Reshaping the Welfare State? Voluntary Action and Community in London, 1960-1975
January 2019
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Chapter
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Welfare and Social Policy in Britain since 1870. Essays in Honour of Jose Harris
Silent Minority? British Conservative Students in the Age of Campus Protest
January 2017
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Chapter
"The Most Fun I Ever Had"? : Squatting in England in the 1970s
July 2016
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Chapter
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Public Goods Versus Economic Interests Global Perspectives on the History of Squatting
The volume examines housing struggles and the occupation of buildings in the Global "North," but it is equally concerned with land acquisition and informal settlements in the Global "South.
Business & Economics
Community and the Labour Left in 1970s London
July 2015
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Chapter
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Politics and Governance in
Modern British History, 1885-1997:
Essays in Honour of Duncan Tanner
(1958-2010)
Containing Racism? The London experience, 1957-1968
January 2015
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Chapter
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The Subversive Special Relationship: race and protest in the United Kingdom and United States in the civil rights era
Drop-Outs
May 2013
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Chapter
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Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt
‘Drop-outs’, examines two experiments in communal living in very different political contexts—London and Leningrad. It explores the creation of intimate spaces on the margins of conventional society in which freedom could be explored in its various forms. It asks whether dropping out was purely cultural, escapist and hedonistic, or the pursuit of a new kind of politics. Within these micro-societies in the West and East it explores different and contradictory attitudes in to imperialism, capitalism, property, democracy and sexual relations, the tensions these communities faced during their short lives and their enduring legacy.
The London Cabbie and the Rise of Essex Man
May 2011
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Chapter
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Classes, Cultures, and Politics
This chapter focuses on London's taxi drivers who belonged to the groups epitomized by the ‘Essex man’ of the 1980s, culturally working-class but politically beyond the reach of the Labour Party during the Thatcher years. It shows that Labour never became the ‘natural party of government’ in the post-war year because the support of working-class groups proved to be conditional — in particular the working class outside blue-collar industry and outside the Labour heartlands.
History
Living Utopia: Communal Living in Denmark and Britain
January 2011
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Journal article
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Cultural and Social History
This article examines experiments in communal living in Britain and Denmark in the early 1970s, using life-story interviews from seventeen members of two British and two Danish communes. It examines communal living as a fusion of radical political principles with the practice of experimental collective living. It concludes that the movement's egalitarian principles of resource-sharing, gender equality and the avoidance of hierarchies were broadly achieved, even if the movement obviously did not realize its more ambitious objective of undermining the bourgeois family. Though none of the interviewees lives communally now, most remain faithful to the principles behind the movement.
"Die Briten kommen”: British Beat and the Conquest of Europe in the 1960s
December 2010
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Chapter
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Europeanization in the Twentieth Century
Europeanization is a term at the centre of contemporary political debate. In this innovative study, a team of British and German historians present the findings of their research project into how the concept and content of Europeanization needs to be understood as a historical phenomenon, which has changed its meaning during the twentieth century.
History
Macmillan’s Martyr: the Pilgrim Case, the “Land Grab” and the Tory Housing Drive, 1951-9
January 2008
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Journal article
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Planning Perspectives: an international journal of history, planning and the environment
The suicide of Edward Pilgrim in 1954 prompted a public furore over the easy terms on which public authorities could compulsorily purchase privately owned land for development. This article argues that Harold Macmillan, as Conservative Housing Minister after 1951, consciously prolonged the statist purchase provisions of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act even as a reviving market in development land in the early 1950s made them unrealistic and inequitable. The Tories’ twin aims of abolishing the 1947 development charge and making good the ambitious 1951 election pledge to build 300,000 houses per year created an immensely complex set of problems which Macmillan negotiated with much skill. The result, though, was that local authorities – mostly Labour ones – eager to build houses benefited and many individual small owners like Pilgrim suffered from this policy. The Tory pledge was therefore realised in part by means of a hidden subsidy to municipal socialism and at the expense of many natural Conservative supporters.
Lloyd, John (1833–1915), municipal reformer and antiquary
May 2006
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Internet publication
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May 2006
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Internet publication
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The Enfranchisement of the Urban Poor in Late-Victorian Britain
March 2006
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Chapter
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Politics and Culture in Victorian Britain
Abstract
This chapter highlights Colin Matthew's first published article as one of his most influential pieces. In his celebrated 1976 essay on the role of franchise extension in the rise of the Labour Party, Colin, writing with Ross McKibbin and John Kay, argued that the then little studied fourth Reform Act of 1918 had, by enfranchising the 30 per cent or so of adult men previously beyond the political pale, provided the impetus for the growth of Labour and the replacement of the Liberals as the party of the left. The authors argued that the bulk of the missing 30 per cent before 1918 were working class. They showed that in the pre-1918 system urban, industrial boroughs had the lowest proportion of their male population registered to vote, and prosperous county towns the highest. The ‘Franchise Factor’ article looked forward into the twentieth-century. Colin Matthew, at least, was much influenced in writing it by the then prevalent view of the steady emergence of class as the basis of political allegiance during the course of the twentieth-century.
January 2006
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Internet publication
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The Government of London
January 2006
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Chapter
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Debating Nationhood and Government in Britain, 1885-1939 Perspectives from the 'Four Nations'
This book is the first in-depth study of the debates over devolution in the four nations of the UK in the period up to 1939. It explores divergent trends and attitudes towards the principle of devolution at both local and national (UK) levels, explains the limitations of devolution as a political ideal and the inherent contradictions in the debates over devolution which were unresolvable in the period under study.
The book also demonstrates the enduring potency of an all-British context and of the influence and power of those who wished to defend the status quo. It investigates the role of national - and Imperial - identities in the debates over devolution, highlighting the continuing value and importance of 'Britishness' and British identity as vital factors in moulding popular opinion and support for established systems of governance. In so doing, the book offers fresh perspectives on the development of nationalisms in the 'Celtic fringe' during this period and demonstrates the problems and limitations of such identities as ways of mobilizing political opposition.
History
The London Drug Scene and the Making of Drug Policy, 1965-73
January 2006
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Journal article
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Twentieth Century British History
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Cutler, Sir Horace Walter (1912–1997), local politician
September 2004
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Internet publication
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‘Simple Solutions to Complex Problems’: The Greater London Council and the Greater London Development Plan, 1965–1973
November 2003
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Chapter
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Civil Society in British History
From GLC to GLA: London Politics from Then to Now
October 2003
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Chapter
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London From Punk to Blair
London is known around the world as a metropolitan, ordered city full of tourist attractions and exclusive shops, but the real face of the city - disordered, chaotic, sprawling, vigorous, untamed - remains unseen and unexplored. London from Punk to Blair is a richly illustrated portrait of Europe's foremost capital. An array of contributors, including poets, journalists, teachers, historians, wanderers, drinkers, photographers and foodies, offer a selection of personal and subjective readings of the city since the late '70s. Using maps, journeys, pictures, narratives and signs, the contributors chart a variety of literal and metaphorical explorations through modern and postmodern London, showing how it works, and how it fails to work; what makes it vibrant, and, what makes it seedy. From West End galleries to strip pubs in Shoreditch; from millionaires' loft apartments to buses and suburban Tube stops; and, from film, fashion and gay clubs to punk bands, ruinous factories, pigeon filth and the vagaries of weather, "London from Punk to Blair" embraces the city like no other book has before. London is too complex and fragmented for any one person to comprehend fully, but this book goes a long way to help you discover what lies outside, and inside, Zone 1. The book will open your eyes to parts of London that you have never seen, or even knew existed, until now.
The Inner London Education Authority and the William Tyndale Junior School Affair, 1974-1976
June 2002
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Journal article
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Oxford Review of Education
3901 Curriculum and Pedagogy, 3902 Education Policy, Sociology and Philosophy, 39 Education
Central goverment and the towns
January 2001
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Chapter
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The Cambridge Urban History of Britain
London government 1850-1920: the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County Council.
January 2001
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Journal article
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The London journal
Sanitary Engineering, Sanitation, Population Growth, Local Government, Government Programs, Politics, Social Mobility, Public Policy, City Planning, Urban Renewal, Socioeconomic Factors, History, 19th Century, History, 20th Century, Urban Health, Urban Population, London
Rents and Race in 1960s London: New Light on Rachmanism
January 2001
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Journal article
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Twentieth Century British History
A crisis in the London housing market was created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a combination of pressure on central London land and the liberalization of rent control in 1957. Economic tensions in the working-class housing market were exacerbated by racial tensions, with large-scale West Indian immigration from the mid-1950s. The scandal associated with the name of Peter Rachman was a product of this crisis, and Rachman has symbolized exploitative landlordism since 1963. It is argued, though, that Rachman's ‘exposure’ was largely accidental—a spin-off of the Profumo scandal—and that what is striking about the episode is in fact the problems encountered by those anxious to give housing a greater prominence, despite the severe problems created by housing shortage. With immigrants driven into house ownership by discrimination in the rental market, the race and housing questions became entwined. Those anxious to make an issue of housing were generally reluctant to amplify racial tensions. Only with the emergence of a racy but tangential scandal was the housing issue made to ‘run’ The episode provides a case study of the way in which conventional politics could fail to provide an outlet for extensive social grievances during the ‘age of affluence’
Modern London
March 2000
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Chapter
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The English Urban Landscape
A volume on the history of the English urban environment that will appeal to both general readers and academic specialists. The emphasis throughout is emphatically that of the historian, rather than the physical geographer: that is, a primary focus on the people who make the landscapes, the changing social structure of the communities, and the different economies which sustained them. The text is enhanced by 130 integrated illustrations, including half-tones and diagrams. The thirteen chapters combine chronological and thematic surveys. After a general introduction by Dr Waller, chapters 2-5 provide overviews of how the urban landscape in England developed during the Roman period, the Early Medieval period, the Medieval period, and the Early Modern Period. The second, larger part of the text offers a variety of thematic approaches to the history of the built environment, with a focus on the last two centuries: metropolitanism, the commercial city, the industrial city, transport, slums and suburbs, recreation, civil and ecclesiastical, and artistic and literary. In addition there are a number of cameo features throughout the text, eg on a small market town, a garden city, a council estate, the Potteries.
A History of Britain, 1885-1939
May 1999
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Book
The period between 1885 and 1939 was a pivotal half century in British history, in which the Victorian political system yielded to a system far more recognisably modern, in response to popular pressure for social reform and the implications of global superpower status. Dr Davis relates these political developments to the background of social and economic change and to the consequences of Britain's position as an imperial power. Drawing extensively upon the new historical scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s, John Davis presents an original analysis of political change in a crucial period of Britain's recent past.
Modern London, 1850-1939
December 1998
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Chapter
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Capital Histories: A Bibliographical Study of London
This text reprints nine articles, previously published in The London Journal, which cover the history of London from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Each is an extensive bibliographical essay, updated by individual contributors for this anthology.
The Borough Franchise after 1867
October 1996
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Journal article
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Historical Research
This article investigates the practical effects of the extension of the parliamentary franchise in 1867, examining the extent of enfranchisement in different types of borough and the reasons for the differences observed. An uneven pattern emerges, with registration law more open-ended in its application than has previously been claimed, but with the practical obstacles to enfranchisement reinforced by the inadequacy of the registration machinery. The capricious process which resulted ensured that the limited pre-1918 franchise nonetheless displayed an unexpectedly wide social variation. Generalizations based upon the assumption that a limited electorate was also one which had been in some conscious way socially selected are therefore dangerous.
Slums and the Vote, 1867‐90
October 1991
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Journal article
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Historical Research
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Radical Clubs and London Politics, 1870-1900
January 1989
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Chapter
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Metropolis: London: Histories and Representations since 1800
This book seeks to demonstrate the social and political images of late-twentieth century London — the post-big-bang city, docklands, trade union defeats, a mounting north-south divide — do not mark as decisive break with the past as they may appear to. It argues that the most striking thing about London’s history since 1800 is the continuities and recurrences which punctuate it. The essays collected in this book focus on these themes and address important questions about class, nationality, sexual difference, and radical politics. They combine the established strengths of social history with more innovative approaches such as the history of representations.
Reforming London. The London Government Problem, 1855-1900
March 1988
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Book
This book analyses the process of reform that led to the formation of the London County Council; the forces that shaped it; and the role played by local and national politicians in its establishment.
In the middle of the nineteenth century London was the world's largest city, and the Victorians were the first to face a task which has become familiar to other generations and other advanced societies - how to provide for its government. The divergent political and material interests within a metropolis have to be reconciled; where previously separate communities are joined together by the spread of the city, traditional local rivalries are likely to be deepened by the growing differentiation of rich and poor areas, and to take political shape. This fascinating account of the economic, social, and administrative complexities of Victorian London will appeal to all those interested in the intractable `metropolitan problem.'