History & Policy

Nearly one million workers in the UK are on zero-hour contracts. A further five million are nominally self-employed. In modern Britain, flexibility is often presented as a way of reconciling pressures between work and family life.

Professor Noel Whiteside, Professor of Comparative Public Policy at the University of Warwick, will approach the subject from the historical perspective. What is now "flexibility" was once "casual labour", and social enquiry revealed the consequences of casual labour over a hundred years ago. The nineteenth century founding fathers of social statistics (Charles Booth, Seehbohm Rowntree, A.L. Bowley among others) argued that, to safeguard Britain’s commercial and imperial pre-eminence, casual employment must be abolished. Theresa May has recently set up a twenty-first century equivalent in the Taylor Review. It is likely to reach similar conclusions. She asks why the social reforms of the early twentieth century designed to tackle the problems of casual labour ultimately failed, and what mistakes we are at risk of making again.

Professor Peter Ackers and Dr Alastair Reid introduced their edited collection of essays challenging traditional narratives of twentieth century British labour history at King’s College London.

The book’s essays explore neglected aspects of working class experience and political awareness over the twentieth century - including religious Nonconformity, self-organisation and left libertarianism - and shows how this diversity has been quashed by a narrative focussing on trade unions, nationalisation, class cohesion and secular state-socialism.

As both editors pointed out, this re-examination of Labour history comes at a critical point in the fortunes of the modern Labour party, which appears to be facing choices about its intellectual future.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.

The Contested History of Hormone Pregnancy Tests

27 January 2017 - 09:00 am - 17:00 pm

Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF

This one-day conference explores the contested history of Primodos, a controversial drug that was used for pregnancy testing in the 1950s-70s, and whether the UK government should have banned it soon after doctors first warned in 1967 that it may have been causing birth defects.

Organised by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn with support from the Wellcome Trust, History & Policy, and Generation to Reproduction.