Labour In Britain Research Articles

Britain's Labour Party First Came to Power on Welfare Policy: Taking Housing Policy for Example

Britain's Labour Party First Came to Power on Welfare Policy: Taking Housing Policy for Example

Uneven decommodification geographies: Exploring variation across the centre and periphery

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed significant variation in the scale and form of decommodification across the capitalist world economy. To explore these uneven decommodification geographies this article develops a new conceptual framework that combines a critical Polanyian reading of decommodification with Latin American insights into centre-periphery structures and relations. The decommodification of land and labour in Britain (centre) and Ecuador (periphery) are then analysed from this conceptual perspective. The comparative analysis reveals significant variation in the scale and form of decommodification between the two countries during the pandemic. However, some important similarities are also observed, especially in relation to the (de) commodification of land. Here, the article draws on the corporate food regime literature to better understand similarities and differences between Britain and Ecuador. By revealing the uneven and shifting terrain of decommodification, this article makes a novel contribution to wider debates about the capitalist conjuncture and the intensifying crises of neoliberal capitalism.

A New Dilemma of Social Democracy? The British Labour Party, the White Working Class and Ethnic Minority Representation

Abstract Like much of the European centre-left, Britain's Labour Party has struggled to appeal to its former core working class support base in recent years. However, this is largely a failure to connect with the ‘white working class’ (WWC) specifically, whereas support among ethnic minorities remains robust. We hypothesise that Labour could be experiencing a ‘trade-off’, whereby efforts to cater to minorities harm its perceived ability to represent WWC interests. We test this thesis by examining whether WWC voters are more likely to view minority and working class representation in zero-sum terms and shun Labour when they associate the party with minority interests. We show that the WWC are somewhat less likely to view working class and ethnic minority representation as strongly correlated, and Labour's perceived ability to represent minorities is negatively associated with WWC support. This is not (primarily) about ethnocentrism. Instead, we suggest that ‘relative political deprivation’ is crucial.

Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Jeffrey Herf

<i>Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949</i> by Jeffrey Herf

Colonial Britain's Convict Labour Policies and the Cape Colony, 1806-1899

This article evaluates how convict labour alleviated labour shortages experienced in the Cape Colony from 1806 to 1899. It explores and evaluates Britain's significant impact on labour policies followed in the Cape Colony and focuses on the imperial government's role in developing legislation and procedures regarding management and transportation of convicts. It also considers the influence of nineteenth century policies of convict control in Britain, and the application of these policies and labour regimes in the Cape Colony. The article describes convict transportation, anti-convict agitation by Cape colonists and the economic significance of convict labour and public works projects. Finally, the convict lease system - the practice of hiring convicts to mines and to farmers - and Cape labour legislation's role in increasing the convict labour force through criminal sanctions will be examined.

The farm worker and the ‘drift to the land’. Roots, routes, opportunities and constraints to career pathways in farming

The mass decline in agricultural labour in Britain since the industrial revolution has, until recently, led to the farm worker being fundamentally overlooked within the agricultural research agenda over the last fifty years, while labour shortages in farming persist at a global scale. Data regarding those who actively work at the ‘frontline’ of agriculture is minimal, as are understandings of the career pathways linked to non-capital related occupational succession in agricultural occupations. Using empirical evidence from a survey of 1251 farms in the South West of England, as well as 45 semi-structured interviews with farmers, farm workers and agricultural contractors, this study employs the Human Capability Framework to examine the career trajectory of the farm labour contributor, and identifies potential constraints to a sustained career in agriculture. Findings demonstrate that farm labour contributors largely, but not always, stem from an agricultural background, arriving via one of three pathways; direct, further/higher education or post-travel, and that farm-level, local-level and national-level constraints exist which influence the capacities and opportunities available to a potential farm worker. Such constraints ultimately affect the ability not only to recruit staff and contend with labour shortage issues in the sector, but also to match employees' and employers' suitably to one another.

&lt;i&gt;Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland&lt;/i&gt; by Steven Parfitt

György Tóth's review of Steven Parfitt's Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland. Studies in Labour History, 7. LiverpoolUniversity Press, 2016.

Conceptions of labor and national cultures: diverging visions of freedom

Studies that relate cultural differences in specific fields of social life to broader cultural differences are wanting in cultural sociology. To show that this type of interlinking can prove fruitful, we focus on cross-country differences in labor relations, starting from the conceptions of wage labor in Britain and Germany that emerged from the late seventeenth century onwards. A first level of culture involves practices specific to a delimited sphere of action. In the British approach, a salaried worker is assimilated to an external supplier who delivers products and remains within a relationship tied to the provision of services without engaging his or her person. By contrast, in the German approach, the salaried worked is viewed as fully engaging his or her person in the company, while also being associated with the company’s overall functioning. Another level of culture involves societal life more broadly. This second level comes to light when exploring the conceptions of freedom inherited from the Enlightenment that are specific to Britain, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other. Moreover, in both countries, these conceptions of freedom were themselves inherited from the medieval conception of the free man.

Political myth as a legitimation strategy

Abstract Golden age myths as an answer to political crises are a recurrent phenomenon. This article demonstrates how the idea of a past golden age as the answer to a crisis of society was employed in the discourses of the Third Way: At the turn of the 20th century, the Social Democrats (SPD) in Germany and New Labour in Britain employed a golden age myth to define their politics. Analysing a corpus of texts from the Labour Party and the SPD between 1990 and 2005, this article demonstrates how global ideological trends are locally legitimized differently through the use of local political myths. The major contribution to the field of political discourse analysis lies in the discussion of mythopoesis as a legitimatory strategy, as well as in the analysis of the local adaptation of the golden age myth, which draws on Laclau’s discourse theory and its idea of empty signifiers.

Knights across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland by Steven Parfitt

<i>Knights across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland</i> by Steven Parfitt

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland by Steven Parfitt

Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland by Steven Parfitt

Bayesian quantile regression analysis for continuous data with a discrete component at zero

In this work, we propose a Bayesian quantile regression method to response variables with mixed discrete-continuous distribution with a point mass at zero, where these observations are believed to be left censored or true zeros. We combine the information provided by the quantile regression analysis to present a more complete description of the probability of being censored given that the observed value is equal to zero, while also studying the conditional quantiles of the continuous part. We build up a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method from related models in the literature to obtain samples from the posterior distribution. We demonstrate the suitability of the model to analyse this censoring probability with a simulated example and two applications with real data. The first is a well-known dataset from the econometrics literature about women labour in Britain, and the second considers the statistical analysis of expenditures with durable goods, considering information from Brazil.

The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940–1948

The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940–1948

Job quality and inequality: The unequal world of work in the UK, 1986–2012

Job quality has become a prominent issue in recent years ‐ and with good reason, say Francis Green, Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie. Their findings on inequality and job quality and how they have changed illuminate the true state of Britain's labour market, and make clear the need for changes in policy to improve working lives.

The UK's Productivity Puzzle

The 2008 Great Recession was notable in the UK for three things: the enormity of the output shock; the muted unemployment response; and the very slow rate of recovery. We review the literature which finds most of the decline in productivity is within sector and within firm before presenting new micro-analysis of workplace-level behaviour between 2004 and 2011 to gain insights into the processes that may have contributed to this aggregate picture. We find clear evidence of labour intensification but employers appeared incapable of turning this effort into improved workplace level productivity. Widespread pay freezes and cuts were often initiated in direct response to the recession. Workplace closure rates were little different to those experienced prior to the recession, but there is some evidence of a cleansing effect with poorer performing workplaces being more likely to close. There is some evidence of labour hoarding, especially hoarding of high skilled labour: this has had no discernible impact on the rate of innovation. There is no impact of recession on either the number of HRM practices workplaces invested in, nor their returns on those investments. There is no evidence that workplaces have benefitted from Britain's labour market as indicated by using recruitment channels used by welfare recipients or the use of numerically flexible workers. On the contrary, workplaces with increasing unionisation appeared to benefit in terms of improved workplace performance.

Margaret Thatcher, the Thatcherite intellectuals and the fate of Keynes

AbstractIn the early 1970s, major political leaders of the centre‐right such as Richard M. Nixon proudly declared their allegiance to the Keynesian consensus and the welfare state. By the mid‐1970s, this consensus unravelled so rapidly that even the leader of Britain's Labour Party came to regard Keynesian medicine as ineffectual. Seeking to demolish several foundations of the Keynesian welfare state, Thatcherism soon attracted economists and policy pundits eager to defend its achievements, including in North America at such bygone hotbeds of Keynesianism as Harvard University. This essay seeks to probe cherished mythologies of Thatcherism that she restored Britain's economic dynamism, streamlined government and revived plucky entrepreneurship. Her intellectual admirers have largely averted their eyes from law‐and‐order repression and the rewards delivered to politically connected insiders, most dramatically those policies unleashing finance capitalists and extending the tentacles of the Murdoch media empire.

Partners in Progress? British Liberals and the Labour Party since 1918

Britain's Liberal and Labour Parties have long identified themselves with the progressive tradition, but have often disagreed about what progress means. This paper examines British Liberals’ efforts to critique state socialism during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and to articulate an alternative vision of progress based on wider property ownership, competitive markets and consumer choice. Although this vision sharpened the Liberal Party's political identity, it did little to improve its electoral fortunes, and gave way after 1959 to a more social liberal approach which overlapped with the thinking of Labour revisionists. The paper concludes by considering how much scope still exists for the contemporary Liberal Democrats to offer a distinctive progressive vision.

Returns to Capital:

Returns to Capital:

Britain's Second Labour Government, 1929-31: A Reappraisal. By John Shepherd, Jonathan Davis and Chris Wrigley.

There is good coverage of the second Labour government in C.L. Mowat’s book on the inter-war years. General histories of the party also contain a summary of the facts. Given this, the desideratum is for some new analysis or unknown facets to be brought to light. The present book, containing 13 chapters, has been ably edited. It derives from a conference held in 2009. The choice of what is included is justified, but with completely free reins, there might have been room also for chapters on foreign policy and women. Labour was generally lauded for its handling of foreign affairs and had concentrated to a marked extent on women’s issues during the election. Philip Snowden managed to uphold Britain’s share of German reparations at the 1929 Hague Conference. Arthur Henderson’s involvement in the League of Nations’ disarmament efforts led to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934. Margaret Bondfield became the first female cabinet minister in 1929.