In contrast to the bulk of historical research on female offending, this thesis focuses, in particular, on women's petty offending. The first objective of the research was to redress the imbalance created by many previous studies that have highlighted the sexually related offences of women and to establish the participation of women in less overtly gendered crime. The analysis showed that women's offending was indeed mundane in nature and reflected their limited opportunities for offending, but also that, like men, women were largely summonsed for drunken and anti-social behaviour, breaching increasing regulatory legislation, and common assault. The second objective was to examine when and why women started to offend. The analysis showed that the onset and exacerbation of offending was directly linked to pressing social concerns and policing practices rather than an inherent criminality. Conversely, the third objective was to examine why women stopped offending, if indeed they did stop. The examination showed that reform and re-integration were not symbiotic. Re-integration often led to persistence in offending, particularly if their offending was a result of unhappy marital circumstances or alcohol-related. Reform was only possible when women ceased to be summonsed, not necessarily when they changed their behaviour. Criminal justice interventions were largely ineffective; a large proportion of women who desisted from offending did so in spite of punishment, not because of it.

Historically, women activists in the labour movement have faced the problem of combining an allegiance to class politics with an awareness of gender disadvantage. While possessing a unifying egalitarian discourse, the labour movement's gender ideology - through prioritising male concerns in its programme, organisation and culture - marginalised women. The thesis examines the tensions between these two discourses through a study of a group of women activists in the Labour Party, the Labour Women's Organisation and Militant in the North West of England during the 1980s. As well as documentary evidence, the study is based on in-depth, informal interviews with seventeen activists. The thesis begins with a survey of how earlier generations of women experienced and challenged the labour movement's gender ideology before discussing the immediate context of Thatcherism in which this group's activism took place. After analysing their class and gender identities, the thesis considers the activists' response to significant events and issues, including changes in the workforce, the miners' strike of 1984-85, and campaigns on sexual harassment and domestic violence. The thesis assesses the impact of campaigning on their political and organisational views and strategies, and maps both changes and continuities in ideology, practice and culture. The thesis highlights the importance of discourses and structures which encourage and enable collective activism. It shows that, although organising as women was problematic (they could be marginalised or allocated a purely supportive role), it was crucial to the interviewees' ability to develop their political ideas and work. Women labour movement activists who decide to address gender disadvantage within a class context occupy a particular political space. In this, they are neither synonymous with the labour movement nor the autonomous women's movement, but interact with both.

This thesis looks at the development of child adoption in England in the interwar years. It considers the social historical factors contributing to the increasing interest in adoption after the First World War and discusses the campaign for legislation in the 1920s. It focuses in some detail on the two parliamentary committees (Hopkinson, established 1920, and Tomlinson, 1924) which were set up to consider legalising adoption, and on the process leading to the enactment of the first English adoption law. It discussest he consequenceso f the 1926 Adoption of Children Act, and the pressure which resulted in the setting up in 1936 of the Horsbrugh Committee to look into the operation of the adoption societies, and the subsequent legislation on this issue. A wide range of contemporary and secondary sources have been used, with a particularly close analysis of parliamentary and other official material. The central narrative of the thesis is informed by a series of key questions or debates. These include considering why legislation happened at this particular time; the way in which attitudes towards adoption altered during this period; the differing emphasis attached to the interests of those involved in adoption (ie birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children), and whether this changed; the reasons why secrecy was so important for many of those involved in adoption; and a discussion of the significance of adoption for women in the interwar years. The thesis argues that adoption in the interwar years cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the issues raised in these debates, and the concluding chapter, which sketches in the development of adoption since 1939, shows how many of these issues continued to dominate discussion about adoption throughout the post-war period.

No description available.

Sir Samuel Hoare was one of the most significant politicians in 1930s Britain, heading several major departments during the National Government. Appointed India Secretary in August 1931, he steered the hugely complex Government of India Bill through parliament in the face of virulent opposition from Churchill. Rewarded for his fortitude, Hoare became Foreign Secretary in June 1935, only to see his reputation suffer enormous damage due to his enforced resignation six months later, over his attempt to resolve the Abyssinian Crisis. Brought back into government as First lord of the Admiralty in June 1936, he earned the admiration of his officials for his enthusiasm for the senior service and success in securing additional funds for the Navy’s modernisation programme. The accession of Neville Chamberlain to the Premiership saw Hoare move to the Home Office, where he achieved considerable praise for his reformist approach to a variety of issues, from regulation of the workplace to penal reform. Nonetheless, controversy remained ever present due to his role in determining Britain’s response to the increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, and as one of the key Ministers during the Munich Crisis. At the outbreak of war in September 1939 Hoare retained his salience in government as Lord Privy Seal in a small nine-man cabinet, before being transferred to the Air Ministry as the Norwegian campaign began in April 1940. However, his tenure lasted but a few weeks as he became a scapegoat for Allied reverses in the battle for Norway, being relieved of his duties when Churchill became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940. He was never to regain ministerial office.

Although much has been written about the consequences of drainage work carried out in peat fens, the result of eighteenth-century drainage and parliamentary enclosures in Lincolnshire silt fens has received little attention other than at a general level. This thesis explores the Holland Fen, to consider how an inflexible configuration of drainage and enclosure procedures in the eighteenth century was able to dominate the topography and all aspects of its social development and economy, for more than two centuries. Central to this thesis are the complicated and unusual procedures taken by a group of eleven neighbouring parishes to drain and enclose a Lincolnshire fen in which they held undisputed common rights. How radical were these actions, and why were they taken? Particular use is made of contemporary documents including the drainage acts of 1762-6, the enclosure award and maps of 1769, various eighteenth-century London newspapers, and council minutes of a local borough. Data taken from proprietors' lists, census material, annual crop returns, and MAF documents reveal the progression of images of a confined and remote fen. These continue throughout its reclamation, challenges of extra-parochial areas, social development, economic growth and convoluted formation of civil communities. While most studies of drainage and enclosure are only concerned with the first few years, or perhaps the first half-century after such events, the long-term nature of this topic, 1750-1945, has been determined by the direct interaction of these layouts with other important issues. These include plot sizes, leases, tenant rights, rebellion and social responses, migration, farm buildings, and farm servants in late-nineteenth century Lincolnshire. Local documents, photographs, diaries, and oral testimony contribute useful insights. Could an unyielding topography also influence religion, education, the triumph of local enterprise in a depressed economy, emigration, leisure, identity, coastal defences, and national security in wartime? This thesis claims research into lesser known fenlands is more likely to produce that wider range of information needed to fully appreciate the diversity of regional fenlands.

The Liberal Party was the dominant party of government from the 1850s to the Great War, but it was virtually wiped out by the 1950s. The causes and timing of the party’s decline are contested by historians, with Dangerfield, McKibbin and Pelling arguing for a root in Edwardian times; Wilson, Tanner and Bentley asserting that the Great War was the cause; and Hart arguing the case for the 1918 election being critical. This research is the first to investigate the role of defections of MPs and former MPs in the party’s decline. Each defection was a judgement on the state of the party at a specific date. They suggest that neither pre-War change, nor the War itself, was catastrophic for the party. Few defectors left because of the War and the party was still in a recoverable situation after the 1918 election. One sixth of the Liberal MPs, who sat after December 1910, defected from the party – nearly all between 1918 and 1956. The main damage was done by a mechanical, rather than ideological, failure of the Liberal Party. Lloyd George was the leader who presided over the most serious outflow of defectors. Three other figures, who have not previously been strongly associated with the Liberals’ decline, were critically involved - William Wedgwood Benn, Reginald McKenna and Freddie Guest. Negative aspects of the Liberal Party exerted much stronger influence on the defectors than did the positive attractions of any other party. MPs with a military background, high personal wealth and those from a minority religion were most likely to defect. Defectors went almost equally to the right and the left, but those going to the Conservative Party almost all remained satisfied with their new party, whereas over half of the defectors to Labour came to regret their move.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.