Illusionary inclusion – what went wrong with New Labour's landmark educational policy?

This article examines the emergence and evolution of New Labour's landmark educational policy; namely that of inclusion. The author, Alan Hodkinson, associate professor at the Centre for Cultural and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, illuminates his conceptual difficulties in attempting to define what inclusion was and what inclusive education became during the latter part of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty‐first century. Throughout this article he endeavours to observe and define inclusive education in England through the employment of critical analysis of teacher discourse and examination of the vocabulary of inclusion. The article's contextual precept is that, rather than creating a brave new world for equality and social justice, inclusive education here was rendered illusionary by the actors who colonised and striated inclusion's space upon a stage of competing policy initiatives and practicalities of educational settings.