Overview
Explores the highly contentious and revealing political controversies over the meaning and use of water in Britain.
Employs an interdisciplinary approach to reveal a number of themes not immediately apparent to scholars working within older or more hermetically sealed parts of the discipline.
Highlights pressing themes of contemporary relevance such as Flood defence or retreat and the modernisation of the water supply industry.
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This is the first book to cover the British people’s late twentieth century engagement with water in all its domestic, national and international forms, and from bathing and household chores to controversies about maritime pollution. The British Isles, a relatively wet and rainy archipelago, cannot in any way be said to be short of liquid resources. Even so, it was the site of highly contentious and revealing political controversies over the meaning and use of water after the Second World War. A series of such issues divided political parties, pressure groups, government and voters, and form the subject matter of this book: problems as diverse as flood defence to river and beach cleanliness, from the teaching of swimming to the installation of hot and cold running water in the home, from international controls over maritime pollution, and from the different housework duties of men and women to the British state’s proposals to fluoridise the drinking water supply.
Reviews
“This offers a distinctive approach to history of the well-known struggle by women for improvements in housing amenities, alongside the ambiguous effects of improvements in such amenities for women’s role in the division of domestic labour. … the aims of this book are achieved in style. The importance of water-related issues in shaping post-war British politics is amply demonstrated, as is the possibility of using those issues to bring new understandings of Britain’s post-war history.” (Jim Tomlinson, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 56 (3), 2021)
“The politics of water in post-war Britain has much to offer the fields of environmental history and political history. It represents the drawing together of a number of interdisciplinary threads to address the topic of water, and the politics it engenders, as a whole, which I am certain will prove useful and informative for the future study of water politics and environmental history as a whole.” (Jane E. Rowling, Agricultural History Review, Vol. 68 (1), 2020)
“This text will appeal most to graduate students and specialists in the field, and it points to many topics deserving of further study. It is an excellent reference text and is essential reading for anyone interested in The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain.” (Matthew Osborn, Environmental History, Vol. 25 (1), 2020)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain
Authors: Glen O'Hara
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44640-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-44639-8Published: 18 May 2017
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-44640-4Published: 10 May 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 313
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Political History, Social History, British Politics, Modern History