Peter Gurney – författare

National service was a defining feature for a generation of young men in post-war Britain. Around 2.3 million of them were called up between the end of World War Two and 1963, when conscription ended. However, national service was forgotten almost before it had ended, a process aided subsequently by professional historians who have been reluctant to assess its longer-term influence on British social and political history.Based on original oral interviews with well over one hundred men, this book explores the ways in which compulsory military participation reverberated in the memories of interviewees long beyond the end of conscription, and how these early military experiences shaped their later life stores. Unlike existing accounts that tend to rely on memoirs written by officers, or else oral interviews that concentrate narrowly on the details of military service, this study focusses instead on men from working-class backgrounds and it situates national service in the context of the life course and the wider transformations that have occurred in British society since conscription ended. In so doing, the work shines new light on important areas of current scholarly interest and historiographical concern, including the changing meaning and experience of class, masculinity, and citizenship, as well as the complexities of popular memory.

Nineteenth-century England witnessed the birth of capitalist consumerism. Early department stores, shopping arcades and provision shops of all kinds proliferated from the start of the Victorian period, testimony to greater diffusion of consumer goods. However, while the better off enjoyed having more material things, masses of the population were wanting even the basic necessities of life during the ‘Hungry Forties’ and well beyond. Based on a wealth of contemporary evidence and adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Wanting and having focuses particularly on the making of the working-class consumer in order to shed new light on key areas of major historical interest, including Chartism, the Anti-Corn Law League, the New Poor Law, popular liberalism and humanitarianism. It will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in the origins and significance of consumerism across a range of disciplines, including social and cultural history and literary studies.This book is relevant to both United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 12, Zero hunger and Responsible consumption and production

This second volume considers various socialist impulses and developments after the collapse of the Owenite movement in Britain. Interventions by some leading Christian Socialists will illuminate one important tendency; publications by O’Brien another less vital strand. Central to this volume, however, will be far less well-known pamphlets, book extracts and articles in the periodical press by national and local co-operative writers and activists, who appropriated and transformed the legacy of utopian socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Old Owenites are naturally included, though more emphasis is given to reworkings by a younger generation of co-operators, now mostly forgotten. The volume will also cover relationships and controversies between co-operators and late nineteenth century state socialists, who attempted to portray the co-operative movement as merely diversionary for the working class.

This four-volume collection of primary sources examine socialism in the long nineteenth century. The volumes examine the Owenite movement, Co-operation and socialism, Fabian Socialism and the birth of the Labour Party, as well as Marxists and rejectionists. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this title will be of great interest to students and scholars of history and politics.

CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE AWARD WINNER 2018It is commonly accepted that the consumer is now centre stage in modern Britain, rather than the worker or producer. Consumer choice is widely regarded as the major source of self-definition and identity rather than productive activity. Politicians vie with each other to fashion their appeal to ‘citizen-consumers'. When and how did these profound changes occur? Which historical alternatives were pushed to the margins in the process? In what ways did the everyday consumer practices and forms of consumer organising adopted by both middle and working-class men and women shape the outcomes? This study of the making of consumer culture in Britain since 1800 explores these questions, introduces students to major debates and cuts a distinctive path through this vibrant field. It suggests that the consumer culture that emerged during this period was shaped as much by political relationships as it was by economic and social factors.