From interest groups to parties: The change in the career patterns of the legislative elite in German social policy

Analysing the careers of members of the Bundestag Standing Committee for Labour and Social Affairs, the paper demonstrates that the ties between social politicians and social policy organisations such as trade unions, faith-based social policy organisations, independent charity organisations, works councils and social insurance institutions have become blurred. Since the 1990s social politicians have become more focused on political careers in the party and in parliament than on social policy. The new social politicians are party politicians who have distanced themselves from the interest groups. The qualitative change in parliamentary personnel is explained by changes in electoral politics, parties and interest groups. The author argues that the weakening linkages confirm contemporary research results on change in German neo-corporatism.     

‘The Woman was a Stranger’: childbirth and community in eighteenth-century England*

On 17 December 1766 James Field stood accused at the Old Bailey of the ‘wilful murder of a new born child, by casting it into a tub of water’. The case was exceptional in many ways—not only was the accused male but he and his family had removed themselves from the network of neighbourly interactions that characterised lower status life in this period. As a result, the court's deposition statements record ideas of belonging and community with unusual clarity. Using Field as a case study, this article explores the involvement of the local community in the experience of childbirth in the eighteenth century. It will argue that childbirth had an active role in the creation of neighbourhood, and momentarily captured shifting eighteenth-century understandings of community.     

Plantations and modes of exploitation

Persistent Poverty. Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World by George L. Beckford. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. xxvii + 303, Index; £3.45 (hardback) and £1.40 (paperback).     

Balancing acts in construction: A study of two women painters in Denmark and Britain

The construction industry is the most male-dominated labour market in every country in Europe. In Britain and Denmark, women constitute only 1% of those employed in this industry. In spite of the barriers to women entering and remaining in skilled construction work, inroads have been made. Amongst housepainters in Denmark, for instance, women constitute 27% of the workforce and 40% of trainees, and in a number of local authorities' Direct Labour Organisations in Britain, relatively high proportions are to be found. Through the example of two women painters in Britain and Denmark, each with over 14 years' continuous employment, the authors identify the opportunities and obstacles to women entering and remaining in the construction industry. The commonalities and differences between the two countries are illustrated, and it is shown how integration has successfully occurred where social and working conditions are better. The paper concludes that gender segregation and the exclusion of women can be attributed to structural discrimination through training and recruitment mechanisms, the nature of labour relations, employment conditions and the wage system.     

The Female Student on Trial, 1910–1915: Dorothy M. Gladish versus University College Nottingham versus Oscar Wilde

This article examines the student career of Dorothy M. Gladish at University College Nottingham from 1910–1915. By drawing on little-studied archives, a range of narratives about Gladish's multiple embodiments of the female student are analysed. In particular, these narratives are situated within the representational contexts of the Gong student magazine, which are marked by re-writings of Victorian literary texts that re-invent the contemporary female student. In the case of Gladish, the symbolic and literal ‘trial’ was also a feature of her student career. A ‘Mock Trial’ of Gladish is read alongside accounts of the college council’s examination of Professor R. G. F. Dolley, following a complaint by the Gladish family, and their responses to the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, contained in a hitherto restricted archive. Consideration is given to how this case study extends our knowledge about women’s roles in civic universities at this period.