Late Twentieth-century Britain Research Articles

Mass Observers Making Meaning: Religion, Spirituality and Atheism in Late Twentieth-Century Britain, by James Hinton

Mass Observers Making Meaning: Religion, Spirituality and Atheism in Late Twentieth-Century Britain, by James Hinton

‘I am almost the middle-class white man, aren’t I?’: elite women, education and occupational trajectories in late twentieth-century Britain

ABSTRACT This paper makes a major intervention in the historiography of elites through analysis of the experience of women occupational elites born in post-war Britain. The paper draws on a new set of oral history interviews recently conducted with women born in the post-war decades with an entry in Who’s Who which is the leading biographical dictionary of ‘noteworthy and influential’ people in the UK. The women we interviewed were all highly occupationally successful and those analysed here also attended one of twelve elite girls’ schools. This article argues that our interviewees can be separated into two distinct post-war cohorts: one born between early 1940s and mid-1950s and the other born late 1950s to late 1960s. The shape and structure of the cohort’s trajectories were different, their relationship to their careers were different, and, even though both groups faced sexual discrimination and unequal divisions of labour, the nature of these gendered inequalities changed too. By foregrounding elite women within this shifting historical context, this article illuminates broader trends in both classed and gendered experience and how this related to the changing nature of the economy in recent history.

‘A state of almost surreal vice versa’: the devolution referendums in Wales, 1979 and 1997

ABSTRACT Referendums in 1979 and 1997 asked if an elected Assembly should be created in Wales to oversee some government responsibilities. The proportion of voters supporting devolution grew from 20.3% in 1979 to 50.3% in 1997. Growth was concentrated within Welsh identifying Labour voters, but the literature lacks a multicausal explanation of this shift. This article compares the circumstances surrounding both referendums to make two arguments. One is that three factors reversed: the dominant industrial role of the UK state receded under Conservative Governments to prompt deindustrialisation; the growing profile of Wales-specific governance structures exposed their control by Conservative politicians lacking a direct electoral mandate; and, voters were more positive towards Labour in 1997 than 1979. The other is that these factors impacted most on Welsh identifying Labour voters clustered in deindustrialising areas, who no longer trusted the UK state to represent their interests. Their class-based political identity evolved to include a greater sense of Welshness, increasing their support for devolution when offered by a trusted Labour Government. This sequence was prompted and sustained by deindustrialisation, echoing Tomlinson’s arguments that it undercut political assumptions and structures to provide the best underpinning narrative for late twentieth-century Britain.

Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2022

Abstract Ronan Point was a residential tower block that partially collapsed in Newham in 1968, provoking a nationwide scandal. The Ronan Point disaster is frequently cited as a symbolic ‘turning point’ in the urban history of Britain, but it has been surprisingly underexplored on an archival level. It has been identified as a moment at which high-rise architecture was overwhelmingly discredited: a defining event within narratives of ‘urban crisis’ and ‘decline’ in late twentieth-century Britain. This article proposes that the Ronan Point scandal should be understood as a moment of democratic crisis, rather than one unique to the ‘inner city’. The disaster foregrounded a profound democratic deficit within the political culture of post-war reconstruction. However, this article revises standard narratives of the Ronan Point disaster exclusively as a moment of crisis to consider it dually as a moment of possibility for the British welfare state, and for social democracy. The scandal constituted a key moment at which anti-deferential discourses were harnessed by grassroots actors to challenge the legitimacy of technocratic expertise and to lobby for a more participatory reimagination of the post-war settlement. The article goes on, nevertheless, to explore how such discourses of empowerment would also be mobilized to justify a movement away from public housing and towards owner-occupation.

Correction to: Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain

Correction to: Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain

Correction to: Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain

Correction to: Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain

Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain

Abstract This article examines and centres the activism and experiences of Black mothers to demonstrate the primacy of race in the construction working-class motherhood in late twentieth-century Britain. While recent scholarship has demonstrated the way in which working-class mothers could be vectors of social change in post-war Britain, it has obscured the experience of Black mothers. This study addresses the ethnic bias in the historiography of motherhood by drawing on the personal testimony of Black mothers, as well as the campaign literature generated by grassroots organizations in Britain’s inner cities. It corroborates recent scholarship by demonstrating that by participating in tenant’s’ associations, playgroups, and mothers’ groups, working-class mothers developed a mode of motherhood that worked around their own practical needs and demands. However, it argues that these opportunities for assertiveness were refracted through the lived experience of both systemic and interpersonal racism that Black women faced in post-imperial and post-industrial Britain. Moreover, by examining the community efforts taken by Black women in inner-city areas, the study also contributes to recent studies on race, class, and community activism in urban Britain. It demonstrates that the intersecting experiences of race and class could combine to produce forms of community activism among mothers, particularly in the form of tenants’ associations. However, racism continued to persist in inner city neighbourhoods, which isolated Black mothers from mother-centred community groups. Examining motherhood at the granular level, this article demonstrates the importance of viewing the British working-class from the perspective of not only gender, but also race.

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

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

Feminist Business Praxis and Spare Rib Magazine

This article analyses the ‘business praxis’ of the feminist magazine Spare Rib, one of UK feminism’s most enduring cultural institutions. It discusses the diverse ways Spare Rib sustained itself financially (or not), with reference to the role of advertising, distribution, revenue and wages. I explore how Spare Rib developed ethical approaches to business through supporting other women-led business endeavours and attempting to balance profitability with accountability to its readership and the wider women’s movement. The provision of grant funding by the Greater London Council transformed Spare Rib’s fortunes in the early 1980s and demonstrates the ways in which the magazine operated in a market ecology comprising commercial, publicly funded and philanthropic elements. Tracing the history of radical political movements as enterprises and employers expands the existing field of business history and connects it to the history of social movements. The concept of ‘business praxis’, extending across public, private and philanthropic sectors, helps nuance simplistic talk of ‘the market’ or ‘enterprise culture’ in late twentieth-century Britain. It also expands social movement analysis, demonstrating that making money and creating employment were important though often controversial principles of radical activism.

The Making of Mamatoto: Virago, the Body Shop and Feminist Business Strategy

This article explores a collaboration between Virago Press and the Body Shop (TBS) to shine a light on feminist and women’s business, what they have shared historically and how they could work together in late twentieth-century Britain. It uses as a lens the 1991 sale of a Body Shop book, Mamatoto: A Celebration of Birth, to Virago Press. The processes and outcome raise thorny questions: how can political commitments lead to business innovation? How can business support political aims? What kinds of deals can be done between divergent ‘activist’ businesses, and what kind of identification between feminist entrepreneurs supports such deals? Mamatoto, sold alongside a range of mother and baby toiletries of the same name, was important to Virago commercially at a time of economic precarity and expressed TBS’s growing interest in combining marketing with social justice campaigns. Yet the book’s representation of women in developing countries points to neo-colonial elements in the white, middle-class ‘mama market’ of the 1990s, a market which TBS especially cultivated but which contradicted the principles of the women’s movements Virago aimed to serve. The Mamatoto deal thus arguably involved political compromise, even if it was good business. Yet, the partnership also reflects the strategy and strengths of both Virago (established 1974) and TBS (1976) as enduring and iconic women-centred businesses. TBS simultaneously pioneered fair-trade initiatives and a ground-breaking practice of ‘social’ audit, while Virago was developing more inclusive, multi-cultural and transnational approaches to its work, including in a contemporaneous production of a cookbook with the development charity Oxfam. Understanding their struggles to align value chains and combine purpose and profit remains positive and instructive for would-be feminist entrepreneurs today.

'A Hostile Environment': Failure of Composition in the Poetry of Anna Mendelssohn.

This essay examines the effects of incompleteness in Anna Mendelssohn’s poetry, when incompleteness constitutes a requirement to take the thought of the poem further, beyond and outside itself, especially in its refusal to be reconciled with reality as it exists. Taking composition to mean the integration of the materials of a poem into a whole, the argument seeks to show that Mendelssohn’s poems are not-whole, and do not construct a world, but on the contrary carry through an unappeasable criticism of the reality she lived, which is that of late twentieth-century Britain. Her work is in unremitting rebellion against language that covers over and permits misogyny, racism, class oppression, hatred of art, insipid living. She writes from a situation in which not-speaking is imposed, in which the speech organs themselves have been damaged and closed up. This condition carries a removal of the self from life, into a place of death. Another, contrary death, however, takes place in her poetry: that of the self that passes through a disintegration, which Mendelssohn places at the heart of ecstatic experience of life. She excoriates those who want to remove the extreme aliveness of lyrical language from life and poetry. The law is what gives permission to that suppression: her poetry repeatedly moves against the actions of the law as it deadens life and language. Mendelssohn’s poetry is an account, implacable and without resentment, of a life lived inside and against personal and historical suffering.

Black Women's Groups, Life Narratives, and the Construction of the Self in Late Twentieth-Century Britain

AbstractBlack British women's centres and groups evolved out of black women's combined exclusion from male-dominated anti-racist activism and the resurgent feminist movement of the late 1960s. And yet, despite their stable presence in many of Britain's inner cities, black women's centres and groups, and the lives of the women who forged them, have evaded historical interrogation. This article explores how black women's centres provided women with the space and time to nurture their personal experiences of sexism and racism, achieve a sense of self-sufficiency, and celebrate their heritage, which placed every member on a path towards self-discovery. This centring of the black female self was not, as black male activists believed, set on undermining the Black liberation movement, but was considered as a vital tool in the overarching mission to defeat white global supremacy. Drawing on a collection of oral history interviews, this article explores how black female activists constructed a sense of self that turned away from the homogenizing white gaze of post-war Britain. Teasing out the complexities around black female activism, selfhood, and memory, this article contributes substantially to the growing body of literature on late twentieth-century black British history.

‘Old-Time Religion in a New-Fashioned Way’: The Ministry of ‘Billy’ Richards, 1943–74

In 1943 a twenty-six-year-old Pentecostal pastor arrived in Slough, a fast-growing industrial town that many church leaders found spiritually tough. Over the next thirty years Billy Richards built a thriving church with six hundred adult members and a thousand children attending groups across the town. His ministry extended beyond Slough through books, radio broadcasts, correspondence courses and international speaking tours. His methods embraced modern media, new forms of worship, conservative theology and a focus on the active work of the Holy Spirit. One local newspaper characterized it as ‘Old-Time Religion in a New-Fashioned Way’. This article explores the inspirational aspects of Richards's ministry, how these took institutional expression in his lifetime, and why that institution continues to be influential today. His ministry provides one example of how local churches could adapt successfully to the changing social and cultural landscape of late twentieth-century Britain. This has implications for the understanding of urban mission and the contribution made by the agency of organized religious institutions to twentieth-century secularization.

ESA HISTORICAL RECORDS COMMITTEE (Established 1944) Newsletter

ESA HISTORICAL RECORDS COMMITTEE (Established 1944) Newsletter

Consultancy as a Career in Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain

This paper examines the continuing role of consultants within the profession of chemistry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Consultants were a prominent part of the profession in the late nineteenth century, but were overtaken in numerical terms by chemists working in academia, government and industry in the first half of the twentieth century. The paper demonstrates, however, that numbers later stabilised and then goes on to examine the characteristics of those chemists who worked as consultants as compared to the wider chemical community. It argues that the survival of consultancy is best explained in terms of a number of differing models of consultancy work. Whilst for some chemists, consultancy was their main occupation, for others it was a phase in their careers or a secondary occupation alongside another post. The continuing value of consultancy work was related to its very versatility.

The people's critical linguistics: Using archival data to investigate responses to linguistic informalisation

AbstractArguments about the sociopolitical significance of the informalisation of English have been central to the critical study of language in society since the 1980s. This article demonstrates that informalisation was also a key concern of ordinary users of British English in the 1980s. Correspondents in the British Mass Observation Project articulated judgements of informalisation that were in many ways continuous with those of academic linguists. The article argues that such critical arguments about language were part of a ‘structure of feeling’ (Raymond Williams) of late twentieth-century Britain. This suggests a rethinking of ordinary language users’ relations to their linguistic experience, not as unthinkingly ‘prescriptivist’, nor as merely ‘commonsensical’, but as exhibiting a nuance which academic linguists would do well to engage with more fully. The article makes the case for the use of social-historical archives in investigations of metalanguage, as a means by which the social significance of language can be better understood. (Critical linguistics, folk linguistics, terms of address, informalisation, synthetic personalisation, prescriptivism)

Serving ‘the Cause’: Cecil Jackson-Cole and the professionalization of charity in post-war Britain*

Abstract This article explores the relationship between faith, business and charity in mid to late twentieth-century Britain by examining the work of Cecil Jackson-Cole, co-founder of Oxfam, founder of Help the Aged, ActionAid and many other charities. Jackson-Cole’s approach to ‘building-up’ a charity accelerated the ongoing professionalization of the sector. This did not, however, represent a complete break from the Christian charity ethos of the past. By examining Jackson-Cole’s faith and its influence on his charity business network and practices, it is possible to see an enduring symbiotic relationship between faith and professionalization in organized charity across the twentieth century.

'Men Too': Masculinities and Contraceptive Politics in Late Twentieth Century Britain

ABSTRACTIn 1984, the Family Planning Association (FPA) launched its year-long ‘Men Too’ campaign to encourage greater male involvement in family planning and personal relationships. The campaign represented a wider shift towards promoting ‘male involvement’ in contraception by the 1980s. Taking ‘Men Too’ as it’s starting point, this article explores the interrelationship between contraceptive politics and wider debates about masculinity, heterosexual relations and emotion in late twentieth century Britain. Popular uptake of the oral contraceptive pill had transformed contraceptive responsibility, shifting it from men to women from the 1970s, particularly amongst the young. The result was a new sexual subject in sharp contrast to the early twentieth century: the uninvolved male contraceptor. Thus, ‘Men Too’ was tackling a generationally-specific problem that became visible in the 1980s, produced by the conjectural forces of technology (the Pill) and ideology (‘second-wave’ feminism). The campaign reimagined masculinity by idealising emotional expression and a new contraceptive politics framed around the buzzword of ‘shared responsibility’. In turn, ‘Men Too’ exemplified the emergence of new emotional intimacies that framed a larger shift in the character of heterosexual relationships. In addition, ‘Men Too’ is considered as part of the wider emotional culture of late twentieth century Britain.

Sites of Sickness, Sites of Rights? HIV/AIDS and the limits of human rights in British prisons

ABSTRACTThis article considers one specific strand of discussion around HIV/AIDS, in order to think about the uses and limitations of human rights discourse in late twentieth century Britain. HIV/AIDS presented particular problems for prisons, which were initially presented as breeding grounds of infection. This shifted with the rise of human rights language and laws in the 1990s, but talk of rights for prisoners was not as comfortable a fit as talk of equivalence of care. This story is situated in the broader context of attitudes towards crime, HIV/AIDS, and rights in late twentieth century Britain.

Housewives having a go: Margaret Thatcher, Mary Whitehouse and the appeal of the Right Wing Woman in late twentieth-century Britain

ABSTRACTMargaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse have been described by Beatrix Campbell as ‘populist heroines of the right’, and an affinity between the two women was widely assumed throughout Thatcher’s leadership. They were both suburban mothers with prominent handbags, calling for a return to the stabilising values of ‘simpler times’. Their relationship, however, was far from straight-forward. By examining this relationship alongside its public presentation, this article will refine understandings of these important conservative women. Considering their shared cultural resonances will also enhance understanding of the late twentieth-century cultural and political contexts within which they operated.