Previous histories of the British trade unions have tended to treat the working class as a single entity. This gave workers' identity a coherence and dignity, but it also made them separate from and excluded from the rest of British society. In this highly original and absorbing new book Alastair Reid discards this entire model, preferring to see working people' as integral to British society as a whole. Looking both at individual workers and their fates and at the often vast organisations that have represented them, Alastair Reid, in this fundamentally important book, shows how unions have throughout the modern era always been a crucial element in British life and that all governments have - whether they like it or not - had to develop policies to deal with them.
This comprehensive study examines British shipbuilding and industrial relations from 1870 to 1950, addressing economic, social and political history to provide an holistic approach to industry, trade-unionism and the early history of the Labour Party. Examining the impact of new machinery, of independent rank-and-file movements and of craft and trade unions, The Tide of Democracy provides an authoritative account of industrial action in shipyards in the period and their effect on the birth and development of the Labour Party. This volume is clearly presented, elegantly written and suffused with a distinctly human touch which brings the technical material to life. Unique in the combined attention it gives to Scottish and English history, and drawing upon an impressive range of primary sources, this volume will be indispensable for specialist researchers, undergraduates and postgraduate students.
The analysis of social classes and social relations in the second half of the nineteenth century has caused major debates among social historians. In this book, first published in 1995, Alastair Reid provides a critical summary of the different approaches to the subject, giving an account of how interpretations have developed since the 1960s, and highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The author explains how the influence of social sciences in the 1960s led scholars to emphasise the rise to power of the bourgeoisie, and the increasing subordination of the industrial working class. Recently more detailed research has led to a return to the older historical emphasis on the persistence of aristocratic power, the increasing independence of the working classes, and the centrality of voluntary agreement in a social order based on consent. The conclusion suggests new ways in which the subject might be approached. A select bibliography allows the reader to pursue the topic in more detail.
Organised religion played such a central part in Victorian life that it is impossible to understand this era without some reference to it. Yet the question, which worried the Victorians, still remains, how religious was the mass of Victorian society? Recent scholarship has challenged the orthodoxy that the working classes, and the working classes of large urban centres in particular, were irreligious. Yet Liverpool, with its large migratory population, including Roman Catholics from Ireland and Nonconformists from Wales and Scotland, appeared to offer unpromising ground for the Anglican Church to sow its seed. Within the city, Liverpool’s notorious slums seemed to offer the most barren ground of all. What strategies did the Anglican clergy employ to make their churches work at a grassroots level? How could they overcome the problems they faced, which ranged from the hostility of the local community to severe financial constraints? How helpful was the advice dispensed by Church handbooks in dealing with these challenges? More important, is it now possible to estimate the success in gaining not only worshippers, but a wider penumbra of working class adherents to church-based activities? Some of Liverpool’s more aristocratic churches were overwhelmed by the encroaching city slums, and the reaction of at least one clergyman was to retreat within his vicarage, and ‘shut up shop’. However, other clergy set about energetically working the slums. Largely Oxbridge men, with a very different background in social and educational terms to their flock, they made surprising progress. By drawing upon a variety of local sources, including many hitherto unused, this book contends that it is possible to evaluate the success of the Anglican Church in the slums. The Church had successes not only to be judged solely by the number of working class worshippers, but also by the uses the local community made of rites of passage, philanthropic activities and the clubs and societies offered by the Anglican Church in Liverpool. This book is aimed at readers interested in researching family and local history as well as those following wider national trends in religious history.
The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afghanistan, and then, even more controversially, Iraq. It was the most difficult decision of Tony Blair's premiership, and almost certainly the most unpopular. Campbell describes in detail the discussions with President Bush and other world leaders as the steps to war are taken, and delivers a unique account of Blair as war leader. He records the enormous political difficulties at home, and the sense of crisis that engulfed the government after the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly. And all the while, Blair continues to struggle with two issues that ran throughout his time in government - fighting for peace in Northern Ireland, and trying to make peace with Gordon Brown. And Campbell continues to struggle balancing the needs of his family with one of the most pressurised roles in politics. Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read.
This comprehensive study examines British shipbuilding and industrial relations from 1870 to 1950, addressing economic, social and political history to provide an holistic approach to industry, trade-unionism and the early history of the Labour Party. Examining the impact of new machinery, of independent rank-and-file movements and of craft and trade unions, The Tide of Democracy provides an authoritative account of industrial action in shipyards in the period and their effect on the birth and development of the Labour Party. This volume is clearly presented, elegantly written and suffused with a distinctly human touch which brings the technical material to life. Unique in the combined attention it gives to Scottish and English history, and drawing upon an impressive range of primary sources, this volume will be indispensable for specialist researchers, undergraduates and postgraduate students.
Mental health is the one area of health care where people are often treated against their will, with the justification that it is in their own interest. This raises significant ethical questions and value dilemmas; questions of autonomy, human rights, power and treatment. An understanding of how values matter is of vital importance across all disciplines working within the mental health field. This book provides a comprehensive and exploratory text for practitioners, students and all those interested in developing a knowledge of both ethics and the wider framework of values-based practice. It is unique in being fully co-written by authors representing both service user and service provider perspectives. This exciting new text will enable the mental health practitioner to work more co-productively with service users within a humane and just approach to care. With an emphasis on rights-based compassionate care throughout, this book: - Tackles the issues of how mental health is understood through key theoretical debates about mental distress, values and labelling; - Encourages readers to think critically about their understanding of key issues such as recovery, autonomy, power, knowledge, diagnoses and empathy; - Draws on a wide range of case examples and exercises to help readers deepen their knowledge of values-based practice and ethics in mental health.
Can an outrageously immoral man or a scandalous woman teach morality or lead people to virtue? Does personal fallibility devalue one's words and deeds? Is it possible to separate the private from the public, to segregate individual failing from official function? Chaucer addressed these perennial issues through two problematic authority figures, the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath. The Pardoner dares to assume official roles to which he has no legal claim and for which he is quite unsuited. We are faced with the shocking consequences of the belief, standard for the time, that immorality is not necessarily a bar to effective ministry. Even more subversively, the Wife of Bath, who represents one of the most despised stereotypes in medieval literature, the sexually rapacious widow, dispenses wisdom of the highest order. This innovative book places these "fallible authors" within the full intellectual context that gave them meaning. Alastair Minnis magisterially examines the impact of Aristotelian thought on preaching theory, the controversial practice of granting indulgences, religious and medical categorizations of deviant bodies, theological attempts to rationalize sex within marriage, Wycliffite doctrine that made authority dependent on individual grace and raised the specter of Donatism, and heretical speculation concerning the possibility of female teachers. Chaucer's Pardoner and Wife of Bath are revealed as interconnected aspects of a single radical experiment wherein the relationship between objective authority and subjective fallibility is confronted as never before.
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