NGOs in Contemporary Britain

NGOs in Contemporary Britain

Also by Nick Crowson THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION SINCE 1945 At the Heart of Europe? THE LONGMAN COMPANION TO THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY SINCE 1830 FACING FASCISM The Conservative Party and The European Dictators 1935 40 Also by Matthew Hilton CHOICE AND JUSTICE Forty Years of the Malaysian Consumer Movement PROSPERITY FOR ALL Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalisation CONSUMERISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN The Search for a Historical Movement SMOKING IN BRITISH POPULAR CULTURE, 1800 2000

NGOs in Contemporary Britain Non-state Actors in Society and Politics Since 1945 Edited By Nick Crowson Reader in Contemporary British History, University of Birmingham Matthew Hilton Professor of Social History, University of Birmingham James McKay Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Editorial matter and selection Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton and James McKay 2009 Introduction James McKay and Matthew Hilton 2009 All remaining chapters their respective authors 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22109-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-30662-6 ISBN 978-0-230-23407-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230234079 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Contents List of Tables Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements vii viii xi Introduction 1 James McKay and Matthew Hilton 1 Peace Direct Action and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 21 1958 62 Jodi Burkett 2 International Aid and Development British Humanitarian, Aid and Development NGOs, 38 1949 Present Clare Saunders 3 Women Housewives, Workers and Citizens: Voluntary Women s 59 Organisations and the Campaign for Women s Rights in England and Wales during the Post-War Period Caitriona Beaumont 4 Sexual Politics The Sphere of Sexual Politics: The Abortion Law Reform 77 Association, 1930s to 1960s Stephen Brooke 5 LGB Equality Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual NGOs in Britain: Past, Present 95 and Future Matthew Waites 6 Human Rights Human Rights Campaigns in Modern Britain 113 Tom Buchanan 7 Anti-Apartheid The Anti-Apartheid Movement: Pressure Group Politics, 129 International Solidarity and Transnational Activism Rob Skinner v

vi Contents 8 Poverty Stopping the Poor Getting Poorer: The Establishment 147 and Professionalisation of Poverty NGOs, 1945 95 Tanya Evans 9 Drugs The Changing Role of NGOs in Britain: Voluntary Action 164 and Illegal Drugs Alex Mold 10 Reactionaries There Was Something About Mary: The National Viewers 182 and Listeners Association and Social Movement History Lawrence Black 11 Environmentalism Environmental NGOs and the Environmental Movement 201 in England Christopher Rootes 12 Fair Trade NGOs and Fair Trade: The Social Movement Behind 222 the Label Matthew Anderson 13 NGOs and the State Transforming a Divided Civil Society? Governance, 242 Conflict Transformation and NGOs in Northern Ireland, 1970 2006 Audra Mitchell 14 Democracy NGOs and Democratisation: Assessing Variation in 261 the Internal Democratic Practices of NGOs Darren Halpin Index 281

List of Tables 1.1 Prominent NGOs, with year of formation 13 11.1 Leading British environmental NGOs (2005) 202 11.2 Membership of selected environmental NGOs 212 (1971 2006) (thousands) 14.1 What generalised type of advocacy is promised/possible? 270 14.2 Summary of expectations for group democratic practices 271 vii

Notes on Contributors Matthew Anderson recently completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham. He has published articles on the history of co-operation and fair trade and is currently working on a book-length treatment of the fair trade movement in Britain. Caitriona Beaumont is Senior Lecturer in Social History at London South Bank University. She is currently working on a new book entitled Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women s Movement in England 1928 1964. Lawrence Black is Senior Lecturer in modern British history at Durham University. He works on the history of political culture and has published on topics including TV, consumerism, party activism and cultural politics in post-1945 Britain. Stephen Brooke is Associate Professor of History, York University, Toronto. He is the author of Labour s War (1992), Sexual Politics: Sexuality and the British Left, 1880s to the Present Day (forthcoming), and articles in the American Historical Review, Past and Present and Journal of Social History. Tom Buchanan is Reader in Modern History at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education, and a Fellow of Kellogg College. His publications include Britain and the Spanish Civil War (1997), Europe s Troubled Peace, 1945 2000 (2005) and The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss and Memory (2006). Jodi Burkett is a PhD candidate at York University, Canada. She is particularly interested in articulations of national identity within social movements of the left. Her work compares ideas of Britishness within organisations including CND, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the National Union of Students and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. Nick Crowson is Reader in Contemporary British History at the University of Birmingham. His past research has concentrated on viii

Notes on Contributors ix aspects of British politics, particularly the Conservative party. His most recent book is The Conservative Party and European Integration (2006). Tanya Evans is a Research Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. She was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary British History, Institute of Historical Research from 2004 2008 where she worked on a project Unmarried Motherhood in England and Wales, 1918 1995 led by Pat Thane. Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in Modern England will be published in 2009. Darren Halpin is Reader in the Department of Public Policy at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. His research focusses on the engagement of interest groups in the policy process and with the contribution of groups to representation and democracy. Matthew Hilton is Professor of Social History at the University of Birmingham. He has published widely on the history of consumer society and social activism. His most recent book is Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalisation (2008). James McKay is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He was awarded his PhD in 2006, on the topic of British Labour party attitudes to European integration. Audra Mitchell is a PhD candidate at the Queen s University of Belfast. She holds doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Queen s University, and is co-editing the forthcoming book Transformation and the Dynamics of (Radical) Change: Insights from Political Theory and Philosophy. Alex Mold is Lecturer in History at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her publications include Heroin: The Treatment of Addiction in Twentieth Century Britain (2008). Christopher Rootes is Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology, University of Kent. He edits Environmental Politics and has also edited: The Green Challenge: the Development of Green Parties in Europe (1995); Environmental Movements: Local, National and Global (1999); Environmental Protest in Western Europe (2003); and Acting Locally: Local Environmental Mobilisations and Campaigns (2008).

x Notes on Contributors Clare Saunders is a Lecturer/RCUK Fellow in Politics at the University of Southampton. She works mostly on social movements and protest. She has authored and co-authored book chapters on the global justice movement and published articles in the British Journal of Sociology, Environmental Politics, and Social Movement Studies. Rob Skinner currently teaches in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol. He has published work exploring the emergence of anti-apartheid activism as in Britain during the 1950s, and is currently writing a full-length study of the roots of anti-apartheid in Britain and the United States. Matthew Waites is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow. He is author of The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship (2005); and co-editor, with Jeffrey Weeks and Janet Holland, of Sexualities and Society: A Reader (2003).

Acknowledgements This volume emerged out of the Non-Governmental Organisations and Politics in Contemporary Britain conference, held at Birmingham s Midland Institute in July 2007. The conference was organised by the DANGO project (Database of Archives of UK Non-Governmental Organisations since 1945), and as such we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the Resource Enhancement Scheme, for funding both the conference, and the wider DANGO project, with a grant of 194,467 (Grant no. 112181). Through their comments and ideas, all those who contributed to, and participated in, the DANGO conference helped influence the chapters in this book, and as such we would like to thank those contributors whose work could unfortunately not be featured in this collection: Anna Cento Bull, Nandini Deo, Nandita Dogra, Liza Filby, Shane Fudge, Tim Jackson, Bryn Jones, Morag McDermont, Yacob Mulugetta and Susan Trouvé Finding. Particular thanks are also due to Pat Thane, for her closing remarks to the conference. We would also like to thank the Advisory Panel to the DANGO project: Chris Cook, Melinda Haunton, Christine Penney and Dick Sargent, as well as our colleague on DANGO, Jean-François Mouhot, whose help in making the conference a success was greatly appreciated. We further gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of Dave Brown, and the assistance of the British Cartoon Archive, in allowing us to use his work as this volume s cover image. Finally, the conference, and therefore this volume, could not have happened without the hard work of the DANGO project s administrator, Sarah Davies, to whom we are indebted. xi