Twentieth Century British History - current issue

Coal Strikes on the Home Front: Miners' Militancy and Socialist Politics in the Second World War

Gildart, K. — 2009-05-12

The impact of the Second World War on British society has provided fertile ground for historical research. Historians have questioned the once orthodox view of the ‘people's war’ and pointed to divisions across social classes. This article extends such analyses by examing political factionalism within the trade union movement. Through an examination of miners’ strikes it explores socialist traditions, cultures and organizations in the coal industry. The coalfields of South Wales, Scotland and Cumberland provide case studies that show that the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) contained a variety of socialist currents that were in conflict in terms of attitudes to the war, the organizational structure of the industry and the use of the strike weapon in a period of national crisis. The historiography of industrial relations during the Second World War has tended to concentrate on the politics of the Labour and Communist parties. The case studies show that the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was also significant as a vehicle for socialist ideas and reflecting miners’ discontent. The ILP articulated an industrial strategy that for a short period (1941–44) challenged the hegemony of Labour and Communist leaderships within particular districts of the MFGB.

Workplace Conflict and the Origins of the 1984-85 Miners' Strike in Scotland

Phillips, J. — 2009-05-12

Literature on the 1984–5 miners’ strike in Britain tends to be dominated by examination of peak level relations between the Conservative government, the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The strike is usually depicted as being illegitimately imposed, without a national ballot, on the industry and the miners by the NUM leadership. This article develops a more rounded perspective on the strike, by locating its origins in workplace conflict which had been steadily escalating in the early 1980s in the Scottish coalfields. A significant portion of Scottish miners, anxious about employment prospects and angry about managerial incursions on established joint industrial regulation of daily mining operations, pushed their union towards a more militant position. This subverts the conventional picture of the strike as a top-down phenomenon. In this respect events in Scotland, which rarely feature in established literature, were in fact extremely important, shaping the national strike that emerged from the workforce's opposition to managerial authoritarianism as well as the closure of ‘uneconomic’ pits. The peak level context of deteriorating relations and pit level details of incrementally intensifying workplace conflict are established through industry and trade union records and press accounts.

'To Try and Find Out What is being Done to Whom, by Whom and with What Results': The Creation of Psychosexual Counselling Policy in England, 1972-1979

Irwin, R. — 2009-05-12

Although neglected in recent sexual health policy, psychosexual services were briefly during the 1970s the focus of a reluctant policy initiative by the Department of Health and Social Security. In part, a response to the (ultimately short-lived) optimism generated by the emergence of sex therapy, this policy initiative was also precipitated by the transfer of the Family Planning Association (FPA)'s clinical services into the National Health Service. The Department's policy on psychosexual counselling—a combination of information-gathering and the funding of experimental training schemes—enabled it to avoid making any commitment to the expansion of psychosexual services until responsibility for such decisions could be delegated downwards to a newly created local administrative level of the health service. It also helped to maintain a ‘mixed economy’ of providers of psychosexual services drawn from the statutory and non-statutory sectors, albeit with the National Marriage Guidance Council supplanting the role of the FPA in the voluntary sector. Analysis of this policy reveals how, at a time of rising social expectations about the treatment of sexual problems, the Department successfully averted any significant incursion of sexology and innovative psychological therapies into the health service.

Searching for the Soul of Russia: British Perceptions of Russia during the First World War

Hughes, M. — 2009-05-12

British attitudes towards tsarist Russia were often extremely negative before the First World War, despite the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907, since the country was still widely seen as a backward land ruled over by an autocratic government. The outbreak of war meant that Russia became a vital ally for Britain in the struggle with the central powers. Its presence in the allied coalition nevertheless made it difficult to present the conflict as a fight for liberty and democracy against Prussian militarism. Although official propaganda focused on presenting a positive image of Britain to other countries, numerous informal efforts were made during the war to promote a more positive image of Russia to a British audience. Writers and journalists such as Stephen Graham and J.W. Mackail built on the growing pre-war interest in Russian literature and ballet to suggest that the country had its own vibrant culture, and could not simply be rejected as a backward nation, but was instead a suitable ally in the war against Germany and Austro-Hungary. There was nevertheless always a tension between those who believed that the vibrancy of Russian culture existed despite the autocratic government of Nicholas II, and other ambassadors of the Russian ‘soul’ who feared that political liberalization would in time undermine a valuable Russian exceptionalism.

Thrice Denied: 'Declinism' as a Recurrent Theme in British History in the Long Twentieth Century

Tomlinson, J. — 2009-05-12

From around 1870, when Britain reached the apogee of its industrial predominance, the country has experienced relative decline as the size of its economy in relation to the rest of the world has fallen. This inescapable process has been accompanied by a recurrent politics and history which have interpreted this decline not as the result of the inevitable competitive rough and tumble development of global capitalism, but as evidence of pathological failings in British society, creating a persistent ‘declinist’ underpinning to accounts of modern Britain. These have suggested that British society has had profound failings in almost all areas—economic, technological, political and cultural. The pattern has been for declinist narratives to be initiated in the political arena, then to be taken up by historians, to be followed in turn by historians rebuttals of such arguments. This pattern can be discerned in the history and historiography of the 1870–1914 period, the inter-war years, and for post-1945. However, it has been strongest for the post-war period, and especially for the years since the Thatcher government of the 1980s. This article outlines these developments, and offers a critique of such declinism as a useful way to understand twentieth century Britain. It suggests that historians have too often in the past based their approach on contemporary, highly politicized and polemical discourses, but that in a number of areas work is now being published which allows us to construct more productive narratives for this period.

The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. By Guy Ortolano.

Collini, S. — 2009-05-12

Life on Air: A History of Radio Four. By David Hendy.

Baxendale, J. — 2009-05-12

Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity, and the Politics of Land, 1880-1914. By Paul Readman.

Packer, I. — 2009-05-12

Bloody Old Britain: O.G.S. Crawford and the Archaeology of Modern Life. By Kitty Hauser.

Anthony, S. — 2009-05-12

Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale. By Dai Smith.

Howell, D. — 2009-05-12

Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1874-1908. By William Oddie.

Stapleton, J. — 2009-05-12

Trials of Irish History: Genesis and Evolution of a Reappraisal 1938-2000. By Evi Gkotzaridis. * Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality During the Second World War. By Eunan O'Halpin.

Girvin, B. — 2009-05-12

Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. By Jerome de Groot.

Fleming, N.C. — 2009-05-12

Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. By Juliette Pattinson.

Fox, J. — 2009-05-12

Gender, Professions and Discourse: Early Twentieth-Century Women's Autobiography. By Christine Etherington-Wright.

McCarthy, H. — 2009-05-12

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. By Carole Boyce Davies.

Perry, K. H. — 2009-05-12

The Labour Party and Constitutional Reform: A History of Constitutional Conservatism. By Peter Dorey.

Crowley, M. J — 2009-05-12

Reginald McKenna: Financier among Statesmen, 1863-1916. By Martin Farr.

Godden, C. — 2009-05-12