Reassessing 1970s Britain

Reassessing 1970s Britain

Author: Lawrence Black

Publisher:

Published: 2015-01-04

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780719099793

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This book examines a decade of extraordinary ferment in ideas, and the battles about those ideas out of which emerged the Britain of the late-twentieth century.


Reassessing 1970s Britain

Reassessing 1970s Britain

Author: Lawrence Black

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2013-02-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780719088148

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This book examines a decade of extraordinary ferment in ideas, and the battles about those ideas out of which emerged the Britain of the late-twentieth century. In addressing the ideational contours of the decade, Reassessing 1970s Britain takes an innovative approach. It assembles a group of actors who were influential in generating and disseminating new ideas in the 1970s to reflect on key texts and arguments in which they were closely involved during that decade, and debate them with contemporary historians. It ranges over a wide field, encompassing politics, economics, women's liberation, and popular culture. It also engages with the ways in which such ideas were disseminated to a wider audience.Reassessing 1970s Britain will be of interest to lecturers and students in a wide range of disciplines: modern British history, economic history, cultural history, social history, politics, gender studies, and cultural studies.


The first referendum

The first referendum

Author: Lindsay Aqui

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1526145219

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Although the United Kingdom’s entry to the European Community (EC) in 1973 was initially celebrated, by the end of the first year the mood in the UK had changed from ‘hope to uncertainty’. When Edward Heath lost the 1974 General Election, Harold Wilson returned to No. 10 promising a fundamental renegotiation and referendum on EC membership. By the end of the first year of membership, 67% of voters had said ‘yes’ to Europe in the UK’s first-ever national referendum. Examining the relationship between diplomacy and domestic debate, this book explores the continuities between the European policies pursued by Heath and Wilson in this period. Despite the majority vote in favour of maintaining membership, Lindsay Aqui argues that this majority was underpinned by a degree of uncertainty and that ultimately, neither Heath nor Wilson managed to transform the UK’s relationship with the EC in the ways they had hoped possible.


The British Miner in the Age of De-Industrialization

The British Miner in the Age of De-Industrialization

Author: Jörg Arnold

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-11-02

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0198887698

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The British coal industry no longer exists and yet the figure of the coal miner lives on in the British cultural imagination. In feature films and documentaries, miners are typically portrayed as proletarian traditionalists working in a dying industry. Taking this perspective, the 1984/85 miners' strike seems a desperate last stand against forces much bigger than the miners themselves -- not just the Thatcher government but the tide of historical change itself. In this ground-breaking study, Jörg Arnold challenges a declinist reading of the people working in one of Britain's most important energy industries. The study makes extensive use of previously inaccessible records to offer a new account of the British miner in the age of de-industrialisation. The book situates the miners in broader structures of feeling, and reconstructs the miners' sense of the past and the future. Arnold argues that Britain's miners went through a cyclical movement -- from loser to winner and back again -- as Britain underwent a de-industrial revolution in the final decades of the twentieth century. The book reinserts the industry's 'new dawn' of the 1970s into the story of coal and shows that the miners wielded real power. The industry's reversal of fortunes, inscribed in Plan for Coal (1974), proved short-lived. It was significant all the same. Its significance, the book argues, did not lie in affecting the long-term trajectory of the coal industry. Rather, the 'new dawn' was important in raising the political and cultural stakes. The miners found themselves at the centre of sharply conflicting visions of the future at a critical juncture in Britain's history. The figure of the coal miner became invested with sharply contrasting characteristics: hero and villain, underdog and enemy, proletarian traditionalist and standard bearer of Socialist advance. The miners were no mere spectators in this process. They were agents, thought to be uniquely powerful by their numerous opponents, and half believing in this power themselves. The miners' special nature, however, jarred with the aspiration to lead an ordinary life, producing tensions that were most cruelly exposed in the year-long strike of 1984/1985.


The Women's Liberation Movement and the Politics of Class in Britain

The Women's Liberation Movement and the Politics of Class in Britain

Author: George Stevenson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1350066613

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This is the first study of the British Women's Liberation Movement's relationship with class politics. It explores the meaning of class to women's liberationists' identities and activism, both nationally and regionally, using a previously neglected feminist cluster in North East England as a case study. Stevenson demonstrates that British feminism was shaped fundamentally by its relationship to, synthesis with, and rejection of class politics. Through these processes, feminists recognised how post-war changes in the economy and gender roles were reshaping class and the Women's Liberation Movement attempted to remake class politics in response. However, socio-economic and cultural class differences between the women involved - linked to occupation, education and background - remained intractable obstacles causing tensions within groups, fragmentations into specific class-based groups and the ultimate failure of the movement to coalesce into a coherent coalition with labour politics, despite great levels of solidarity around particular struggles. Examining regional feminism against the national backdrop, The Women's Liberation Movement and the Politics of Class in Britain provides an engaging exploration of the fruitful but challenging relationship between British feminism and class politics in a capitalist society.


Women in Britain

Women in Britain

Author: Janet H. Howarth

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-11-29

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1786724243

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The millennium has sharpened perspectives on the history of women in twentieth-century Britain. Many features of the contemporary gender order date only from the last decades of the century – the expectation of equal opportunities in education and the work-place, sexual autonomy for the individual and tolerance of a variety of family forms. The years dominated by the two World Wars saw real advances towards equal citizenship and legal rights, and a growing sense of the impact on women of 'modernity' in its various forms, including consumerism and the mass media. But values inherited from the Victorians were still reflected in the class hierarchy, the policing of sexuality and the male-breadwinner family. This anthology of original sources, accompanied by a state-of-the-art bibliography, illustrates patterns of continuity and change in women's experience and their place in national life. An introductory survey provides an accessible overview and analysis of controversial issues, such as the relationship between 'first', 'second' and 'third' wave feminism.


Understanding Gender Based Violence

Understanding Gender Based Violence

Author: Nadia Aghtaie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-21

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1135107947

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This book aims to bring together the pioneering research on gender based violence that has been conducted by the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. Topics discussed include violence in young people’s relationships, prostitution policy, disabled women’s experiences of domestic violence, men as victims of domestic violence, feminist movements and methodological concerns. This book will have a wide appeal, as each individual chapter builds on and contributes to existing global and national concerns about gender based violence. The book starts with an exploration of key theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues in researching gender based violence, then moves on to look at specific national (UK) based empirical studies. The final section brings together a wide range of research from diverse contexts, ranging from China, Iran, India and refugee camps in Rwanda. The book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, students and practitioners who have an interest in this area, as well as for policymakers around the world. It will also be of interest to the general reader who wants to learn more about what is now a highly topical issue.


Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations

Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations

Author: Mathias Haeussler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-03-28

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1108482635

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The young Helmut Schmidt and British-German relations, 1945-74 -- Harold Wilson, 1974-76 -- James Callaghan, 1976-79 -- Margaret Thatcher, 1979-82.


The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000

The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000

Author: David Brown

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0198714890

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The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes--from the development of democracy, the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation--have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also presented challenges to the historians who have researched and written about Britain's past politics. This Handbook shows the ways in which political historians have responded to these challenges, providing a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain's political past and a thought-provoking 'long view' for those interested in current political challenges.