{"title":"In Defence of White Freedom: Working Men's Clubs and the Politics of Sociability in Late Industrial England.","authors":"Camilla Schofield","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwad038","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While ongoing discrimination in jobs, welfare, and housing in 1970s England belied the social democratic promise of 'equality of opportunity' and the much-touted British value of 'fair play', racism at the door of the working men's club told a different story. For reactionaries and liberals alike, it spoke to the uncertain future of working-class politics in late industrial England. This article shows how the legal and political controversies surrounding whites-only working men's clubs contribute to our understanding of the 'white working class' as a political subject in British public life. Even more, it reveals how-among club members-whiteness came to be invested with feelings of intimacy, kinship, respectability, and independence.</p>","PeriodicalId":46051,"journal":{"name":"Twentieth Century British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Twentieth Century British History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwad038","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
While ongoing discrimination in jobs, welfare, and housing in 1970s England belied the social democratic promise of 'equality of opportunity' and the much-touted British value of 'fair play', racism at the door of the working men's club told a different story. For reactionaries and liberals alike, it spoke to the uncertain future of working-class politics in late industrial England. This article shows how the legal and political controversies surrounding whites-only working men's clubs contribute to our understanding of the 'white working class' as a political subject in British public life. Even more, it reveals how-among club members-whiteness came to be invested with feelings of intimacy, kinship, respectability, and independence.
期刊介绍:
Twentieth Century British History covers the variety of British history in the twentieth century in all its aspects. It links the many different and specialized branches of historical scholarship with work in political science and related disciplines. The journal seeks to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, in order to foster the study of patterns of change and continuity across the twentieth century. The editors are committed to publishing work that examines the British experience within a comparative context, whether European or Anglo-American.