scholarly journals Paradise Postponed: A Re-examination of the Green Book Proposals of 1945

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Finkel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
Green Book ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
State Programs

Abstract During World War Two, all federal political parties sought to accommodate the growing demand for "welfare state" programs. Mackenzie King's Liberals successfully checked the growth of the CCF by promising a comprehensive program of cradle-to-grave security. After the 1945 election the Liberal government prepared such a program and brought it to a dominion-provincial conference whose purpose was to determine the taxation and administrative arrangements necessary for its implementation. The "conference", which became a series of mini-conferences stretched over nine months, ended without agreement. The federal government blamed recalcitrant premiers in Ontario and Quebec for the conference's failure and abandoned much of the reform program. This article argues that the federal government, in fact, wanted the conference to fail because it did not want to undertake the expenses implied in the reform proposals. After proving inflexible in dealing with provincial criticisms, it cynically and successfully manipulated events to make it appear that the provinces had killed hopes for reform. Post-war prosperity and a declining interest in reform, particularly on the part of the corporate and medical elites, contributed to the federal government's unwillingness to pursue reform vigorously.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

scholarly journals Commentary: Serving the nation, serving the people: echoes of war in the early NHS

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-156
Author(s):  
Roberta Bivins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Health Service ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
State Institution ◽  
World War ◽  
Total War ◽  
The People ◽  
Post War ◽  
British People

It is something of a cliché to speak of Britain as having been transformed by the traumas of World War II and by its aftermath. From the advent of the ‘cradle to grave’ Welfare State to the end of (formal) empire, the effects of total war were enduring. Typically, they have been explored in relation to demographic, socioeconomic, technological and geopolitical trends and events. Yet as the articles in this volume observe across a variety of examples, World War II affected individuals, groups and communities in ways both intimate and immediate. For them, its effects were directly embodied. That is, they were experienced physically and emotionally—in physical and mental wounds, in ruptured domesticities and new opportunities and in the wholesale disruption and re-formation of communities displaced by bombing and reconstruction. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that Britain’s post-war National Health Service, as the state institution charged with managing the bodies and behaviour of the British people, was itself permeated by a ‘wartime spirit’ long after the cessation of international hostilities.

scholarly journals The Enduring Influence of Female Special Operations Executive Agent Biopics on Cultural Memory and Representations in France and Great Britain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. WLS144-WLS168
Author(s):  
Sylvie Pomiès-Maréchal
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Fictional Representations

Seventy-five years have elapsed since the end of World War Two. Yet, the memory of the conflict still occupies a central place in British and French collective consciousness. Fiction and film representations of the war act as powerful ‘vectors of memory’, to borrow an expression from French historian Henry Rousso, and as such, they have deeply contributed to shaping popular and cultural memories of the war. This article investigates a specific aspect of World War Two representations, namely the cinematic representations of the female agents from the SOE F section, focusing on the ‘generic’ or archetypal figure of the female SOE agent as generated by the post-war cultural industry. After a brief contextualisation focusing on Churchill’s clandestine organisation, the article will analyse the contribution of Odette (Herbert Wilcox, 1950) and Carve Her Name with Pride (Lewis Gilbert, 1958) to the construction of a World War Two ‘mythology’. It will then address more recent films, concentrating on Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001) and Female Agents (Jean-Paul Salomé, 2008). How did the fictional construction of the female spy come to influence the social and cultural perception of the SOE agent? Are the tropes developed in such post-war films as Odette or Carve Her Name with Pride still current or have they evolved with time? The analysis of these fictional representations will reveal the permanence or evolution of certain representational patterns and also allow us to approach different perspectives on the cultural representation of World War Two on both sides of the Channel.

scholarly journals American 'committed' drama in Slovene theatres

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Igor Maver
Keyword(s):  
Social Criticism ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War

The purpose of this study is essentially to demonstrate that the delayed stagings of American 'committed' plays, written in the thirties and produced in Slovene theatres immediately after World War Two in the late forties and fifties, were often miscontextualized and partly misinterpreted by the literary critics of the period. This was only in the early post-war years largely due to the need to serve the then ruling ideology and to comply with the criteria of Marxist aesthetisc, especially that of a radical social criticism. However, the later stagings particularly of Arthur Miller's and also Tennessee Williams's plays, did not see the same phenomenon, for it was they that assured the popularity of the American post-war drama on Slovene stages and, even more importantly, helped Slovene theatre to come off age in the sixties.

Social Service and Social Legislation in Edwardian England: The Beginning of a New Role for Philanthropy

1971 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
World War ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
Private Effort ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Many historians have written about the impressive social achievement of the last Liberal Government which sat in Britain from 1905 to 1916. Prominent among them is Bentley Gilbert whose Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain importantly expands. Maurice Bruce's excellent survey The Coming of the Welfare State. Much of this work has emphasized the political maneuverings for legislation which increased the economic security of millions of British citizens. This paper takes a different, supplementary approach. It is an attempt to understand the impact of the Liberals' social reform program on a part of the philanthropic community which had asssumed an important role in meeting the problems of poverty. The focus is on the provisions for social welfare made by voluntary and statutory agencies in order to clarify the beginnings of their successful partnership which today operates in the Welfare State. David Owen, in his monumental study of English philanthropy, has rightly characterized the modern role for voluntary agencies as “Junior Partner(s) in the Welfare Firm,” but he has wrongly stated that this role was recognized only after the First World War. The voluntary-statutory partnership in social welfare was formed during the Liberals' legislative revolution from 1906 to 1911: voluntarists who were affected by it understood its signficance for their work.The welfare measures of the post-Second World War Labour Government gave final recognition to the fact that in Britain social development was no longer to be the by-product of economic development, and that the State must plan comprehensively to meet social needs rather than filling in the gaps left by private effort. In a very real sense the proposals of the Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, given shape in this new age by a Fabian disciple, William Beveridge, became the foundation of British policy. But the social legislation enacted by the Labour Government was implanted in ground haphazardly prepared by previous measures which provided for specific needs, but often with little reference to related questions.

Male Vampires

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Michael Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Post War

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter ventures into the so-far uncharted territory of the Italian male vampires that populate horror parodies, straightforward horrors and horror-tinged adventures. It investigates how, within a masculinity-in-crisis framework, Italian makeshift Draculas act as champions of traditional virility, irresistible Latin lovers and tyrannical patres familias seeking to reassure Italian men of their gender leadership.

scholarly journals Muddy Waters: Cross Currents in Fundraising and Its Control – 1907–1954

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-298
Author(s):  
Putnam Barber
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
State Governments ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Second World

AbstractDuring the first half of the 20th century, many of the techniques of modern fundraising were developed. During these decades, fundraising demonstrated its potential for supporting important community goals, financing efforts to combat dread diseases, and initiating change in public policies. In this same span of years, community leaders, journalists, and policy makers became increasingly concerned with growing opportunities for inefficient or even downright dishonest fundraising. Local governments, federated fundraising organizers, and nonprofit charity ratings agencies attempted to forestall abuses of the public’s generosity. Further, during the Second World War, the federal government imposed significant controls on fundraising for war-related activities. The year 1954 saw the passage of new laws in two states that anticipated the most common form of charitable solicitations regulation in the second half of the century, a form that is widespread today. This paper traces developments from the end of the 19th century to show how the ground was prepared for post-war efforts by state governments to regulate charitable fundraising.

‘We Must Feed the Men’

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Gill Plain
Keyword(s):  
Women's Fiction ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Post War ◽  
Purposeful Activity

Gill Plain interrogates the trend towards domestic heteronormativity post World War Two in the light of the complex and profound disorientation of women’s post-war lives. She identifies a pervasive sense of personal, social and cultural loss, following the ‘smothering’ of wartime expectations, that often extended beyond the heterosexual matrix. Where ‘male’ plots reprogrammed masculine identity through purposeful activity beyond the home, the absence of plot in women’s fiction signals a lack of interest in the post-war rebuilding of the normative feminine psyche. The ‘resistant plotting’ of Pamela Hansford Johnson’s post-war trilogy, and its emphasis on the urgency of maternity, exhibits a turn toward the gothic. Male damage is offset by female guilt and the onset of a second childhood in her male characters, leading to a narrative of remasculinization. The largely absent figure of the child in post war narratives suggests a generation in mourning for its abruptly foreclosed childhood.

Female Vampires

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-106
Author(s):  
Michael Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Predators ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Heterosexual Relationship ◽  
Post War

The chapter zooms in on the cultural instrumentality of the vampire metaphor in Italy by studying Italian-made vampire movies as struggles for gender definition and domination that reflect the zeitgeist of post-war Italy, when a perceived decline in masculine authority due to the vicissitudes of World War Two, the hardships of reconstruction and the post-1958 neocapitalist consumerism went hand in hand with women’s ever-increasing challenges to traditional gender roles. The chapter argues that the female vampires of Italian horror are not simplistically villainous, power-hungry sexual predators that misogynistic-reactionary narratives put to death as a punishment for attempting to subvert the patriarchal status quo. They also are empathy-inducing characters caught between rebellion and hyper-identification with traditional values: victims returning from the grave to seek revenge against their male oppressors, and tragic lovers dreaming of a monogamous heterosexual relationship that looks strangely similar to marriage.

scholarly journals American 'committed' drama in Slovene theatres

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Igor Maver
Keyword(s):  
Social Criticism ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War

The purpose of this study is essentially to demonstrate that the delayed stagings of American 'committed' plays, written in the thirties and produced in Slovene theatres immediately after World War Two in the late forties and fifties, were often miscontextualized and partly misinterpreted by the literary critics of the period. This was only in the early post-war years largely due to the need to serve the then ruling ideology and to comply with the criteria of Marxist aesthetisc, especially that of a radical social criticism. However, the later stagings particularly of Arthur Miller's and also Tennessee Williams's plays, did not see the same phenomenon, for it was they that assured the popularity of the American post-war drama on Slovene stages and, even more importantly, helped Slovene theatre to come off age in the sixties.

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