Twentieth Century British History - recent issues

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

Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity and Maturity in Understandings of Shell Shock in Britain

Meyer, J. — 2009-02-20

This article examines gendered discourses of shell shock in Britain during the First World War. Located within the context of the ideas about shell shock as a form of male hysteria put forward by Elaine Showalter, it examines the ways in which the contemporary discourses of soldiers, medical professionals and popular novelists used ideas of maturity and self-control to understand a condition that appeared to undermine both the war effort and national masculinity. It argues that contemporary understandings of authority and maturity helped to normalize shell shock as a medical condition, thereby lessening its perceived threat to society.

Networking Health Research in Britain: The Post-War Childhood Leukaemia Trials

Moscucci, O., Herring, R., Berridge, V. — 2009-02-20

The treatment of childhood leukaemia is seen as a successful historical example of the operation of the randomized controlled trial and continues to inform contemporary policy making on such trials within health research. This article analyses the scientists’ ‘story of success’ through historical research. It tells us about the organizational and professional structures of such research post-war in the United Kingdom, and examines the history of the cancer clinical trial through this particular example. The story reveals a more complex picture than the ‘heroic’ one, with key developments in the operation of post-war science, both in terms of its infrastructure and of its scientific networks, not least the rise of co-operative working among clinicians and the growing importance of statisticians in medical research and practice. It also underlines differences between the British and US approaches in which the role of one health system, the National Health Service, helped structure different, initially less intensive, patterns of response.

The Heath Government and British Defence Policy in Southeast Asia at the End of Empire (1970-71)

Benvenuti, A. — 2009-02-20

This article examines the rationale behind the Heath government's 1970 decision to negotiate a Five Power Defence agreement with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and to maintain a small British military contingent in Southeast Asia as a part of this new politico-military framework. It argues that while its overriding foreign policy concern was to end Britain's problematic relationship with the European Economic Community and to make membership of this grouping the cornerstone of its foreign policy, the Heath government was careful not to cast Britain's post-imperial future in purely European terms. The successful negotiation of the Five Power Defence Arrangements in 1970–71 was instrumental in achieving this by ensuring that London would maintain close links with key Commonwealth partners in the Asian region. In what was not only an attempt to neutralize potential domestic opposition to Britain's entry into the EEC, but also a lingering reluctance to do away with the rhetoric of Britain as a leading power with extra-European interests, Heath was eager to show that by making a contribution to the stability of Southeast Asia, Britain still had a role to play outside Europe.

'Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away'? The SDLP and the Failure of Northern Ireland's Sunningdale Experiment

McLoughlin, P. J. — 2009-02-20

This article examines the part played by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in both the making and the breakdown of the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. In particular, the article looks at the party's relations with the Irish government in this period. Specifically, it considers the charge that the SDLP—by obliging the Irish government to support its approach—pushed unionist negotiators too far at Sunningdale, producing a settlement which was predetermined towards Irish reunification, and so which justified loyalist claims that ‘Dublin is just a Sunningdale away’. The article draws on recently released archival material to show how the SDLP was, to a significant degree, able to dictate Dublin's policy on Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, suggesting that this led to a uniform and highly ambitious agenda on the part of nationalist participants at the Sunningdale conference. However, it also argues that this agenda was not realized, and that the deal made at Sunningdale was not as favourable towards the SDLP as has sometimes been suggested. Nonetheless, the article maintains that the dynamic rhetoric and perceived momentum of Irish nationalism—orchestrated largely by the SDLP—served to distort that which was actually agreed, and in this helped to undermine unionist support for Sunningdale.

Wanting and Having: New Histories of Scarcity and Excess in Modern Britain

Gurney, P. — 2009-02-20

Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900-64. By Ben Jackson.

Toye, R. — 2009-02-20

Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949-1957. By Chi-Kwan Mark.

Hampton, M. — 2009-02-20

Negotiating Boundaries in the City: Migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Britain. By Joanna Herbert.

Hackett, S. — 2009-02-20

British Popular Culture and the First World War. Edited by Jessica Meyer.

Hanna, E. — 2009-02-20

Money, Speculation and Finance in Contemporary British Fiction. By Nicky Marsh.

Michie, R. — 2009-02-20

'The Citizens of the Future': Educating the Children of the Jewish East End, c.1885-1939

Lammers, B. J. — 2008-11-03

Scholars interested in British national identity in the early twentieth century have argued that this period was one in which ideas of national belonging became increasingly exclusive. At the same time, many Anglo-Jewish historians have argued that this was a period of increasing hostility towards the Jewish presence in Britain. An examination of the education of Jewish children in London's East End from the beginning of large-scale Jewish immigration in the mid-1880s through to the beginning of the Second World War, however, indicates that the story was more complicated than this. Although there were various early twentieth-century discourses which were ambivalent or hostile towards Jews, the actual policies followed in educating London's Jewish children were open and accommodating, particularly when compared with policies implemented in response to New Commonwealth immigration later in the century. The London County Council, building upon policies established by its predecessor the School Board for London, worked in a variety of ways to allow Jewish pupils to fully participate in the life of their schools without creating conflict with their Jewish background. Oral history and autobiographical evidence indicates that Jewish pupils generally did not feel excluded or alienated by their schooling, but found it to be a largely positive initiation into the national community. This illustrates the importance of examining not only the discourses of national belonging, but also actual practices which helped to define national belonging and the experiences of those affected by those practices.

Protestant Challenges to the 'Protestant State': Ulster Unionism and Independent Unionism in Northern Ireland, 1921-1939

Reid, C. — 2008-11-03

This article considers intra-unionist divisions in inter-war Northern Ireland, with an emphasis on the antagonistic relationship between the governing Ulster Unionist Party and a number of independent unionists. The article is divided into four sections. The first section briefly outlines the nature of independent unionism in pre-partition Ireland. The second section considers the politics of the inter-war Ulster Unionist Party, with an emphasis on its programme to create and maintain unionist unity. This provides the context for the third section, which examines the political contribution of a small band of independent unionists who stood outside this unity. The final section conducts an analysis of the electoral politics in inter-war Northern Ireland. This reveals that the most heated political cleavage in inter-war Northern Ireland was not the traditional unionist–nationalist battle line; it was instead the intra-unionist divide.

Puzzled People Revisited: Religious Believing and Belonging in Wartime Britain, 1939-45

Field, C. D. — 2008-11-03

The article investigates whether the Second World War was a significant factor in Britain's transition to a secular society. Quantitative data about the religiosity of adult Britons in 1939–45 are reviewed under five headings: faith, belief, affiliation, practice and opinions. These span the spectrum of institutional Christianity and implicit religion. The evidence derives from Church statistics and social surveys undertaken by Mass-Observation (which prepared the celebrated report on Puzzled People) and other agencies. Cumulatively, while some ground was lost in terms of religious belief and practice, especially during the first half of the war, there was hardly any irreversible collapse of religion. Such decline as occurred was often a continuation of pre-war trends and, in certain respects, relatively short term. The war is therefore not seen as a particularly major milestone in Britain's secularization history. Possible explanations for this resilience of wartime religion are advanced.

Children's Experiences of War: Handicapped Children in England During The Second World War

Wheatcroft, S. — 2008-11-03

The experiences of children during the Second World War have attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and popular. Not all children however, have received equal attention. Handicapped children are conspicuous by their absence from all types of literature, both on evacuation and on children's experiences of the Second World War. This article restores these children to the story of wartime England and assesses their experiences. It examines the plans that were made for their evacuation and how they were carried out, and compares their lives, both individually and institutionally (i.e. in the various types of ‘special’ school) with those who, for various reasons, were not evacuated. It also compares their experiences, to a lesser degree, with those of their non-handicapped counterparts. The article argues that for many handicapped children it was a positive experience but one which depended on specific aspects, such as the attitudes of the authorities and of the general public, and perhaps more importantly, the attitudes and quality of the teaching and nursing staff, who were responsible for the children on a daily basis.

Recuperation, Rehabilitation and the Residential Option: The Brentwood Centre for Mothers and Children

Welshman, J. — 2008-11-03

The place of anti-social behaviour in government policy in the United Kingdom is attracting increasing attention. Particularly interesting are residential projects aiming to rehabilitate ‘problem families’. Nevertheless, to date, attempts to view these initiatives in historical perspective have been limited. This article reconstructs the history of one such institution, the Brentwood Recuperation Centre for Mothers and Children, within the broader context of the problem family debate. The argument is that, unlike in the Netherlands (whose pioneering efforts in this field were widely noted at the time), Britain tended to steer clear of residential options for families, regarding these as an expensive last resort. Nevertheless the Brentwood Centre was an important experiment, with its rise and fall mirroring broader changes in the relationship between voluntarism and the state; social work theory and practice; and attitudes to the segregation and social integration of families. Letters from the mothers also challenge the idea that stays in residential institutions were always punitive and unpleasant.

Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain. By Mathew Thomson.

Waters, C. — 2008-11-03

The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885-1947. By Nicholas Owen.

Taylor, M. — 2008-11-03

Spicing up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Food. By Panikos Panayi.

Warde, A. — 2008-11-03

Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789-2006. By Paul Bew.

Biagini, E. F. — 2008-11-03

The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History. By Eric Kaufmann.

Bryan, D. — 2008-11-03

Popular Conservatism in Imperial London. By Alex Windscheffel.

Thompson, J. — 2008-11-03

Monarchy and the British Nation, 1780 to the Present. Edited by Andrzej Olechnowicz.

Mallam-Clark, J. — 2008-11-03

The Post-War Compromise: British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1945-64. Edited by Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman and John McIlroy. * The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1964-79. Edited by John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell.

Gildart, K. — 2008-11-03

Neo-Liberal Ideology: History, Concepts and Policies. By Rachel S. Turner.

Middleton, R. — 2008-11-03