Class Struggle and Social Welfare

Michael Lavalette, Gerry Mooney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135119553
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

For too long the collective struggles of the oppressed over welfare provision and welfare settlement have been ignored, yet such struggles punctuate recent British history. By presenting a series of case-studies of episodes of collective action from the field of social policy and social welfare, Class Struggle and Welfare aims to rediscover this 'hidden history'.
Organised chronologically, the book covers some of the most important welfare struggles from the early nineteenth century, some of the issues covered are:
*the growth of capitalism
*the development of the poor laws and the anti-poor law movement
*working class self-help welfare in the nineteenth century
*rent strikes on the Clyde in 1920s
*the squatters movement in the 1950s
*the struggle for abortion rights
*an analysis of the urban riots in the 1980s
*the great poll tax rebellion.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Series editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction Class Struggle and Social Policy
• 2 Class Struggle and the English Poor Laws
• 3 Class Struggle, Self-Help and Popular Welfare
• 4 Class Struggle and the Origins of State Welfare Reform
• 5 ‘The Clyde Rent War!' The Clydebank Rent Strike of the 1920s
• 6 The Making of a Poor People's Movement A Study of the Political Leadership of Poplarism, 1919–25
• 7 The ‘Two Souls of Socialism' The Labour Movement and Unemployment During the 1920s and 1930s
• 8 Housing and Class Struggles in Post-War Glasgow
• 9 The Struggle for Abortion Rights
• 10 Riots and Urban Unrest in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s A Critique of Dominant Explanations
• 11 ‘No Poll Tax Here!' The Tories, Social Policy and the Great Poll Tax Rebellion 1987–1991
• 12 Identity Politics or Class Struggle? The Case of the Mental Health Users' Movement.
• Bibliography
• Name index
• Subject index