Built between 1921 and 1934, the London County Council's Becontree Estate was the largest public housing scheme ever undertaken in Britain, and, at the time of its planning, in the world. Using interviews with surviving tenants from the inter-year period, Dr Olechnowicz discusses the early years of the estate, looking in detail at the philosophy behind its construction and management, and showing how it eventually came to be denigrated as a social concentration camp.

From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

Exploring the politics of housing during 1890-1990, this fascinating study examines the interaction not only of national and local politics but also of local factors such as civic culture, key local players, local discourse and geographical and demographic problems. This book argues that increasingly, tenants acted as consumers of a public service, and it questions the way in which notions of consumerism shaped responses to the housing debate. An analysis of the impact of legislation on housing policy in different cities is provided, as well as a more detailed account of the politics of housing in Manchester, including the Victorian legacy, the emergence of local government intervention, post-war overspill estates, new system-built flats and their rapid deterioration, rising tenant anger and protests, and the beginning of a new approach based on consultation and partnerships. The book will be of value to anyone studying urban history, politics, governance, civic culture, social policy and society.

In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society.

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation explores how the urban transformation of Britain between 1945 and 1970 was understood politically by the Labour Party. Placing the Labour Party at the centre of the discussion, the book covers the most extensive period of state-led urban change in British history, from the end of the Second World War to the decline of high modernism in the late 1960s. Taking a particular focus on housing to explore the implementation of modernist ideas to drive a far-ranging process of urban transformation in Britain, it challenges conventional understandings of Labour's urban legacy and puts political ideas at the heart of twentieth-century change. Utilising a breadth and range of material, including two distinct sets of archival sources, published secondary material, national legislation and Housing Acts, and various case studies, Child moves seamlessly between the national picture and its local impacts. It also draws from sources which had a crucial influence on political thinking throughout the mid-twentieth century to understand how urban transformation represented for Labour a political vision of the future. A timely contribution both to urban history and to the history of post-war Britain, it challenges existing interpretations of modernism, connects urban change to the political ideas that drove it, and allows us to comprehend the state of urban Britain today.

The political identities of the Turkish working class began a transformative journey that started during a period of industrialization following World War II and continued until the military interventions of 1960. Working Class Formation in Turkey addresses common, structural generalizations to recover the complex history of developing political, recreational, familial, residential, and work-related lives of Turkish workers. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, this volume brings the concept of “everydayness” to the fore and uncovers the local contexts that fostered class solidarity, examines labor practices that fueled radicalism, and analyzes the shifting dynamics of industrial discipline that impacted working class identity and culture.