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The Labour party has been largely defined by the battle of ideas between its left and right sections. This book chronicles those battles, highlighting the key ideas and people behind them since Attlee. It focuses on the totemic moments in the party, but pays particular attention to the Corbyn era. It argues that to understand Corbynism it is important to understand the previous battles over ideas in the party. The final chapter analyses how Corbynism has reacted to Brexit, the biggest issue to face UK politics since WWII, and how this issue has re-opened the left and right battle.

A common misunderstanding of the Abortion Act 1967 is that it granted women the ‘right’ to access abortion. In reality, there is no such thing; the current provision of abortion in the United Kingdom rests on a system in which doctors, not women, are the arbiters of abortion access. In recent years, calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion have been given a vigour not seen before. For the first time, MPs and medical associations have moved to back decriminalisation, in line with the demands of pro-choice campaigners across the UK. But at the same time, opponents are mobilising to undermine public faith in both the Abortion Act and abortion providers. In doing so, they have tended to set aside the classic ‘right to life’ arguments, instead focusing on issues such as sex-selective abortion and disability rights. This book makes sense of today’s changed landscape of abortion debate by tracing the evolution of political and parliamentary discourse on abortion from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present. It makes the case that to understand contemporary abortion politics, it is necessary to move beyond a conceptualisation of the debate as characterised by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’.

Britain and Europe at a Crossroads: The Politics of Anxiety and Transformation dissects the complex social, cultural and political factors that led the UK to take its decision to leave the EU and examines the far-reaching consequences of that decision. Developing the conceptual framework of securitization, the book uses primary sources and a focus on rhetoric and discourse analysis to examine the ways that political elites engineered a politics of fear, insecurity and Brexit nationalism before and after the Brexit vote. The book situates Brexit within a wider shift in international political ideas, traces the resurgence in popularity of far-right politics and explores how Britain and Europe now face a choice between further neoliberal reform or radical democratic and social renewal. The book posits a number of policy responses that might serve as antidotes to the causes of Brexit and radical right populism centred on a new Social Europe, redistribution and social justice and forms of deliberative democracy that extend participation and preserve representative judgement in the British tradition of ‘pouring new wine into old bottles’.

This book offers a powerful and distinctive analysis of how the politics of the UK and the lived experience of its citizens have been reframed in the first decades of the 21^st century. It does so by bringing together carefully articulated case studies with theoretically informed discussion of the relationship between austerity, Brexit and the rise of populist politics, as well as highlighting the emergence of a range of practices, institutions and politics that challenge the hegemony of austerity discourses. The book mobilises notions of agency to help understand the role of austerity (as politics and lived experience) as a fundamental cause of Brexit. Investigating the social, economic, political, and cultural constraints and opportunities arising from a person’s position in society allows us to explain the link between austerity politics and the vote for Brexit. In doing so, the book goes beyond traditional disciplinary approaches to develop more interdisciplinary engagements, based on broad understandings of cultural studies as well as drawing on insights from political science, sociology, economics, geography and law. It uses comparative material from the regions of England and from the devolved territories of the UK, and explores the profound differences of geography, generation, gender, ‘race’ and class.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the NHS reforms ushered in by UK Coalition Government under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, arguably the most extensive reforms ever introduced in the NHS. Contributions from leading researchers from the UK, the US and New Zealand examine the reforms in the contexts of national health policy, commissioning and service provision, governance and others. Collectively, the chapters presents a broader assessment of the trajectory of health reforms in the context of marketisation, the rise of health consumerism and the revelation of medical scandals. This is essential reading for those studying the NHS, those who work in it, and those who seek to gain a better understanding of this key public service.

Housing has been labelled a ‘wicked’ problem: complex, territorial, open-ended and intractable. This book underscores the role of politics in generating this ‘wickedness’, highlighting the ‘actors’ engaged in the process within their political institutions and the entrenched territorial electoral politics involved in the ‘housing question’. It concentrates on the preparing, disputing and implementing policy rather than on policy outcomes and the social and economic determinants ― industrialisation, capitalism, globalisation ― of continuity and change. The major theoretical approaches framing its content are the ‘new institutionalism’, social constructionism and public choice theory. The sub-title reflects the book’s themes. Power is acquired formally through the electoral system but is exercised through a variety of mechanisms including ‘governmentality’ ― the techniques that regulate and order behaviour. Planning draws attention to attempts to modify the role of markets in housing outcomes and includes land use planning and the influence of alleged ‘rational’ solutions applied to ‘the housing problem’ manifest in housing design and specific interventions aimed at mitigating housing problems. Protest concerns the ‘outsiders’ in the political system and their attempts to secure a voice often outside the normal institutional channels approved by authorities and perhaps eventually become the power holders.

Now in its fourth edition, this is the classic assessment of the state of child well-being in the United Kingdom. This edition has been updated to review the latest evidence, examining the outcomes for children of the impact of the economic crisis and austerity measures since 2008. It draws together a vast amount of robust empirical evidence and includes intra-UK and international comparisons. Edited by a highly regarded expert in the field, each chapter covers a different domain of child well-being, including health, wellbeing, housing and education. This is an invaluable resource for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers concerned with child welfare and wellbeing.

This book contributes to important discussions on gender inequality in the present-day film and television industries and labour movement through an historical analysis of women workers and their trade union in the British film and television industries from 1933 to 2017. This book concentrates on the three iterations of the technicians’ union: the Association of Cine-Technicians (ACT) (1933-56), the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT) (1957-91), and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU) (1991-2017). Drawing on previously unseen archival material and oral history interviews with activists, it casts new light on women’s experiences of union participation and feminism over nine decades. This book advances three key arguments in relation to its central themes: the operation of a gendered union structure, women’s activism, and the relationship between class and gender in the labour movement. Firstly, it argues that a gendered union structure was institutionalised from the union’s establishment and maintained through a belief system that women’s issues were not trade union issues. Secondly, it argues that separate self-organisation was essential to women’s activity within the gendered union structure as it provided an essential space and voice for women to discuss their gender-specific concerns, develop consciousness and skills and formulate policy. It further emphasises the importance of external feminist allies to women’s union activity. Thirdly, it argues that class differences between middle-class women in film and television production and working-class women in the laboratories informed the direction of women’s activity at its height during the 1970s and 1980s.