap between the social ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’” by “positive discrimination in favour of ‘black’ areas” experiencing multiple deprivation.
Simultaneously, while the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act reduced migratory flows, another Home Office division raised concern over “the increasing serious problem of the integration of second and third generation immigrants”. In March 1968, the Cabinet Secretary Burke Trent reported the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for “more effective interdepartmental arrangements” and a “new impetus”.
The new Ministerial Committee on Immigration and Assimilation examined concepts like “multiracial society”, “non-racial society”, “racial harmony” noting the “largest determinant of the problem”: “the existence of concentrations of coloured communities”. Drawing on “the analogy of the CDAs” and the Plowden report, the idea emerged “to mount early experiments” to “channel more [resources] to meet the need of immigrant communities”. Yet, this “specific plan of aid” for “interlocked issues of education, housing and immigrant concentration” faced Treasury’s fear that “preferential treatment might produce a ‘backlash’ effect”. For Home Secretary James Callaghan at the Ministerial Committee meeting on 10 April 1968, the idea primarily aimed at “improving community relations”.
Within ten days, convergence occurred within ten days and overcame the “political difficulties of setting up the idea of positive discrimination in favour of immigrant areas”. Wilson’s Government shifted from immigration-specific to socially-specific area-based policy by, as described by Higgins and al., “dressing up these as urban areas of general social need”. Enoch Powell’s speech on 20 April acted as accelerator, moving the process from reflection to decision.
Noting poll support for “fair treatment of immigrants already in this country”, the Parliamentary Committee advised on 25 April that the Government should “make an immediate and massive effort” and “grasp the opportunity presented by the current situation to rekindle enthusiasm for humane and tolerant policies”. Labour’s May Day speeches were seen as an opportunity to promote “peaceful relations between the races” and dispel “damaging myths” rather than dwell on party controversies.
The policy to be adopted was subject to debate. Beyond opposition to preferential treatment, the Treasury feared higher public expenditure and the Cabinet Office deemed it “premature”, while some departments favoured dispersal and the prioritisation of “twilight areas”, “within existing national programmes”, which, though “not specifically directed towards integration […] should help indirectly”.
Three days before Wilson’s speech, Home Secretary James Callaghan warned of “the gravity of the situation”, which, without action, would be “disastrous in the short term for the Labour Party” and “in the long term create an insoluble social problem”. He proposed an “Urban Programme” targeting the “most hard-pressed areas” that would benefit “the community in general” rather than ethnic groups. The Prime Minister subsequently decided to “make major speeches” announcing the programme.
Thirdly, while both initiatives rely on area-based approaches, they are by no means identical copy or a repetition. Pride in Place inherits from the Urban Programme but reflects five decades of policy evolution and lessons from ideas and experiments developed by successive governments, moving from a “state-led approach” to a “community-led approach”. Unlike 1968, when expectations were minimal for a new and experimental policy, Pride in Place operates in a context shaped by accumulated experiences, established references, and heightened public expectations.
Conclusion
Historical analysis benefits from hindsight, once events have unfolded and outcomes are visible through temporal distance and archival access, revealing not only formal decisions but also the ambitions, informal dynamics, and strategies shaping policy.
At this stage, it is too early to know whether Keir Starmer’s speech will acquire Harold Wilson’s historical significance, much depends on whether rhetorical commitments are translated into sustained action.
The 1968 experience highlights several uncertainties for central government: whether a community-led programme can be as foundational as the Urban Programme and withstand political change without being diluted or relabelled; whether it can reduce social and territorial resentment; whether it will receive strong and durable central government support despite its community-driven orientation; and, finally, whether mainstream policies will also be reconsidered. As the development of the 1970s Inner Cities White Paper showed, specific initiatives alone are no “magic solution” without broader structural change.
However, we may also ask what lessons the Wilson government’s experience can offer for today’s quest for national cohesion amid the rise of the populist right. Labour lost the 1970 General Election, and although the Conservatives maintained the Urban Programme, they hardened immigration policy. Today, with Reform attracting Conservative supporters, electoral temptations to adopt populist and nationalist rhetoric are strong.
The Labour government now stands at a pivotal moment. Defeat at the next General Election is not inevitable but will depend on the choices made.
As under Wilson, the challenge is to hold that line by presenting the facts and addressing the real sources of exclusion, rather than playing the game of populism itself, which feeds on feelings of decline and “left-behindness” by scapegoating immigration.
This requires careful presentation and communication to avoid agenda disruptions that damage the policy, as well as a sustained focus on delivery so that policies reach the “last mile” and make a tangible difference in everyday life.
Unlike the Urban Programme and past initiatives, the Pride in Place programme is built on a community-led basis, which requires both trusting and mobilising communities, and adapting governmental practices and mentalities accordingly. The 1968 consensus was not automatic but resulted from sustained political work to build it, foster a collective movement, and avoid tensions by improving areas for all. Renewed with contemporary ideas of ownership, pride, and capacity-building, such an approach may help curb populism.
Two cautions follow.
First, Pride in Place must not become merely a symbolic flagship, showcased when convenient, nor a nostalgic replication of New Labour’s New Deal for Communities, sometimes regarded as a golden age. If earlier models had been unassailable successes, they would not have been dismantled after 2010. The programme therefore requires a durable and widely shared foundation.
Second, embarking on a community-led approach is necessary to reconnect with people, consistent with past lessons, and with the idea of building a foundation resilient to political change if communities are truly in the driving seat. However, it is important to ensure that placing communities in the driving seat does not become a convenient excuse for central government to withdraw from its responsibilities or to pursue cost savings. A community-led approach should not be a substitute for State action, nor should it neglect the crucial role of central government, particularly when local issues stem from national structures. Finally, national cohesion cannot emerge solely from the aggregation of local communities but depends also on a broader collective project capable of bringing people together and fostering a shared sense of belonging and pride within one, though diverse, community.
