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This study used an oral history (OH) and reminiscence work (RW) approach to explore childhood memories of Merseyside, England, United Kingdom, in the period following the Second World War. Interviews were conducted with ten volunteers between 60 and 70 years of age from communities across Merseyside, collecting unique reminiscences. The researcher used a qualitative research approach to obtain and analyse the findings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on a one-to-one basis and findings were analysed thematically according to emergent themes. Firstly, the interview transcripts were analysed to identify the social conditions which impacted on childhood experiences. Then, the researcher created a Memory Tree Model (MTM) and revisited the same participants to focus on the reflective aspect of the reminiscence process itself; thus, each participant was interviewed twice, allowing adequate scope for reflection. The researcher wrote a series of memoir chapters to present and discuss the research findings in a way that captured the essence of childhood and adequately represented the impact of reminiscence. This thesis explores the social conditions of childhood during the post war years in Merseyside and in doing so has prompted the researcher to develop a tool to support the reminiscence process. Overall, the participants found the experience to be a positive one, with therapeutic benefits, even when recalling negative memories. The majority of the participants (n=9) found the Memory Tree Model and reflective reminiscence work interview easier and more supportive than the open-microphone oral history interview. Each of the participants continued to reminisce in the months between the first and second phase of interviews and had started to engage in reminiscence with their families. The results were linked to the research and practice outcomes of a heuristic model of reminiscence to explain the impact that reminiscence had on those who took part. In theorising the use of both an oral history and reminiscence work approach, this thesis informs others working with reminiscences, in better understanding the impact on those who are engaging in this type of research. It also demonstrates an understanding of the relationship between social research and community engagement. The researcher was given the opportunity to disseminate the findings in a public forum via an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool Life (MLL); this established that both OH and RW can be a positive experience for participants and enrich the wider community. Recommendations for future practice include increasing access to public reminiscence workshops, enabling people of all ages to benefit from its qualities. This would be an enriching practice in society, not only facilitating the process of reminiscing, but also bridging gaps between generations and cultures, building networks and bringing communities closer together. The research contributes to the body of knowledge by providing insight into the social conditions of childhood in post-war Merseyside through a set of unique and candid childhood memories. The researcher achieved this by opting to use a multi-method participatory approach for gathering the research findings; a pictorial tool was created and used to support the participants in this process. Furthermore, a collaborative approach fostered community engagement in the form of an interactive museum event which provided a platform for public engagement and additional memory sharing.

During World War II, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) infiltrated into Japanese-occupied Malaya. They worked with Malayan guerrilla groups, including the communist-sponsored Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). The MPAJA is regarded as the precursor of the communist insurgent army of the Malayan Emergency, and has been examined from that perspective, but its relationship with SOE and with other Malayan guerrilla groups remains poorly understood. Using SOE and related sources as a route into the Malayan interior during a pivotal period, this thesis traces the development of SOE’s Malayan operations, before analysing the interactions between SOE and the various guerrilla groups, and their relationships with each other. It explores the extent of Malay disillusionment with Japanese rule, and demonstrates how guerrilla service acted as a nursery for some later Malay leaders of the independent nation. Furthermore, it contributes to our knowledge of wartime Malaya by revealing the existence of a proto-state in northern Malaya ruled by guerrillas allied to the Chinese Nationalist Party. The destruction of this proto-state by the MPAJA, coupled with the communists’ acquisition of jungle-fighting weapons from SOE and their actions during the lawless period following the Japanese surrender, provides clear insights into the long-term ambitions of the Malayan Communist Party. However, the reports written about the MPAJA by SOE operatives just after the war failed to draw out the likely future threat posed by the communists to the returning colonial administration, foreshadowing the intelligence failure in the lead-up to the Malayan Emergency. In both cases, the British possessed a wealth of local information, but failed to catalyse it into active intelligence. This thesis leads us to re-assess the impact of SOE on Malayan politics, to reconsider the nature of Malayan communism’s challenge to colonial rule, and to rethink British post-war intelligence in Malaya.

This study addresses the history of the static holiday caravan site in Britain. Commercial holiday camps, such as Butlin’s and Warner’s, have been seen by many to be the epitome of UK post-war working-class holiday making. But despite some shared characteristics and developmental roots, it is argued that static caravan sites were and are essentially a separate phenomenon, and this study analyses how they quickly became a significant and substantial aspect of post-war domestic tourism. This study also demonstrates that unlike commercial holiday camps, they spawned organically as a result of the agency of the post-war working-class, who were empowered by a growing sense of confidence, assertion and economic security, against the vision of the state-approved holiday camp model. Arising as they did as an affordable and more individualistic alternative (despite strict planning legislation that in its formulation had no concept of their future development), it is shown that static caravan sites continued to develop (with the benefit of key legislation) in a way that was not in many respects typical of other aspects of UK domestic tourism in the second half of the twentieth century, but did reflect wider patterns of working-class consumerism. This study also argues that as a major aspect of domestic tourism, static caravan parks did not follow the well-documented pattern of decline experienced by many domestic resorts and holiday forms, but exhibited a distinct tendency to adapt and change in a way that allowed manufacturers and parks to offer an up-to-date and enticing product in times of economic growth as well as times of recession. This has resulted in the static holiday caravan park becoming a significant aspect of British domestic holiday making.

This thesis examines the experiences and political subjectivity of women who engaged in workplace protest in Britain between 1968 and 1985. The study covers a period that has been identified with the ‘zenith’ of trade-union militancy in British labour history. The women’s liberation movement also emerged in this period, which produced a shift in public debates about gender roles and relations in the home and the workplace. Women’s trade union membership increased dramatically and trade unions increasingly committed themselves to supporting ‘women’s issues’. Industrial disputes involving working-class women have frequently been cited as evidence of women’s growing participation in the labour movement. However, the voices and experiences of female workers who engaged in workplace protest remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses this space through an original analysis of the 1968 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford, Dagenham; the 1976 equal pay strike at Trico, Brentford; the 1972 Sexton shoe factory occupation in Fakenham, Norfolk; the 1981 Lee Jeans factory occupation in Greenock, Inverclyde and the 1984-1985 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford Dagenham. Drawing upon a combination of oral history and written sources, this study contributes a fresh understanding of the relationship between feminism, workplace activism and trade unionism during the years 1968-1985. In every dispute considered in this thesis, women’s behaviour was perceived by observers as novel, ‘historic’ or extraordinary. But the women did not think of themselves as extraordinary, and rather understood their behaviour as a legitimate and justified response to their everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism. The industrial disputes analysed in this thesis show that women’s workplace militancy was not simply a direct response to women’s heightened presence in trade unions. The women involved in these disputes were more likely to understand their experiences of workplace activism as an expression of the economic, social and subjective value of their work. Whilst they did not adopt a feminist identity or associate their action with the WLM, they spoke about themselves and their motivations in a manner that emphasised feminist values of equality, autonomy and self-worth.

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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of History

This thesis is a history of humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Britain, between 1942 and 1985. Specifically, it is focused upon the group of leading agencies linked to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella body for joint emergency fundraising established in the 1960s. The thesis explores the role of these NGOs in building up an expansive and technocratic disaster relief industry in Britain, in which they were embedded as instruments for the delivery of humanitarian aid. This was problematic, as many principal aid agencies also wished to move away from short-term disaster relief, to focus upon political advocacy connected to international development instead. It is argued that, despite this increasing political focus, humanitarian NGOs were consistently brought back to emergency relief by the power of television, the lack of public support for development, and the interventions of the British government. Aid agencies also actively contributed to this process, as they used apolitical disaster relief to generate public support and drive institutional growth in a crowded marketplace. This analysis complicates linear narratives of a transition from emergency relief to development aid in post-war British humanitarianism, instead presenting the period as characterised by competing and contradictory trajectories. This challenges conceptions of NGOs as bottom-up agents of civil society, by highlighting their competitive tendencies and complex interconnections with the mass media and the state. The rise of NGO humanitarianism also sheds light on broader trends in contemporary British history, such as changing patterns of political engagement, the character of modern activism, and the legacies of empire in the post-imperial period.

The thesis investigates the role of the Greek junta in the Cyprus Crisis of 1974 and analyses the invisible and complex components, including the foreign factors, which determined its outcome. Initially it examines the backstage of the intra-Greek collision between Brigadier-General Ioannides in Athens and Archbishop Makarios in Nicosia, as well as the subversive planning, including the possibility of US implication, and the military operations of the Greek coup that dethroned the Cypriot president on 15 July. It analyses the critical preinvasion days (15-19 July), which offered a clear operational forewarning over Turkish strategic intentions, and the Athenian strategic miscalculations, for the timely mobilization of the Greek-Cypriot forces, against the imminent invasion on 20 July. Then it focuses on the analysis of the offensive and defensive operations during the two phases of the Turkish invasion, and examines the difficulties encountered by the Turkish forces as well as the causes that pre-determined the Greek-Cypriot defensive failure. The thesis concludes with the implicating responsibility of foreign powers, which silently acquiesced to the deterioration of a crisis that ended with the military partition of the island Republic: the surprising Soviet silence, the fluctuating behaviour of Whitehall, and the ambiguous role of Washington which, under the dominance of Kissinger, played a critical role in encouraging, rather than deterring, Turkish strategic objectives.