{"title":"Factory tourism in inter-war Britain: the spectacular construction of social-democratic mass production.","authors":"Richard Hornsey","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the 1920s and 1930s, British mass-manufacturers opened their factories to hundreds of thousands of ordinary consumers. As the market for branded household commodities became increasingly competitive, visitors were offered a day out of mechanical wonderment and informative entertainment in hopeful exchange for loyalty at the grocers. Such tours were also a significant riposte to the radical consumerist movement and popular discomfort at the rise of monopoly combines. Organized factory tours worked hard to present capitalist mass production as a form of social-democratic progress, positioning mass production and mass consumption as the twin engines of a more equitable, abundant, and democratic society. This essay provides the first systematic critical engagement with inter-war mass factory tourism and explores four of the most popular destinations: Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight; Cadbury at Bournville; Rowntree at York; and Fry at Somerdale. It unpicks the contradictions within the attempt to turn monotonous factory work into a source of spectacular pleasure and examines the common techniques used to construct hegemonic visitor experiences.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145260413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'A jigsaw puzzle which Britain finds difficult to solve': Britain, Bophuthatswana and the Sun City Eight.","authors":"Daniel J Feather","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf010","DOIUrl":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In January 1984, seven British and one US national were jailed in the 'independent' Bantustan of Bophuthatswana for their roles in a complex fraud at a Sun City casino. This article demonstrates how the Bophuthatswana 'government' tried to use the detainees as pawns in their efforts to gain recognition of the territory's independence, and the difficulties this created for British policymakers. While the Bophuthatswana authorities initially allowed British and US officials to visit the detainees, they soon became obstructive and demanded that permission be sought from their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As neither the UK nor the USA recognized Bophuthatswana's independence, such formal contact was ruled out. However, as this article will demonstrate, a well-orchestrated campaign by the families of the detainees put pressure on the British government, which ultimately made concessions to Bophuthatswana regarding the visa process its ministers had to undertake prior to visiting the UK to allow contact with the prisoners. This article will also demonstrate the degree of sympathy that certain sections of the British elite had for Bophuthatswana's quest for international recognition. Indeed, the deal regarding the visa restrictions and access to the detainees was arranged through Sir Peter Emery, a Conservative member of the British parliament and chairperson of Shenley Trust, a firm hired by the Bophuthatswana government to facilitate its gold sales.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144736471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capenhurst Women's Peace Camp (1982-3) and after: local nuclear resistance, grassroots feminisms, and transnational solidarities.","authors":"Rachel Collett","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the local specificities of Capenhurst Women's Peace Camp, established in 1982 at British Nuclear Fuels Limited on the Wirral peninsula. Making the case for the camp's inclusion and centrality within histories of nuclear resistance, peace camps, and grassroots feminism, it argues for the value of localised examples to widen understandings of the multiple shifting and overlapping anti-nuclear cultures in 1980s Britain. Tracing Capenhurst's unique origins, motivations, forms of resistance, and networks of solidarity, this article contributes to knowledge of how different peace camps and protest groups articulated the nuclear threat in diverse and complex ways, often locating activism in spatially specific and tangible sites with potential for broad mobilisation. Focusing on smaller, localised actions, I argue, can reveal new and unexpected experiences of national and international issues, and can widen understandings of how and why activist movements operated on varying levels. Discussion of the camp's immediate aftermath beyond 1983 also widens our understanding of 1980s feminist anti-nuclear activism, exploring how activists adopted an ambitiously wide-ranging, global, and anti-racist outlook, forged through powerful and lasting translocal and transnational alliances.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145126855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'What if?' Early marriage and the 'shadow selves' of young women from the late 1950s to early 1970s.","authors":"Penny Tinkler","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The value of producing counterfactual history has been hotly debated, but principally in relation to major public events. Drawing on oral history interviews with women who grew up in Britain in the late 1950s to early 1970s, this article presents a case for studying alternative personal histories; in interviews these are often glimpsed in the form of shadow selves, these are the selves that interviewees think they might have been if their lives had unfolded differently. Early marriage was a common source of shadow selves for interviewees, and the article explores what can be learnt from these about women's experiences of marriage in, and about, a period of heightened social and cultural change. Addressing shadow selves does have implications for research practice. While the interviewee's composure of a self is a recognized feature of oral history interviews, I propose that researchers also attend to evidence of alternative selves that are not usually or easily integrated into a singular, coherent self, and which are often sidelined, muted, or discarded. Ethical ways of doing this are outlined.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144610897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Precept and Example': The Conservative Government and British Sporting Contacts with Apartheid South Africa, 1970-74.","authors":"Toby C Rider, Matthew P Llewellyn","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research into the history of the British anti-Apartheid movement and its efforts to isolate South Africa from international sport acknowledges that the 1970s were a 'difficult decade' for campaigners. British athletes and teams still competed regularly in South Africa, while exclusively all-white South African athletes and teams still toured or played in Britain. Although the boycott stalled for various reasons during this period, this article argues that Edward Heath's Conservative government, elected in June 1970, played an important role in maintaining British sporting ties with Pretoria and in empowering a British sporting establishment that preferred to keep politics out of sport. While the Labour leadership under Harold Wilson (1964-70) had denounced sporting relations with South Africa and taken steps to prevent them, Heath and his Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, completely reversed British policy. From 1970 to 1974, Heath's Conservative government openly encouraged British sporting interactions with South Africa, and even went as far as to fund them.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144586016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: Mass-Observation and Vernacular Politics at the 1945 General Election.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145115903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anarchism, anti-militarism, and the British Empire: the case of war commentary and the freedom defence committee.","authors":"Eleanor Strangways","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf006","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anti-imperialism was central to the anarchist critique of the Second World War. Throughout the war, the anarchist publication War Commentary became a platform for challenging the British Empire and garnered the active involvement of key anti-imperialist thinkers such as Jomo Kenyatta and Chris Jones. George Padmore, another notable anti-imperialist in this period, was on the board of the Freedom Defence Committee (FDC)-established in 1945 to defend the arrested editors of War Commentary-an organization that would later become a springboard for anti-imperial solidarity. Through an analysis of the publication War Commentary and relations with the FDC, this article highlights the often-overlooked convergence of anti-imperialism and anarchism during and immediately after the Second World War. It begins with the domestic intellectual context, demonstrating how anti-imperialism was at the heart of the anarchist rejection of the war, and how this stance was influenced by anti-imperial actors from the colonies. Additionally, it reveals how these networks developed in the British Empire through a focus on the FDC's connections with Ghana. In doing so, this article will reveal how anarchist responses to the Second World War contributed to connections between anarchist groups in Britain and anti-imperialist groups in the colonies, while also highlighting the growing disillusionment of colonized activists with these alliances.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144556440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debating the Bachelor Tax: Masculinity and the Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1894-1920.","authors":"Piers Haslam","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf013","DOIUrl":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>'Bachelor tax' was a popular shorthand for controversial changes in government policy regarding income tax and marital status. From 1918, men were given tax allowances for a wife, and from 1920, all married and unmarried people had their incomes taxed on different terms for the first time. By examining the letters pages of national and local newspapers, alongside the reports and minutes of the Royal Commission on the Income Tax, this article argues that bachelors became contentious figures in this period, decried for their failure to marry and have children and pilloried as incomplete citizens. Through the prism of a debate about tax policy, married and unmarried masculinities were pitted against each other. The article considers the effects of this atmosphere on bachelors, and their strategies for defending themselves in the face of punitive hostility. It asserts that the bachelor tax debate throws into relief the deep relationship between gender and the fiscal state in these years. Tax policy was not a dispassionate political topic, being frequently discussed through discourses of gender and brought into dialogue with men's self-understandings.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144839785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ewan Gibbs, Ewan Mackenzie, Alan McKinlay, Des McNulty, Jim Phillips, Stephen Procter
{"title":"Rolls-Royce engineers and deindustrialization in Scotland from the 1950s to the 2020s.","authors":"Ewan Gibbs, Ewan Mackenzie, Alan McKinlay, Des McNulty, Jim Phillips, Stephen Procter","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf002","DOIUrl":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research involving Rolls-Royce engineers made redundant in 2020, when the firm ended its Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul operation at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire, Scotland, provides recent-world perspective on the history of deindustrialization in the UK. Specifically, it qualifies the half-life metaphor, which has been advanced in social sciences and humanities literature to explain the prolonged chronological impact of job losses and workplace closures. The metaphor imprecisely presents deindustrialization as a moment of rupture followed by a predictable contraction and downplays the continued importance of industrial work after the 1980s. Evidence provided by the redundant Rolls-Royce workers through life-course interviews and a survey questionnaire shows that deindustrialization is both a historical and continuing current-world process. Two phenomena are emphasized: the adaptation since the 1950s in Scotland of a robust industrial culture, equipped with moral economy understanding of employment changes; and, into the 2010s, the 'post-industrial' presence of significant levels of industrial and what we term 'industrial-analogous' employment in the UK.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143782346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Ambassadors of cultural appreciation': the social, political, and associational life of Chinese students in Britain, 1908-37.","authors":"Jennifer Bond, Georgina Brewis","doi":"10.1093/tcbh/hwaf007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaf007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article uncovers the experience of Chinese students in Britain before the Second World War, focusing on students who attended universities and colleges between 1908 and 1937. It argues that Chinese students at British colleges and universities played an important role as unofficial ambassadors who were uniquely qualified to interpret China to the British despite religious, political, linguistic, and regional schisms that divided the student community. This article shows that by the mid-1930s, Chinese students in Britain enjoyed a rich associational culture, with active local groups and national bodies that worked closely with the wider British student movement. This article discusses how and why Chinese students sought to interpret China and the Chinese to British audiences and examines the specific tactics and techniques they developed to do so. The presence of Chinese students in Britain remains curiously neglected, and they are less well researched than other diasporic student communities or their compatriots who studied in France or the USA. Since the mid-2010s, Chinese students have formed the largest cohort of international students in the UK. This article makes the case for the significance of university and college students as cultural intermediaries, both within and outside formal empire, as well as contributing to a revaluation of what was a more varied Chinese presence in Britain before 1937 than is often recognized.</p>","PeriodicalId":520090,"journal":{"name":"Modern British history","volume":"36 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144311171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}