In 1900, we (0. know) knew our place. Since then, ordinary people (1. learn) have learned to unite in common cause, and parliaments and palaces no longer (2. monopolise) monopolise politics. The twentieth century, perhaps more than any other, (3. be) was the century of the activist, when political initiative passed to the streets and factories. Flashes of popular involvement (4. exist) had existed in previous eras but only in localised or short-lived forms. But by 1900 the spread of industry, ideology and voting itself (5. lead) had led to the democratisation not only of forms of government, but also of participation in the political process.
In Britain, the suffragettes (6. epitomise) epitomised this change. Their struggle for votes for women (7. involve) involved techniques – from demonstrations and lobbying to acts of self-sacrifice and civil disobedience – that (8. remain) remain a template for mass campaigning to this day. But activism (9. be) was more than anything, a creation of the working-class movement whose power (10. swell) swelled in the years around the First World War. By the 1930s, millions across the world (11. join) had joined a network of trade unions, co-ops, workers’ libraries and socialist or communist parties. At the same time, Hitler and Mussolini (12. fashion) fashioned an inverted parody of these movements with their own mass parties, women’s, youth and labour organisations. The left-wing activists later (13. play) played an important role in the armed resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The immediate political impact of 1968, the 20th century’s ultimate year of activism, (14. be) was less significant than the wider spirit of revolt it (15. fuel) fueled for a generation. The civil-rights activism of Martin Luther King and others (16. already, defeat) had already defeated racist segregation in the southern US states. In the wake of 1968, campaigns on race, gender and the environment (17. multiply) multiplied while the peace and anti-nuclear movements (18. peak) peaked in the early 80s.
By the 1980s, activism (19. begin) began to decline, as resurgent market ideology (20. seek) sought to convince people they were consumers first, citizens second. During the 90s, political activism (21. grow) grew even weaker and more fragmented. Nowadays the word activist (22. become) has become a term of abuse, even within social-democratic parties built on activism. It (23. remain) remains to be seen if once again as so often before, politics (24. become) will become a specialised function reserved for elites, or whether forcing the genie of political participation back into the bottle (25. prove) will prove to be an impossible task.
In 1900, we (0. know) knew our place. Since then, ordinary people (1. learn) have learned to unite in common cause, and parliaments and palaces no longer (2. monopolise) monopolise politics. The twentieth century, perhaps more than any other, (3. be) was the century of the activist, when political initiative passed to the streets and factories. Flashes of popular involvement (4. exist) had existed in previous eras but only in localised or short-lived forms. But by 1900 the spread of industry, ideology and voting itself (5. lead) had led to the democratisation not only of forms of government, but also of participation in the political process. In Britain, the suffragettes (6. epitomise) epitomised this change. Their struggle for votes for women (7. involve) involved techniques – from demonstrations and lobbying to acts of self-sacrifice and civil disobedience – that (8. remain) remain a template for mass campaigning to this day. But activism (9. be) was more than anything, a creation of the working-class movement whose power (10. swell) swelled in the years around the First World War. By the 1930s, millions across the world (11. join) had joined a network of trade unions, co-ops, workers’ libraries and socialist or communist parties. At the same time, Hitler and Mussolini (12. fashion) fashioned an inverted parody of these movements with their own mass parties, women’s, youth and labour organisations. The left-wing activists later (13. play) played an important role in the armed resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. The immediate political impact of 1968, the 20th century’s ultimate year of activism, (14. be) was less significant than the wider spirit of revolt it (15. fuel) fueled for a generation. The civil-rights activism of Martin Luther King and others (16. already, defeat) had already defeated racist segregation in the southern US states. In the wake of 1968, campaigns on race, gender and the environment (17. multiply) multiplied while the peace and anti-nuclear movements (18. peak) peaked in the early 80s. By the 1980s, activism (19. begin) began to decline, as resurgent market ideology (20. seek) sought to convince people they were consumers first, citizens second. During the 90s, political activism (21. grow) grew even weaker and more fragmented. Nowadays the word activist (22. become) has become a term of abuse, even within social-democratic parties built on activism. It (23. remain) remains to be seen if once again as so often before, politics (24. become) will become a specialised function reserved for elites, or whether forcing the genie of political participation back into the bottle (25. prove) will prove to be an impossible task.
