For the first issue of the renamed journal, Modern British History co-editor Erik Linstrum convened a group of scholars to reflect on the past, present, and possible futures of the field. The resulting contributions make no claim to provide a comprehensive or representative survey. Rather, they offer a variety of perspectives on where modern British history has been and where it might be going. Several contributions, written by former editors of Twentieth Century British History, drawn on the history of the journal as a way of thinking about the direction of the field and its subfields. Others consider the place of modern Britain in the wider discipline of history, grappling with questions of temporality and embodiment; the institutional and material contexts of scholarship; the role of national histories in a transnational world; and the response of historical writing to epidemiological, humanitarian, and ecological crisis. The sequence of contributions mirrors the evolution of the journal since its founding in 1990, beginning with political history and gradually encompassing a much broader range of subjects and methodologies as well as an expanded geographical ambit. Here are archive stories, pleas for new subjects, roadmaps for new approaches to old subjects, and attempts to identify master narratives. Taken together, these contributions demonstrate that modern British history has many houses—which is both a sign of intellectual vitality and a challenge for anyone wishing to generalize about the ‘state of the field’. If British modernity remains an abundant resource for ‘thinking with’, its contours and frontiers are tantalizingly up for grabs.

Abstract This chapter shows how the tensions underlying British politics emerged more clearly from the early 1970s as the economic situation worsened, and Conservative and Labour governments alike struggled to deal with challenges of weakening growth, inflation, and industrial action. Ordinary voters were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the main parties and susceptible to alternatives. Margaret Thatcher, who became Conservative leader in 1975, was able to exploit the appetite for change with a rhetoric of individual opportunity and the return of traditional values that resonated with people who were anxious about the overreach of the state, the power of trade unions, and the pace of social change. Thatcher alienated as many voters as she attracted, but she was able to marshal a powerful electoral coalition against a divided political opposition, particularly after her leadership in the Falklands War transformed belief in her overall competence. With social and economic divisions widening, however, and modest victories in general elections translating into crushing parliamentary majorities, significant sections of the population were becoming further disaffected with politics. The 1992 election demonstrated the importance of competence in voters’ calculations, but enthusiasm for politics, and trust in politicians, remained at a low ebb.

Abstract What did British citizens really feel about the political system, their role in it, and the people who represented them? This book examines British democracy from below, investigating how electors understood politics and how they viewed its relationship to their lives, from the establishment of a near democracy with the Representation of the People Act 1918 up until the rise of the internet and 24-hour news channels in the early 1990s. It focuses on the everyday political opinions, discussions, and interactions of ordinary British voters in the period, and pays attention to the ways in which women, young people, and minoritized groups related to a political system dominated by middle-aged men. The book argues that most people, across the period, felt remote from politics and sceptical of politicians. But this reflected the perception that the world of parliamentary debates and party intrigue was distant, insular, and rather impenetrable, not that people did not care about political issues or have a desire to improve their position. Britain was home to plenty of everyday political thinking and conversation, and the amount and quality of this activity tended to increase and improve over the period as people became better educated, had access to more information through the media, and the power of the democratic ideal grew in strength over the period. The book maps these changing patterns of political support to deeper social and cultural developments, and thereby produce a new and distinctive history of British democracy that challenges some of the simplistic narratives that underpin contemporary political debate.

Abstract This chapter shows that the electoral dynamics of the 1940s—often taken as the starting point for political science models of class alignment—did not last long. Class identities evolved significantly as prosperity increased from the mid 1950s, and the Conservative Party revived its fortunes by combining a broad acceptance of the welfare state and the mixed economy with a persuasive language of affluence and aspiration, which was particularly appealing to female voters. Labour, under the leadership of Harold Wilson, also updated its image to try to connect to voters, although both parties struggled to satisfy rising expectations at a time when people were becoming less inclined to defer to authorities and established ways of life. Britain was becoming more socially and culturally diverse, with youth subcultures challenging the status quo and immigration from the West Indies, South Asia, and Africa bringing new, and often critical, perspectives on British political thinking and practices. In Wales and Scotland, nationalist parties became more prominent. The Wilson government reduced the voting age to 18, but no party was especially successful in generating political enthusiasm among young people. Many ethnic minority voters remained alienated by the mainstream parties, particularly in the context of inflammatory rhetoric about the social ‘problems’ caused by immigration. Proposals to devolve some political power to assemblies in Scotland and Wales failed to gain approval. The British political system found it hard to integrate the new forces that were reshaping society.

Abstract This chapter covers the period from the end of the First World War until the mid 1930s, and examines how ordinary voters responded to the new political environment created both by the extensions of the franchise in 1918 and 1928 and the emergence of the Labour Party as the main rival to the Conservatives. It shows that in a period of economic dislocation and strained industrial relations, class became more central to the way many people understood politics, especially in large urban areas. Although the Labour Party expanded its support sufficiently to form minority governments in 1924 and 1929, it was unable to make major breakthroughs outside areas of heavy unionization, and the media and social environments made challenging the Conservatives on equal terms difficult. Many working people continued to trust the Conservative Party’s management of the economy, and accepted the conventional frame that it was necessary for the government to tighten belts and control budgets in a depression.

Abstract The second chapter fleshes out the idea of ‘everyday politics’ by investigating the various spaces and occasions where political interactions took place, and the codes and assumptions governing them. Of central importance is the home, and the chapter considers the varied dynamics between different family members, and especially between parents and children, and shows how long-lasting these influences could be. It examines other significant spaces including educational establishments, the workplace, religious environments, and places of sociability. It shows that while political discussion was often disliked or even actively marginalized, it inevitably burst into the open at particular moments.

Journal Article Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain, ed. Heidi Egginton and Zoë Thomas Get access Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain, ed. Heidi Egginton and Zoë Thomas (London: University of London Press, 2021; pp. xvi + 344. £40 and Open Access). Adrian Bingham Adrian Bingham University of Sheffield, UK adrian.bingham@sheffield.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2256-9260 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, cead095, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead095 Published: 19 January 2024

Abstract The first chapter examines the development and proliferation across the twentieth century of attempts to map, measure, and record ordinary life and public opinion, from the rudimentary anecdotal methods of pioneering journalists and social investigators to the highly sophisticated survey techniques developed by pollsters and political scientists from the 1960s. It explains that despite the search for ever greater rigour and accuracy, it is not possible to study people in ways that are entirely objective, neutral or infallible and argues that we need to understand the nature, motivations, and methods of the various organizations and groups involved in gathering evidence about patterns of political behaviour before we draw on their data. It also highlights that attempts to scrutinize and record people’s attitudes and behaviour influenced what they sought to measure. The work of pollsters, social scientists, and journalists made citizens more self-reflexive, more attuned to how individual views relate to broader currents of opinion, and more aware of how others were trying to interpret their behaviour through different social classifications and concepts.

"British Pop Archive, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester." Social History, 48(2), pp. 284–285

This introductory chapter offers a new interpretation of twentieth century British press history by examining the changing ways in which owners, editors and journalists sought to address the British public in five milestone years – 1903, 1938, 1969, 1986 and, more briefly, 2011. Each section offers a brief overview of the industry at each of these crucial moments, before considering how the press tried to adapt both to new political, social and commercial opportunities, and to the challenges of the shifting media landscape. The central focus is on the most widely circulating and influential national (usually London-based) daily newspapers as a way of exploring some of the key trajectories of the wider industry.

Offers a definitive history of the British and Irish Press from 1900-2017 Captures the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in twentieth-century and at the start of twenty first-century Britain and Ireland Offers unique and important reassessments of twentieth-century and contemporary British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contexts Provides a timeline of significant events for cross-reference as well as an extensive bibliography for further research This volume responds to the absence of wide-ranging, up-to-date analysis of newspapers and periodicals across Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century by providing an ambitious, interdisciplinary and research-led volume that seeks to explore long-term continuities and changes. The Introduction provides an initial overview of the century by studying the evolution of the British and Irish press across five milestone years, and, in particular, examining how the leading titles in the market, the popular daily newspapers, sought to develop their appeal to a broad, mainstream audience. Five core chapters then analyse in more detail the central features of the environment in which the press operated: economic forces and patterns of ownership; the institutions and technologies of production and distribution; the reading audience; the legal and regulatory framework; and the identities and communities that structured the market. The main body of the volume comprises a series of thematic chapters attending to different aspects of the creation, content and impact of newspapers and periodicals in this period. A timeline of significant events for cross-reference and an extensive bibliography for further research are also included making this a thorough resource for researchers and students alike.

This chapter explores the dynamic relationship between the labour movement and the press. It argues that recognition of the need to negotiate or counter the growing pre-eminence of the press and other forms of mass-communications media compelled some of the twentieth-century labour movement’s most original intellectual and strategic advances. Equally, at other moments, a tendency on the part of beleaguered labour leaders to overestimate the hegemonic reach of the ‘right-wing’ or ‘capitalist’ press served to mask shortcomings and lacunae in the movement’s own ideological and strategic perspectives. Rather than approaching the relationship between labour and the press as one of essential conflict and antagonism, the chapter seeks to understand them as two aspects of the same ongoing historical process.

Chapter 23 Gender, Media, and Modernity Adrian Bingham, Adrian BinghamSearch for more papers by this authorMatilde Eiroa, Matilde EiroaSearch for more papers by this authorSusanne Kinnebrock, Susanne KinnebrockSearch for more papers by this authorClaire McCallum, Claire McCallumSearch for more papers by this author Adrian Bingham, Adrian BinghamSearch for more papers by this authorMatilde Eiroa, Matilde EiroaSearch for more papers by this authorSusanne Kinnebrock, Susanne KinnebrockSearch for more papers by this authorClaire McCallum, Claire McCallumSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Klaus Arnold, Klaus ArnoldSearch for more papers by this authorPaschal Preston, Paschal PrestonSearch for more papers by this authorSusanne Kinnebrock, Susanne KinnebrockSearch for more papers by this author First published: 13 August 2019 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119161783.ch23 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary This chapter explores the gendering of media markets, media debates about changing gender roles brought about by modernity, and the attempts to challenge and resist traditional gender ideologies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It focuses on six European countries – Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Russia – in order to identify variations created by different levels of economic development, contrasting political frameworks (democracy, fascism, communism and dictatorship) and alternative religious systems (Protestantism, Catholicism, and atheism), as well as a multitude of social and cultural permutations. The chapter is structured around three chronological sections – the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I, 1914 to the 1960s, and the 1970s to the present – capturing some of the most important shifts across the periods. Despite notable changes over the decades and variations across Europe, the resilience of many assumptions about gender and sexuality remains striking. The Handbook of European Communication History RelatedInformation