History & Policy

David Lyddon, co- editor journal Historical Studies in Industrial Relations

In Place of Strife (1969): Trade Union legal rights & responsibilities revisited

Modern Records Centre, Warwick University

50 years ago, the conflict between the Harold Wilson Labour Government & the trade unions over the Barbara Castle White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’ was one of the pivotal moments of post-war British Industrial Relations. It pitched voluntarist ideas of ‘free collective bargaining’ against ideas of economic planning & public policy concerns about strikes, inflation and restrictive practices. The white paper followed the 1968 Donovan Report & preceded Heath’s Conservative 1971 Industrial Relations Act. In response to Peter Dorey’s new book on In Place of Strife, this seminar has two parts. In the morning there is a historical reassessment of the political episode. In the afternoon, we consider the implications for current Labour Party policy on trade unions, as the Manifesto promises to ‘roll out sectoral bargaining’. The seminar is held at the Modern Records Centre, the largest UK trade union & industrial relations collection, which will be introduced to us.

Peter Dorey, author Comrades in Conflict: Labour, the Trade Unions & In Place of Strife (1969), Manchester 2019

In Place of Strife (1969): Trade Union legal rights & responsibilities revisited

Modern Records Centre, Warwick University

50 years ago, the conflict between the Harold Wilson Labour Government & the trade unions over the Barbara Castle White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’ was one of the pivotal moments of post-war British Industrial Relations. It pitched voluntarist ideas of ‘free collective bargaining’ against ideas of economic planning & public policy concerns about strikes, inflation and restrictive practices. The white paper followed the 1968 Donovan Report & preceded Heath’s Conservative 1971 Industrial Relations Act. In response to Peter Dorey’s new book on In Place of Strife, this seminar has two parts. In the morning there is a historical reassessment of the political episode. In the afternoon, we consider the implications for current Labour Party policy on trade unions, as the Manifesto promises to ‘roll out sectoral bargaining’. The seminar is held at the Modern Records Centre, the largest UK trade union & industrial relations collection, which will be introduced to us.

Dr Andrew Blick (King’s College London and Director, History & Policy)

Dane Kennedy (National History Center): Brexit and the Legacies of Empire

Although Britain lost its empire some fifty years ago, this talk will argue that the legacies of its imperial past have helped shape the debate surrounding Brexit and Britain’s future. I intend to (1) note the historical forces that brought an end to Britain’s empire and led to its belated and ambivalent entry into the European Union, (2) point out how postcolonial demographics and politics within British society gave rise to sharply divergent interpretations of the nation’s imperial past, and (3) make the case that these interpretations have shaped arguments about Britain’s future, particularly for Brexit’s most vocal advocates, whose repeated evocations of the imperial past have served as proxies for their vision of a ‘global Britain’.

Dane Kennedy is Director of the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is a historian of the British imperial world whose publications include The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire (Bloomsbury, 2018), Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2016), The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (Harvard UP, 2013), and The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World (Harvard UP, 2005). As the NHC’s director, he oversees a congressional briefing program and other initiatives designed to bring historical perspectives to policy issues.

David Lowe (Australian Policy and History): Trump tumult and the Australian-American alliance in historical perspective

The Trump phenomenon has caused many governments to think hard about the nature of their relationships with the United States. In the case of Australia, amidst the shock and confusion, it may even trigger the sort of questioning of the ANZUS Security Pact (1951) that historians have thus far been unable to stir. To date, ANZUS and the oft-recalled memory of 1 million American soldiers passing through Australia in the Second World War, have constituted mnemonic foundation stones for thinking about the intertwining of American and Australian security. But just as the numbers of US war veterans have rapidly dwindled, so too does ANZUS suddenly look fragile.

While it would be rash to say recent events have opened up a new space for historians in public conversation – such has been the continuing bipartisanship on the virtues of the American alliance – they have invited greater reflection. I suggest that historical perspective has much to offer at this time. Through analysis of Australian foreign policy-making and Australian-US relations at different times since the creation of ANZUS, I venture that, far from a stable ‘insurance policy’, the security pact has often shifted ground for Australian leaders. This has produced both anxiety and opportunity. The imprecision in the Australian-US security relationship has encouraged Prime Ministers to narrate its importance in ways that strengthened their leadership. The arrival of Trump might break an executive hold on the story, and enable a healthier sense of historical perspective that informs policy thinking about next steps in the relationship.

Klaus Neumann (Deakin University, Melbourne): Forced migration, policy making, and the uses and abuses of history

Drawing on examples from Germany and Australia, I reflect on the role of historicized and remembered pasts in the recent so-called refugee crisis. I am particularly interested in why and how the events of 2012-2013 (in Australia) and 2015-2016 (in Europe) were interpreted as an unprecedented crisis, and how particular readings and memories of the past facilitated or hampered responses to that “crisis”.

Klaus Neumann works for the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture on a project about local public and policy responses to refugees in Germany. He is also an honorary professor at Deakin University (Melbourne) and an adjunct research fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute (Dresden). He has written numerous articles and books (most recently, the award-winning Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees, 2015), and contributes regularly to Inside Story and other non-academic fora.

Jennifer Crane (Warwick): ‘The NHS … should not be condemned to the history books’: The Place of Activism in History & Policy.

In a public event in South Wales in June 2017, one participant stated that the NHS must not be ‘condemned to the history books’ alone. This critical comment raises a series of questions about the relationships between history, policy, and activism, and also about the roles of public history in celebrating, criticising, or condemning public institutions. Drawing on research and engagement work, this paper argues that, throughout the post-war period, activist work has prefigured, reshaped, and represented broader cultural shifts in attitudes to the NHS, particularly through media and, newly, social media networks. Given this, therefore, analysis of activism provides a key mechanism, for historians and policy-makers alike, to understand schisms in public opinion over time, and to analyse how voluntary organisations mediate between public and political thinking.

Jennifer Crane is a Public Engagement Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, working on a Wellcome Trust-funded project, ‘The Cultural History of the NHS’. This involves substantial work with Museums, hospitals, campaign groups, and media, particularly around the recent 70th Anniversary of the NHS. She has broader research interests in health, activism, policy, and childhood. Her first book was published this year, entitled Child Protection in England, 1960-2000: Expertise, Experience, and Emotion.

Sally Sheard (Liverpool): Learning from history: NHS plans

For the first 26 years, the NHS was left to run without major reform or reorganisation. Although planning emerged as a concern in the 1960s, linked to desires to increase effectiveness and efficiency, it wasn't until the 1980s, and the introduction of general management, that there was the political will or technical capacity to construct detailed, long-term plans. This paper considers the introduction of NHS plans as key political 'sticks' (rather than 'carrots') to improve performance, and discusses the impact of the increasing tension between planning and the service's ability to meet targets, such as waiting times and 'quality' of care.

Sally Sheard is the Andrew Geddes and John Rankin Professor of Modern History at the University of Liverpool, with a primary research interest in the interface between expert advisers and policymakers. She currently leads a five-year Wellcome Trust funded project; The Governance of Health: Medical, Economic and Managerial Expertise in Britain since 1948. Her latest book is The Passionate Economist: how Brian Abel-Smith shaped global health and social welfare (Policy Press, 2013). She has also written on the history of hospitals, the finance of British medicine and the development of the NHS. Sally has extensive experience of using history in public and policy engagement and has worked with local health authorities and government organisations. She also has written for and presented television and radio programmes, including the 2018 BBC Radio 4 series National Health Stories.

Roberta Bivins (Warwick): 'Stop reinventing the Wheel: Prompting critical reflection on medical responses to migration'

Today, migration is framed as a crisis, and often one of unprecedented scale, complexity and diversity. Yet from a historian's perspective, neither this language nor the phenomena described by it are novel. Globally, the second half of the twentieth century was characterised by mass movements of population. Moreover, medical practices and ideas about 'good' citizenship and 'good' behaviour have been integral to state management of both migrant populations and the ethnic communities that emerged as migrants became citizens and stakeholders.

In theory, then, national and international organisations should be able to mobilise fifty years of clinical and public health experience with migrant and ethnic populations. Yet this valuable resource is rarely tapped, or even recognised, by those newly charged with each successive 'crisis'. The outcomes -- positive or negative -- of previous interventions are lost to those who accidentally repeat them. I have found that historical case studies showcasing past experience as a resource for present decision-makers are valued as direct and translatable evidence by workers in the field.

Roberta Bivins is a historian of medicine at the University of Warwick. Her first two books examined the cross-cultural transmission of medical expertise, particularly in relation to global and alternative medicine (Acupuncture, Expertise and Cross-Cultural Medicine, 2000 and Alternative Medicine? A History, 2007). Since 2004, funded by the Wellcome Trust, she has studied the impacts of immigration and ethnicity on post-war British health, medical research and practice. In 2015, she published findings from this work as a book, Contagious Communities: Medicine, Migration and the NHS in Post War Britain. With Mathew Thomson, she is now exploring the culture and effects of Britain’s National Health Service in the UK and internationally since 1948.

Roberta Bivins (Warwick): 'Stop reinventing the Wheel: Prompting critical reflection on medical responses to migration'

Today, migration is framed as a crisis, and often one of unprecedented scale, complexity and diversity. Yet from a historian's perspective, neither this language nor the phenomena described by it are novel. Globally, the second half of the twentieth century was characterised by mass movements of population. Moreover, medical practices and ideas about 'good' citizenship and 'good' behaviour have been integral to state management of both migrant populations and the ethnic communities that emerged as migrants became citizens and stakeholders.

In theory, then, national and international organisations should be able to mobilise fifty years of clinical and public health experience with migrant and ethnic populations. Yet this valuable resource is rarely tapped, or even recognised, by those newly charged with each successive 'crisis'. The outcomes -- positive or negative -- of previous interventions are lost to those who accidentally repeat them. I have found that historical case studies showcasing past experience as a resource for present decision-makers are valued as direct and translatable evidence by workers in the field.

Roberta Bivins is a historian of medicine at the University of Warwick. Her first two books examined the cross-cultural transmission of medical expertise, particularly in relation to global and alternative medicine (Acupuncture, Expertise and Cross-Cultural Medicine, 2000 and Alternative Medicine? A History, 2007). Since 2004, funded by the Wellcome Trust, she has studied the impacts of immigration and ethnicity on post-war British health, medical research and practice. In 2015, she published findings from this work as a book, Contagious Communities: Medicine, Migration and the NHS in Post War Britain. With Mathew Thomson, she is now exploring the culture and effects of Britain’s National Health Service in the UK and internationally since 1948.