Women and the Labour Party: Gender and the Writing of British Political History

This article takes stock of the state of women's political history in the twentieth century and suggests new lines of enquiry, drawing on the authors’ own work on the Labour Party. It identifies a number of key themes which have enriched histories of women and gender in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and considers how these might be developed. Firstly, it examines the significance of the local, and more particularly, the neighbourhood, in women's political lives. Secondly, it asserts the value of focussing on the membership, including the economic, social and cultural shifts that shaped their lives, the intersection of gender with factors such as age or ethnicity, and their own political identities. Finally, it stresses the importance of interrogating masculine cultures to understand how gendered dynamics played out. It concludes with a reminder that inserting women into established political narratives is insufficient: the point is to transform those narratives.     

Benefits,Challenges, and Enabling Conditions of Collective Action to Promote Sustainable Production and Marketing of Products from Africa's Dry Forests

Collective action has been identified, by governments and nongovernmental organizations, as a mechanism to improve smallholder farmers' bargaining power and access to input and output markets. In many developing countries, supporting collective action has and continues to be an important policy instrument. However, in the collection and marketing of forest products, recognition of and support for producer organizations, is limited. Data, from focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and an analysis of formal producer organizations' functioning and organizational aspects, were used to examine the motives, benefits, challenges, and enabling conditions of collective action in promoting the sustainable production and marketing of shea, frankincense, and honey from dry forests in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Zambia, respectively. Lessons and key recommendations, including those related to policy, are presented on how collective action through formal producer organizations could be assisted to promote responsible forest products collection and marketing practices that benefit small‐scale producers in Africa's dry forests.     

The presence of feminism in the future of welfare

This article argues that the contribution of second wave feminism to new welfare practice and provision is greater than recent discussions of welfare reforms have acknowledged. Along with other new social movements and grass-roots welfare campaigns, feminist activism and its critiques provide an important moral and political case for a new welfare society. This paper proposes four principles which underpin such a case – autonomy, mutualism, inclusive diversity and voice. Aspects of these are discussed, developing, in particular, an argument for a political ethic of care.     

“I Fought. I Screamed. I Bit”: The Assertion of Rights Within Historic Abuse Inquiry Transcripts

ABSTRACT

This article examines how treating historic abuse inquiry testimonies as retrospective assertions of rights can help to shed light on how this abuse was able to occur and how memories are recalled in an inquiry environment. It presents its approach as a possible framework for other historians seeking to analyse testimonies with sensitivity. It uses, as an example, a case study from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerning two interrelated “homes” for girls, showing the ways in which abuse survivors can use their testimonies to assert rights denied them in the past and further the goals of public inquiries.