The Remaking Of The British Working Class 1840 1940

Mike Savage and Andrew Miles provide a comprehensive introduction to the working class in Britain in the years after 1840. This textbook: * Includes a provocative, timely and clear defence of class analysis * Breaks new ground in showing how social mobility and urban change affected working class formation * Demonstrates how the history of the working class is politically reconstructed * Shows how class and gender interact in mediating social and political change

EU security governance assesses the effectiveness of the EU as a security actor. The book has two distinct features. Firstly, it is the first systematic study of the different economic, political and military instruments employed by the EU in the performance of four different security functions. The book demonstrates that the EU has emerged as an important security actor, not only in the non-traditional areas of security, but increasingly as an entity with force projection capabilities. Secondly, the book represents an important step towards redressing conceptual gaps in the study of security governance, particularly as it pertains to the European Union. The book links the challenges of governing Europe's security to the changing nature of the state, the evolutionary expansion of the security agenda, and the growing obsolescence of the traditional forms and concepts of security cooperation.

In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society.

Who made up the working class in Britain, who were the ordinary men and women and what were their aspirations? The first generation of postwar British labour historians tended to be preoccupied with working class activism. This texts attempts to chart not only this struggle, but to describe and analyse the rich and varied tapestry of working-class history as a whole. It demonstrates that "class" both existed and mattered although ordinary men and women had diverse lives and lifestyles. Professor Benson examines work, wages, incomes and the cost of living, family, kinship and community relations and the individual in the context of nation and class.

From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

A book that revolutionised our understanding of English social history. E. P. Thompson shows how the English working class emerged through the degradations of the industrial revolution to create a culture and political consciousness of enormous vitality.

Speaking for the People, first published in 1998, draws our attention to the problematic nature of politicians' claims to represent others, and in doing so it challenges conventional ideas about both the rise of class politics, and the triumph of party between 1867 and 1914. The book emphasises the strongly gendered nature of party politics before the First World War, and suggests that historians have greatly underestimated the continuing importance of the 'politics of place'. Most importantly, however, Speaking for the People argues that we must break away from teleological notions such as the 'modernisation' of politics, the taming of the 'popular', or the rise of class. Only then will we understand the shifting currents of popular politics. Speaking for the People represents a major challenge to the ways in which historians and political scientists have studied the interaction between party politics and popular political cultures.