The organisation of ex-service men into a mass membership movement was a new departure in British life. Four main groups came together in 1921 to form the British Legion. On its establishment, the leadership, who were predominantly high- ranking ex-officers, had high hopes of forming an extremely powerful and influential organisation. Due to a number of inherent flaws in the Legion's ideology, composition and character, the organisation never became a truly mass movement of all ex-service men. This work looks at the dynamics of the movement and provides insights into the motivations of its leaders and their impact upon the organisation. It provides a detailed account of the structure of the Legion and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the movement. The existence of a semi-autonomous Officer's Benevolent Department, a subordinate Women's Section, and an independent Legion in Scotland reveal the serious rifts within this superficially unified movement. The paradox of low officer involvement combined with an almost exclusively officer leadership contributed to low membership and other factors such as geography, unemployment and finance are considered in the discussion of Legion membership. Divisions between leaders and led on policy and methods are explored in an examination of Legion democracy. A full examination of the Legion's practical work and the attitudes which underpinned that activity confirms the Legion's position as a voluntary society with traditional charitable views. A detailed examination of the Legion's struggles over pension legislation gives an insight into Government attitudes towards ex-service men and also reveals the inherent weakness of the Legion's position when dealing with politicians. An analysis of the Legion's contacts with foreign ex-service men penetrates the Legion's rhetoric and reveals the real motivations and attitudes of the Legion leaders who developed and executed the Legion's foreign policy. Ultimately, this study provides important conclusions about the nature of the British ex-service movement.

This doctoral research has analyzed the employment of ex-military as teachers from a perspective of identity and culture. Using a single case study approach, including focus groups, interviews and observations, the research has explored a military academy within 'College', a further education institute in the south of England. Focusing particularly on the experiences of four teachers who had recently left the British Armed Forces, the analysis employs Pierre Bourdieu's habitus, field and capital to understand the macro, micro and subject level influences that shape field practice. It is proposed that, at a macro level, moralizing discourse regarding undesirable working class youth has been positioned against an idealized masculine military power identity. This has overlaid existing discourse regarding the feminized nature of teaching and the marketization of education. This can be viewed as an ideological tension between a pervading centre-right perspective of education as a tool of social order and preparing the young for employment, dominating a broader liberal egalitarian ideal of education for comprehensive social reform. At a micro level, the construction of military identities was accomplished through capital exchanges regarding military experience and relational processes of differentiation with feminized 'others'. Student identity work used processes of imagination, constructing imagined social capitals through storytelling, symbolic interaction and ritualized performance. It is proposed that socialization with idealized military types, providing conceptualized forms of idealized vocational habitus, provided access to powerful imagined capitals on which students were able to draw in the construction of new identities. The research indicates that there are both positive and negative outcomes to this identity work. The data shows that the identity work through the differentiation of feminized ‘others’ can lead to behaviours that could be viewed as aggressive or abusive. The research also argues that this identity work can have a motivating effect on students who want to join the Armed Forces, leading to successful educational attainment where identity narratives supported academic practice. With respect to the ex-military teachers themselves, the research witnessed the most successful transitions being made by the youngest members; the oldest member struggled to change to the new field conditions, his cultured military habitus disposing him to military practice, resulting in him positioning himself professionally through the capitals of his past.

Introduction: Although the health of military personnel who have taken part in specific conflicts has been studied throughout the 20th century, there is a paucity of evidence on the long-term overall impact of military service on health. This thesis describes the establishment of and findings from the Scottish Veterans Health Study, a retrospective cohort study comparing the health outcomes of veterans with those of people with no record of service, in order to determine whether the long-term health of military veterans living in Scotland differed from that of people who had never served in the armed forces. Methods: The study population comprised all 57,000 military veterans born between 1945 and 1985 who were resident in Scotland both before and after military service, together with a 3:1 comparison group of 173,000 people with no record of service, matched for age, sex and postcode sector of residence. The demographic data were extracted from the National Health Service Central Registry database and were linked electronically to the National Health Service Scottish Morbidity Record and national vital records data for acute and psychiatric hospital admissions, psychiatric day-case admissions, cancer registrations and death certificate data. Survival analysis was used to determine hazard ratios for those health conditions and outcomes considered to be of a priori interest, overall, by sex, by birth cohort and by length and period of service, both univariately and after adjusting for deprivation. Results: Veterans were at significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease compared to non-veterans overall, and of acute myocardial infarction, stroke and peripheral arterial disease specifically. Subgroup analysis showed the increased risk to be confined to veterans born between 1945 and 1959, reducing in more recent birth cohorts. The risk was highest in veterans who left after only a short period of service (Early Service Leavers), whilst those who served for longest exhibited a similar risk of cardiovascular disease to all non-veterans. Veterans were at no higher overall risk of cancer than non-veterans, although there were major differences in the risk of specific cancers, which changed over time. The oldest veterans had an increased risk of cancer of the lung, oropharynx and larynx, oesophagus and stomach; the risks of these cancers reduced in more recent birth cohorts. The 1960-1964 birth cohort showed an increased risk of both bladder cancer and pancreatic cancer in comparison with non-veterans. There were increased risks of ovarian cancer in veteran women compared with non-veterans, and of breast cancer in longer-serving women. The risk of cervical cancer decreased in more recent birth cohorts. There were no differences in the risk of colorectal cancer or prostate cancer in veterans, overall or in any subgroup. There was no clear evidence of increased risk of lymphohaematopoietic cancer in veterans. Veterans were at increased risk of motor neuron disease, but not of multiple sclerosis. Veterans were at increased risk of peptic ulcer disease for all birth cohorts up to the mid-1960s but not thereafter; the risk was highest in those with the shortest service. Hepatitis C was less common in veterans than in non-veterans, in all subgroups. Analysis of mental health outcomes showed that the greatest burden of ill-health was among Early Service Leavers, whilst veterans who completed at least a minimum length of engagement were not at increased risk compared with non-veterans, except for post-traumatic stress disorder. The results for post-traumatic stress disorder, in both veterans and non-veterans, demonstrated a complexity which could not be reconciled with any operational exposure or conventional clinical pattern, but which may have reflected a ‘hidden iceberg’ of unmet need in the late 1990s which was uncovered by increasing awareness of the condition. Longer service was generally associated with better mental health. Veterans were at no greater risk of suicide than non-veterans; the risk was independent of length of service. Veteran women exhibited a risk profile for mental health outcomes which more closely resembled that of veteran men; this was especially marked for suicide. Veterans were not at increased risk of alcoholic liver disease overall; the only subgroup to show an increase in risk was Early Service Leavers who had completed training, and there was also evidence of increased risk of some alcohol-related cancers in trained Early Service Leavers. Interpretation: Older veterans demonstrated an increased risk of smoking-related ill-health, including cardiovascular and respiratory disease and the smoking-related cancers, which is consistent with reported high rates of military smoking in the 1960s and early 1970s. Overall, there has been an improvement in health of veterans compared with the non-serving population in more recent generations, suggesting that the increased emphasis on health promotion and physical fitness in the armed forces since the late 1970s has been effective. Major alcohol problems were no more common in veterans than in the wider community, and were most likely to affect those who left earliest, although not those who left whilst still in training. Longer service was generally associated with better long-term health. Early Service Leavers had poorer health outcomes than longer-serving veterans, but the ability to stratify by length of service demonstrated that the poorest outcomes were in those who did not complete initial training. It is likely that their long-term health outcomes have been predominantly influenced by pre-service and post-service health and behavioural factors which, at a pre-service level, may have also contributed to their failure to complete the minimum military engagement, rather than by their short period of military service. The early period of service appears to act as an extension to the screening process for entry to service, filtering out those who prove least suited to service. The Early Service Leavers therefore form a ‘less healthy leaver’ group which is the counterpart to the longer-serving ‘healthy worker effect’; their status as veterans means that they can be identified within the community, unlike most other occupational leaver groups, but their poorer long-term health is unlikely to be due to military occupational factors. Improved understanding of the determinants of veterans’ health will inform the provision of appropriate health and community services to meet their needs.

En France, l’expression de "deuxième génération" de Harkis renvoie à une réalité sociologique et historique pour le moins surprenante, car un statut administratif serait devenu une caractéristique héréditaire. Le fil d’Ariane de cette étude est la transmission d'une identité. Cette transmission se traduit publiquement par les associations dont les membres s’engagent dans un conflit latent avec les pouvoirs publics. Ainsi, la relation entre les pouvoirs publics français et la population harkie de 1962 à nos jours constitue l'épine dorsale de notre recherche. Après une présentation des débats historiographiques, la gestion étatique de cette population, ses effets matériels et symboliques sont examinés à l’échelle départementale. Le terrain d’investigation choisi est le Lot-et-Garonne, où se situent le Centre d'Accueil des Rapatriés d'Algérie à Bias, et le Centre d’Accueil des Français d’Indochine sur la commune voisine de Sainte-Livrade. Leur approche comparative aide à l’analyse du traitement par l'Etat de cette question sociopolitique dans une France fraîchement décolonisée. L’administration des familles harkies lot-et-garonnaises s’articule autour de trois phases : 1- de 1962 jusqu’au milieu des années 1970, celle-ci se caractérise par une certaine improvisation et une gestion de l’urgence ; 2 - la première révolte de 1975 ouvre la seconde période marquée par le passage d’une question coloniale à une question d’immigration avec une réelle recherche de solutions ; 3 - la rébellion de 1991 inaugure la troisième phase durant laquelle les dirigeants instaurent une politique basée sur un accompagnement social renforcé et une réparation historique. Ce dispositif entérine la double étiquette de la population harkie qui forme une communauté socio-historique singulière. / In France, the expression “second generation” of Harkis is a surprising sociological and historical reality, because an administrative status would become a hereditary characteristic. The main theme of this study is the transmission of an identity. This transmission is publicly conveyed by the associations whose members are in conflict with the authorities. Thus, the relation between the French authorities and the Harki population from1962 to nowadays composes the backbone of our research. After a presentation of the historiographical debates, the management by the French State of this population, its material and symbolic effects are examined on a departmental scale. The chosen place of investigation is Lot-et-Garonne, where the Reception Center for the Repatriated Settlers from Algeria in Bias (or CARA) and the Reception Center for the French people of Indochina on the nearby municipality of Sainte-Livrade (or CAFI) are located. Their comparative approach helps in the analysis of the treatment by the State of this sociopolitical question in newly decolonized France. The management of Harki families in Lot-et-Garonne can be studied according to three periods: 1 - from 1962 until the middle of the 1970’ this management is characterized by a certain improvisation and a sense of urgency; 2 - the first revolt of 1975 opens the second period which is marked by the passage from a colonial question to a question of immigration with a real research of solutions; 3 - the rebellion of 1991 inaugurates the third phase in the course of which the leaders establish a policy based on an intensified social accompaniment and a historic repair. This plan confirms the double label of the Harki population which forms a singular socio-historical community.