British Working Class Research Articles

Vernacular Discourses Of Gender Equality In The Post-War British Working Class

Abstract Why did women’s roles change so dramatically in the West in the period after 1945? These years saw major changes in those roles, and in dominant understandings of female selfhood, from a model based on self-abnegation to one based on self-fulfilment. The roots of this shift have often been located in the post-1968 feminist movement and in economic change. Examining this question through the lens of Great Britain, this article, however, centres working-class women as drivers of these changes, drawing on oral history interviews with over 100 women from coalfield communities. In the decades after 1950, these women constructed a new vernacular discourse of gender equality which had profound implications for the position of women in society. This vernacular discourse shared some similarities with post-1968 feminism, but rather than focusing on the division of domestic and paid labour, or sexual violence, it emphasized women’s autonomy, individuality and voice. In constructing it, working-class women drew on pervasive post-war ideas about equality and democracy, discourses of individualism and individual fulfilment, and discourses of ‘companionate’ marriage and ‘child-centred’ parenting in order to make claims for women’s rights. Through doing so, they constructed women not only as wives and mothers, but also as free and equal individuals.

A Dire Need for Parliamentary Reform: or, the Role of Elite Fears in Britain’s Great Reform Bill of 1832

Countless historians consider the 1832 reform bill one of Britain’s most pivotal legislations in transitioning into a modern representative democracy for its undeniable impact on the country’s electoral system. The same historians, however, vary on their determination of its causes mostly from comparing major developments surrounding the bill. Parliamentary speeches tend to be neglected or presupposed which causes valuable aspects of the development to be missed. This work demonstrates that fear of revolution, launched by France and catalyzed by Bristol, by the British elite was the primary motivator for reform. It does so by focusing specifically on parliamentary debate between the pro-reform party (Whigs) and the anti-reform party (Tories), supplemented by private correspondence and other public documents. Whig M.P.s insisted Britain reform or face revolution, but Tory M.P.s downplayed any immediate threat. When massive unrest materialized at Bristol, the conversation radically shifted. Bristol exploded because the House of Lords rejected an earlier form of the bill, giving the Whig’s argument substance. Direct resistance to the bill faded as Whig urgency increased. While some contemporary and modern historians doubt the reformers’ true fear of revolution, the speeches and letters reveal that preventing disaster was the sincere objective.

The Second World War: Remaking the British Working Class?

In the post-war years, to the 1970s, most historians’ verdict on the Second World War was abundantly clear: it represented a watershed in social and political relations, shifting Britain in a social-democratic and more egalitarian direction. In more recent years, this verdict has increasingly been called into question. Some historians began to judge the war’s results, especially in terms of the flattening of social and gender hierarchies, to have been considerably exaggerated. Geoffrey G. Field has produced a sizeable, detailed and well-produced work which reaffirms the judgements of the ‘war as dramatic watershed’ school. He synthesizes much of the work on British society and the working class in the Second World War, interspersed with analysis of the vast holdings of The National Archives, the Mass Observation Archive, as well as film and literary sources. This review focuses on industrial relations, particularly the arms industries: where unionization, collective bargaining and workplace union organization were transformed. Joint production committees, however, proved ephemeral.

Итоги Брексита: Глобальная Британия и противодействие России

The article analyzes the first results of Brexit in the context of the economic consequences and the UK foreign policy, its ambitious plans and the real state of affairs, the predisposition of the British elite to confront China and Russia in the first place. The priority is to build new relationships with the countries of the British Commonwealth, especially with India. The modernization of the armed forces and the increase in nuclear warheads are attributed to the Russian threat and the strengthening of Russia's missile defense. One gets the impression that the opposition to Russia is the main outcome of Brexit, since the information war with Russia began immediately after the announcement of its withdrawal from the EU.

Histories of a Radical Book: E. P. Thompson and the Making of the English Working Class. Edited by Antoinette Burton and Stephanie Fortado

<i>Histories of a Radical Book: E. P. Thompson and the Making of the English Working Class.</i> Edited by Antoinette Burton and Stephanie Fortado

Adaptation against Myth: Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott and the Violence of Austerity

This article explores, from the standpoint of socio-political myth-criticism, the processes of revision and adaptation carried out in Gary Owen’s 2015 play Iphigenia in Splott. The play, a dramatic monologue composed in the rhythms of slam poetry, rewrites the classical Greek myth of Iphigenia in order to denounce the profound injustice of the sacrifices demanded by austerity policies in Europe—and more specifically, in Britain—in the recession following the financial crash of 2008. Reassessing contemporary social, economic and political issues that have resulted in the marginalisation and dehumanisation of the British working class, this study probes the dramatic and mythical artefacts in Owen’s harrowing monologue by looking back to Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis, the classical play which inspires the title of Owen’s piece and which serves as the mythical and literary background for the story of Effie. The aim is to demonstrate how Owen’s innovative adaptation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, slurred out in verse, resentful and agonising, speaks out a desperate plea against myth, that is, against a dominant social ethos that legitimises its own violence against the most vulnerable—those who, as in the classical myth, suffer the losses that keep our boats afloat.

Fleeting gestures and changing styles of greeting: researching daily life in British towns in the long eighteenth century

AbstractResearching the history of daily greetings is challenging, because references are casual and scattered through many sources. Nonetheless, some broad trends are apparent. In eighteenth-century Britain, the old tradition of deep bowing and curtseying was slowly attenuating into a brisker touching of the cap or head (for men) and a quick bob (for women). Yet that transition was not the whole story. Simultaneously, a new form of urban greeting, in the form of the handshake, was emerging. The strengths and weaknesses of many different sources are here assessed, including novels, plays, letters, diaries, etiquette books, travelogues and legal depositions, as well as artwork. Strategies for analysis are identified, with a warning against generalizing from single references in single sources. Finally, the emergence of the handshake among the middle class in Britain's eighteenth-century towns gives a clear signal that socio-cultural change does not invariably start at the ‘top’ and ‘trickle down’.

Racing Clean in a Tainted World: A Qualitative Exploration of the Experiences and Views of Clean British Elite Distance Runners on Doping and Anti-Doping.

Background: Doping has been a prominent issue for the sport of athletics in recent years. The endurance disciplines, which currently account for 56% of the global anti-doping rule violations in athletics, appear to be particularly high risk for doping.Objective: Using this high-risk, high-pressure context, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the human impact of doping and anti-doping on “clean” athletes. The secondary aim of the study was to better understand the reasons for, and barriers to, competing “clean” among this group of athletes.Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 elite distance runners from the UK to explore: (1) the reasons and motivations for competing clean. (2) Perceptions of the anti-doping system, and experiences of being part of that system. (3) Views on the prevalence and causes of doping and the impact of doping on the lives of clean athletes. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis.Results: Four major themes were identified: (1) The participants in this study have not been tempted to use prohibited substances or methods; they compete in their sport for the personal satisfaction of seeing how good they can be, rather than in pursuit of winning at all costs. (2) Anti-doping does not currently prevent doping effectively and is not implemented evenly across the globe. (3) Doping was perceived as a major issue and was felt to be borne out of certain sporting cultures in which doping is enabled. (4) Doping has impacted the careers of clean athletes in irreversible ways and presents a continuing challenge to the psychological preparation for competition.Conclusions: Clean athletes suffer negative consequences from both doping and anti-doping. ADOs must collaborate across borders to ensure a more even implementation of anti-doping activities, to facilitate a more level playing field on the global stage. ADOs must also acknowledge the existence of a large group of athletes who would never consider deliberately doping and make anti-doping work for these athletes too.

Negative Dialectics in Mrs Dalloway

ABSTRACT Critics have interpreted Clarissa Dalloway as an ontologically complete character who can be divided into private and public sides: the former is thought and kept to herself while the latter presents an exterior view of her to the members of the British elite with whom she associates. I take issue with this private/public split, however, and argue that, even in her thoughts, Clarissa never finds a permanent reprieve from the Victorian gender norms that are impressed upon her because her interiority is defined by the dialectical movement between her Victorian and anti-Victorian persuasions. I further contend that Woolf never provides a resolution to this dialectic, making it negative rather than affirmative, and thus reveals how she more generally felt about interwar women: as indefinitely between gaining full ownership of the newly won “rooms of their own” and forfeiting them in favour of a return to traditional Victorian mores.

Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes Archaeology

Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes Archaeology

Framing the Trucial Coast's tribes: Shifting notions of borders and imperial influence before the United Arab Emirates

The process of border formation of the United Arab Emirates included extensive local leadership participation. Such a rare event in the Middle East affords a glimpse into local inhabitants’ notions of borders and their transformations over time. Based on primary sources in English and Arabic, the paper follows the evolution of the unique spatial interpretation of borders adopted by the local leadership. It highlights two perceptual turning points during the border negotiations, from the reticular border system, through the setting up of frontier zones to the phase of territorial borders. The negotiations records shed light on the dialectic process of shaping and reshaping border perceptions through an ongoing dialogue between the local and British elites and through mutual adjustment of spatial ideas and practices. The paper argues that the borders delineation process in this region exemplifies late-stage decolonization when pragmatism transcended ideology and when locally-oriented considerations prevailed bureaucratic amenity.

E.P. Thompson, Shirley , and the Antinomian Tradition in West Riding Luddism and Popular Protest

The novelist Charlotte Brontë and the historian E.P. Thompson both claimed that the Yorkshire Luddites of the 1810s were Antinomians, descendants of the seventeenth-century radical Christian sects who claimed, as Christ’s elect, that they were not bound by the (moral) law. This article follows a thread that links Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (in which he made this claim) with his later study of William Blake, Witness against the Beast, which, far from being just an esoteric study of an esoteric figure, uncovered an antinomian tradition that linked the radicalism and protest of the ‘age of reason’ with the seventeenth century. In doing so, it revisits the relationship between Thompson and religion, still an underexplored aspect and too overshadowed by his polemical attacks on Methodism. Having sketched this antinomian tradition, the article then turns to Brontë’s novel Shirley, which recounts the Luddism of the West Riding, and situates it in the context of Thompson’s antinomian tradition, exploring why Brontë chose to present the Luddites as Antinomians. The final section tests the hypothesis of Brontë and Thompson that Luddites may have been Antinomians through a case study of Luddism in the West Riding and the place of religious enthusiasm in working-class protest and culture in the early nineteenth century.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Poverty: Culture and Welfare State Development in Britain, Denmark and France

Why did historical anti-poverty programs in Britain, Denmark and France differ so dramatically in theirgoals,beneficiariesandagentsfor addressing poverty? Different cultural views of poverty contributed to how policy makers envisioned anti-poverty reforms. Danish elites articulated social investments in peasants as necessary to economic growth, political stability and societal strength. British elites viewed the lower classes as a challenge to these goals. The French perceived the poor as an opportunity for Christian charity. Fiction writers are overlooked political agents who engage in policy struggles. Collectively, writers contribute to a country's distinctive ‘cultural constraint’, or symbols and narratives, which appears in the national-level aggregation of literature. To assess cross-national variations in cultural depictions of poverty, this article uses historical case studies and quantitative textual analyses of 562 British, 521 Danish and 498 French fictional works from 1770 to 1920.

Schools of war

In his classic The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), Friedrich Engels argued that workers engaged in industrial action gained knowledge of economic processes, tactical awareness in struggles and grasped the value of solidarity in the face of employers’ assaults on pay and working conditions. These struggles constituted “schools of war”; significant learning experiences for workers, argued Engels. Yet schools of war can take other forms, such as struggles against the capitalisation of education; educational institutions becoming sites of capital accumulation and preparation for capitalist work. In this sense, education has become a battleground as its privatisation, commodification, marketisation, commercialisation and monetisation have gathered pace in many countries since the second half of the twentieth century. This article argues that there are two main fronts in the war over the penetration of education by capital in contemporary society: the business takeover of education, as educational institutions become value- and profit-making sites; and the reduction of education to labour-power production. It explores these two fronts of war in terms of education policies in England and Brazil and argues for the establishment of forms of education beyond capitalist states and capital’s commodity forms.

Roundtable discussion: Organising cleaners in the context of Covid-19

People working as cleaners represent a substantial part of the modern British working class. Low-paid, often part-time, disproportionately female and, more recently, from black and minority ethnic and migrant communities, this workforce has historically been seen as hard to organise. Yet the Covid-19 crisis has elevated the status of cleaning as a key part of maintaining public health. In this article, trade union organisers with experience of working with cleaners discuss the possibilities of the current conjuncture for effecting a step change in both unionisation and the reconstruction of public services.

PRINCIPLES OF NARRATIVE REASON

ABSTRACTJouni‐Matti Kuukkanen has theorized that narrative does not involve rational content. Rather, he suggested, narrative is only a descriptive practice consisting of singular statements. Kuukkanen thus divorced the rational and narrative frameworks, arguing that historiography belongs to the former and not the latter. This article establishes a new conceptual framework that provides a revised understanding of narrative as a rational practice. I argue that the principles of organization brought to light by the Gestalt school of experimental psychology illuminate the underlying organizational logic that historians engage with when constructing narratives. To illustrate how these principles operate in historical narratives and how they are rational, I examine classic historical works such as Karl Marx's introduction of the concept of surplus value; Giambattista Vico's Autobiography and Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance; Reinhart Koselleck's Futures Past; and E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class and Johan Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages. My analysis shows that narrative entails its own kind of explanatory structure. It is a way of thinking that provides meaning and structure to that which is otherwise unstructured and undetermined. Finally, my new framework offers a foundation for the rational evaluation of narratives by showing how the context of discovery and the context of justification cannot be separated in the case of narrative histories.

An Intertextual Reading of William Faulkner’s “Victory”

An Intertextual Reading of William Faulkner’s “Victory”

‘I feel like two different teachers’: the split self of teacher subjectivity

ABSTRACT In this paper, I use a debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson about the nature of time as a heuristic tool to understand the nature of teacher subjectivity. This debate outlines notions of time as measurable and time as duration or flow. These two interpretations of reality, one from a physicist and one from a philosopher, are used to examine the bi-Discoursal nature of the teacher identity An ethnographic participatory action research project in a preschool class in England finds that teachers operate as both physicist and philosopher, sometimes simultaneously. At times, the teacher is a physicist, measuring the geometry of child development and comparing it to a fixed point of normative expectations. At other times, the teacher is a philosopher, existing in the moment with children. The simultaneous existence of these two identities is a cause of anguish, forming a conflicted and contested self.

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

“It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar

It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard11We use the term ‘nonstandard’ to refer to linguistic variants that are not codified in the standardised variety of a language. This reflects usual practice in variationist sociolinguistics. We recognize the hegemony of standard language ideologies and the potential for the term ‘nonstandard’ to further marginalize highly regular and frequent modes of language. However, alternative terms such as ‘regional dialect forms’ do not capture the fact that grammatical items are employed across regional and social styles of speech. Also, as our paper demonstrates, variants identified as ‘nonstandard’ are routinely stigmatized, whereas forms described as ‘regional’ are not always sanctioned in the same way or to the same degree; compare, for instance, the use of negative concord (I didn’t do nothing to mean ‘I didn’t do anything’) with the use of a variant like multiple modals (I might could do it to mean ‘I might be able to do it’). Our use of ‘nonstandard’ is intended to identify variants which undergo prescription precisely because of comparison with standardised alternatives. However, note that we refer to individual nonstandard variants as elements of a person’s diverse repertoire (Snell 2013), without presuming that a specific instance of a nonstandard form equates to speaking in a ‘nonstandard dialect’. grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.