‘Unmarried’ housewives and ‘‘up-graded’ women’: Mark Abrams, gender, polling, and the Labour Party, 1959–64

Historians have long grappled with what Amy Black and Stephen Brooke have termed the ‘problem’ of women, gender and the Labour Party in post-war Britain, which manifested in a significant gender gap in voting patterns. This article demonstrates that the advent of opinion research and polling data failed to overcome this ‘problem’. It draws on the archival records of Mark Abrams (1906–1994), a pioneering social scientist who played a key role in Labour Party election strategy in the run up to the 1964 election. Returning to the original surveys Abrams carried out for the party, and contextualising these within his wider research, the article shows that the assumptions and attitudes embedded within the surveys both reinforced particular ways of thinking about women and failed to take account of the implications of the changes in women‘s lives, even while highlighting the differences between men and women as voters. As well as providing new insights into this ‘problem’ and its significance for the Labour Party, this article contributes to the wider social scientific turn within history: reading social science research against the grain to access fresh perspectives, while documenting the rise and impacts of the social sciences on British political culture.

Africans and “the Windrush generation” 1948 – 1973: some comparisons and silences

The narratives of people who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean islands—referred to as the ‘Windrush generation’—has tended to make invisible, if not overlooked the lived experiences of ‘Black Africans’ from the African continent between the period 1948–1973. The ‘single story’ of the ‘Windrush era’ dominates and homogenises the experiences of all Black and Brown people living in Britain. Even though Black Africans are now the largest ‘Black’ demographic group in Britain, the various ‘Windrush’ commemorations have overshadowed their presence and contributions to British society. Through oral narratives, autobiography, novels, memoirs and film, this article illustrates that while there were distinct differences in the experiences of post-war African and Caribbean people in Britain, such as reasons that brought the two groups to Britain; affiliation to African ‘identities’; there were also shared experiences of disappointed imaginings of Britain, cultural shock and institutional racism. Black British history cannot be built on people perceived as ‘Black’ living in post-war Britain as possessing a single narrative, but on myriad narratives reflecting the multiplicity of their identities, communities and experiences.

Public faces of the Anglo-American special relationship

The Anglo-American special relationship is in part at least a discursive construct. Its public face is co-produced by British and American officials through speech, sign and symbol with an intent to influence strategically international and domestic opinions. Much less scholarly attention has been paid to this than to Anglo-American functional cooperation. This article consequently examines how a metanarrative of continuity has been maintained since World War Two whilst Britain and the US have also subtly evolved the public face of the special relationship to suit their particular interests and to preserve its credibility. The analysis shows how Churchill crafted the original model of special relations, how Britain and the US have not always agreed on the public representation of the special relationship but nevertheless reconstructed it discursively, and how the narrative of special relations has acquired socio-cultural resilience.

Environmental ethics of war by Tamar Meisels, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 80 pp., £49.99 (hardback), ISBN: 781009622714; £17.00 (paperback), ISBN: 9781009622691; $22.00 USD (22.00), ISBN: 9781009622677

What are the drivers in the neglect of Sudan's war and humanitarian crisis? Reframing global disengagement

Medical care, humanitarianism and intimacy in the long Second World War, 1931–1953 edited by Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, Laure Humbert, Bertrand Taithe and Raphaële Balu, Manchester, Manhester University Press, 2025, 298 pp., £25.00 (hardback) ISBN: 9781526183477, also available free on open access

Six minutes to winter–nuclear war and how to avoid it Six minutes to winter–nuclear war and how to avoid it , by Mark Lynas, London, Bloomsbury Sigma, 2025, 304 pp., £18.00 (hardback) ISBN: 9781399410519, £11.69 (paperback) ISBN: 9781399410502, £14.00 (e-book) ISBN: 9781399410496

Women doctors against war – some pioneers

This article gives vignettes describing some key aspects of the medical, social and peace work of five women doctors prior to World War One – Anna Kuliscioff, Madeleine Pelletier, Aletta Jacobs, Alice Hamilton and Maria Montessori. Their activities gathered around feminist, political and social reform approaches in trying to combat the exploitation of working-class women, advocating for social and political equality, improving their education and in trying to reduce the phenomena of war and militarism. Because they were women, they faced considerable obstacles in pursuing their careers as doctors, but this is why they sympathized with the emerging feminist and socialist movements of their time and often played a leading role in them. Their attempts to prevent World War One, to bring about its early end, as well as their peace initiatives after 1918, can be seen as a logical continuation of their professional work: the prevention and alleviation of human suffering and misery. Their work as women, doctors and peacemakers can still be inspirational today.

Questioning the relevance of medical preparation for war. The Dutch example 1939–1940

Physicians for war? The German health system is being redesigned for war: A wake-up call from the IPPNW Germany against the creeping militarization of medicine