Finding a Role?: The United Kingdom 1970-1990

by Brian Harrison

Overview

In 1970 the 'cold war' was still cold, Northern Ireland's troubles were escalating, the UK's relations with the EEC were unclear, and corporatist approaches to the economy precariously persisted. By 1990 Communism was crumbling world-wide, Thatcher's economic revolution had occurred, terrorism in Northern Ireland was waning, 'multi-culturalism' was in place, family structures were changing fast, and British political institutions had become controversial.

Seven analytic chapters pursue these changes and accumulate rich detail on changes in international relations, landscape and townscape, social framework, family and welfare structures, economic policies and realities, intellect and culture, politics and government. The concluding chapter ranges chronologically even more widely to bring out the interaction of past and present, then asks how far the UK had by 1990 identified its world role. Like Harrison's Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009) - the immediately preceding volume in this series - Finding a Role? includes a full chronological table and an ample index of names and themes.

This, the first thorough, wide-ranging, and synoptic study of the UK so far published on this period, has two overriding aims: to show how British institutions evolved, but also to illuminate changes in the British people: their hopes and fears, values and enjoyments, failures and achievements. It therefore equips its readers to understand events since 1990, and so to decide for themselves where the UK should now be going.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199548750
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2010
Series:	New Oxford History of England
Pages:	708
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Brian Harrison, Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at Oxford, has published widely in British social, political and cultural history since the 1790s. His first book, Drink and the Victorians (1971, second edition 1994), was followed by books on British reforming movements, feminism, and anti-feminism, Oxford University's history, and - in The Transformation of British Politics 1860-1995 (1996) - on how our political institutions have evolved. After editing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from 2000 to 2004, Harrison was knighted in 2005 for 'services to scholarship'.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE WORLD2. THE FACE OF THE COUNTRY3. THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE4. FAMILY AND WELFARE5. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE6. INTELLECT AND CULTURE7. POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT8. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECTCHRONOLOGY OF EVENTSBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX

Editorial Reviews

"Harrison's narrative is rich in both the range of the subjects he discusses and the detail in which they are analysed."—British Scholar

From the Publisher