Introductory description

This module examines modern British history through an in-depth focus on the single decade of the 1970s. The period has often been seen as time of social and national crisis, key in destabilisation of the post-war settlement and in bringing about a turn to right from 1979 under Margaret Thatcher. Others have pointed out that the decade saw levels of equality at an historical high and that the experience for many was of social security and liberation. Until recently, there was little historical work that took us into such recent realms of national history, but the period is fast emerging as a focus for exciting new historical research. Students will have the opportunity to engage with the emerging debates and to make their own contribution through original research.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

TERM 1: Remembering the 70s; the birth of the ‘new society’; the new social science and the old; social workers and social problems; the children’s rights movement; paedophiles and the sexual revolution; consciousness-raising and feminism; revolutionaries

TERM 2: Class identities; strikes and industrial relations; race relations and immigration; television; vandalism, football hooligans, and radical criminology; sub-culture and punk; Thatcherism and the end of ‘society’; the long seventies; History Workshop, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, and the history of the new society.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of aspects of British history in the 1970s
• Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources relating to British history in the 1970s
• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments based on original primary sources, relating to the influence of social science within British society in the 1970s
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to British society in the 1970s

Indicative reading list

• Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: What Really Happened to Britain in the Seventies (2009).
• Children's Rights (1971-2)
• Bernard Coard, How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System (1971)
• Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982)
• Jonathan Coe, The Rotter's Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004).
• John Davis, 'The Inner London Education Authority and the William Tyndale Junior School Affair, 1974-1976', Oxford Review of Education (2002).
• Jenny Diski, The Sixties (2009).
• Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals (1976).
• Celia Hughes, 'Young Socialist Men in 1960s Britain: Subjectivity and Sociability', History Workshop Journal (2012).
• Hari Kunzru, My Revolutions (2007).
• Jan O'Malley, The Politics of Community Action: A Decade of Struggle in Notting Hill (1977).
• Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left: How the Personal got Political (2007).
• Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (1996).
• Dominic Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 (2012).
• Dominic Sandbrook, State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970-1974 (2010).
• Jon Savage, England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond (1992)
• Mike Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method (2010).
• New Society (1962-)
• Norma Schulman, 'Conditions of our own making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham', Canadian Journal of Communication (1993)
• Spare Rib (1972-)
• Mathew Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (2006).
• Colin Ward (ed.), Vandalism (1973).
• John Welshman, 'Ideology, Social Science, and Public Policy: The Debate over Transmitted Deprivation', Twentieth Century British History, (2005).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.