Author: Edward Pearce File Type: pdf In the late 1890s, Britain was basking in the high noon of empire, albeit with the sobering experience of the Boer War just around the corner. By 1956, the year of the Suez debacle and less than a lifetime later, the age of empire was drawing rapidly to a close and Britains position as an independent great power was over. In between, the country had experienced two devastating world wars. India - the jewel in her imperial crown - had gained independence. And there had been far-reaching changes on the domestic front the birth of the welfare state, full mens (and eventually womens) suffrage, and the foundation of the National Health Service, to name but a few. Throughout this momentous period, the Oxford Union, the worlds most famous debating society, continued to meet to debate and discuss the changing world around them. Sometimes their debates had important repercussions in the wider world - such as the notorious King and Country debate of 1933 which made headlines around the globe and which Winston Churchill described as that abject, squalid, shameless avowal. More often than not, the debates had merely a local impact, even if among the debaters were many of the leaders, thinkers, and opinion formers of the future, figures such as Harold Macmillan, Archbishop Temple, Edward Heath, and Tony Benn. In The Golden Talking Shop, former Parliamentary sketch writer (and Union member) Edward Pearce tells the story of Britain - and the world - in the first half of the twentieth century as seen from the perspective of these Union debates sometimes shocking, sometimes wittily amusing, and often both. The students do most of the talking, along the way revealing the changing preoccupations, prejudices, and assumptions of their changing times. A distinct pre-First World War fashion for Social Darwinism is in due course replaced by a widespread 1930s penchant for Stalinism, with civilized opinion reliably breaking in on occasion too. Above all, browsing these debates, taken straight from another age, gives the reader a vivid, sometimes piquant, sense of a Britain which is now passing from living memory - and serves as a powerful reminder of the ways in which the past and its attitudes really are a foreign country. **

Author: Leah F. Vosko File Type: pdf This book explores the precarious margins of contemporary labour markets. Over the last few decades, there has been much discussion of a shift from full-time permanent jobs to higher levels of part-time and temporary employment and self-employment. Despite such attention, regulatory approaches have not adapted accordingly. Instead, in the absence of genuine alternatives, old regulatory models are applied to new labour market realities, leaving the most precarious forms of employment intact. The book places this disjuncture in historical context and focuses on its implications for those most likely to be at the margins, particularly women and migrant workers. Managing the Margins provides a rigorous analysis drawing on original qualitative and quantitative material. It innovates by analyzing the historical and contemporary interplay of employment norms, gender relations, and citizenship boundaries.ReviewAn invaluable contribution... This integrated approach (linking citizenship, employment norms and gender relations) is so rare because it is so complex, and most significantly it allows us to think about labour market regulations in terms of the actors involved.--Work, Employment, and SocietyAbout the AuthorLeah F. Vosko is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Feminist Political Economy at York University, where she teaches comparative political economy, public policy, and women and politics. She is the author of Temporary Work The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship (University of Toronto Press, 2000), editor of Precarious Employment Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada, and co-author of Self-Employed Workers Organize Law, Policy and Unions (McGill-Queens University Press, 2006 and 2005 respectively).