The English ethnic associationalism we describe in this book was not unique; indeed, it was part of a world of associations. Providing a comparative context is therefore crucial. Chapter 6 charts the evolution and purpose of those ethnic clubs and societies established in North America by other migrant groups. We focus particularly on Scots and Germans and explore the beginnings of the associational culture of these groups. The Scots were the most active in the early phase of settlement, also anchoring their associationalism in philanthropy. St Andrew’s societies, much as those of St George, had an elite dimension, but catered for a broader migrant cohort—those in distress. Similarities in the work of the two organisations even led to concrete co-operation. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, however, the Scots developed a second and distinct tier: an ethnic associational culture at the heart of which lay sport. This contributed to a significant proliferation in Scottish ethnic associational activity—though one that was trumped, in the early twentieth century—by the Scottish mutualist branches in both the US and Canada (Order of Scottish Clans and the Sons of Scotland respectively). We also develop non-British/Irish comparators through an examination of developments in the German immigrant community in North America to establish to what extent language was a factor in immigrant adjustment to new world realities. Examining the Germans will also permit consideration of how external developments—in this case particularly the First and Second World Wars—were watersheds that united British Isle migrants, while casting out Germans and the more militant wings of the Irish.

The last chapter looks at the ways the Youth League initially sought to reform and re-invent its role and mission and was later subsumed in and divided by the wider Yugoslav political debates and developments in the country. The proposed statute changes which came out of the public debate organised by the SSOJ in 1989 reflected both the gap between the Slovenian, on the one hand, and the Serbian, the Montenegrin and the Army youth leagues, on the other, but also shed light on a spectrum of shared visions and values which existed among the other branches. The chapter reflects upon the (lack of) consensus about the dilemma of how to modernise Yugoslav society and the sphere of institutional youth politics and culture and shows how by the end of the decade the consensus on change and reform and the discourse of ‘pluralism of self-managing interests’ was almost entirely replaced by a new discourse of human rights and liberal values which foreshadowed the ‘exit from socialism’.

Chapter 1 frames the following discussion of English associations and ethnic activities by charting English migration to North America from the mid-1700s. The earlier emigrants carried with them cultural characteristics, habits and customs that were critical in shaping the social and civic life that marked the English as foundational and invisible within America society. We problematize existing scholarship and challenge the assumption that the hegemony of the English language and the early immigrants’ foundational context provided all subsequent English migrants with a permanent and unchanging advantage over other migrant groups by default. Ordinary English migrants faced the same challenges and hardships as any other group; working-class immigrants in particular dealt with many common economic pressures regardless of their origins. Ultimately, the English had much in common with those of other backgrounds. The English settled in all colonies, counties and states; they were loaded towards the urban and industrial areas, but the focus upon the north-east—in both the colonial and early Republican period, as well as north of the border in what was to become Canada—gradually gave way to greater diffusion: a diffusion in line with the spread of ethnic associations. In the nineteenth century, English-born immigrants—the mainstay of English ethnic associations—came to be hugely out-numbered by several immigrant groups, most notably the Irish, with whom innate tensions were reprised in the new country. Chapter 1 explores such factors as a frame for the study that follows.

From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards and up till the early years of the twentieth century, there appeared a growing spate of medical handbooks and manuals, authored by India-based colonial physicians. This chapter examines the construction of gender in the colonial medical texts, scrutinising how they wielded authoritative power over vulnerable young European women in the colonies through the power/knowledge of their medical directives. In medical discourse, European memsahibs were subjected by their male compatriots to a gendered, medical gaze that was often critical and disparaging. White women's physical unfitness to live in the tropical colonies was always a subject of avid debate in medical handbooks, and much of the focus was on the impact of climate on their reproductive health. Gender politics was also played out in the sphere of clothing and climate in medical discourse.

This chapter provides an examination of the policy of reservation in the two world wars. In total war, industry was in direct competition with the military for a limited supply of men. The state needed to mobilise labour just as much as it did combatants to fill the ranks of the armed services. Both wars witnessed increased government control to direct manpower to where it was needed. Despite attempts to retain men with essential skills on the home front during the First World War, too many skilled men were able to enlist into the forces. Those men who remained on the home front were derided as shirkers and cowards. Civilian men therefore had to negotiate their relegation to the subordinate status of unmanly ‘other’. Whereas errors were made during the First World War, with the government lurching from one manpower crisis to another, a more systematic approach was adopted in the Second with a Schedule of Reserved Occupations. The raising of an ‘industrial army’, which was merely rhetoric in the First World War, became a reality in the Second.

This chapter reconstructs the working lives of reserved men during wartime, drawing upon a wide range of sources, including oral testimonies and autobiographies. It contrasts this with the 1930s Depression. Whilst work experience varied widely across reserved occupations during wartime, what comes through the evidence is a pervasive intensification of work and a deep commitment to work as patriotic endeavour, commonly expressed in what we term ‘graft and sacrifice narratives’. In critically examining the emasculation thesis through the prism of lived experience, daily working lives and personal narratives the chapter concludes that civilian male identities in wartime were complex and contested. Young reserved workers may well have felt the cultural censure and slight on their manhood which went along with not being in uniform. However, with full employment, demand for industrial skills and experience, good wages and empowered trade unions there were many ways that reserved men could maintain and reconstruct breadwinner masculinity and position themselves discursively as superior to women through their wartime work.

Portrait 7 follows Active Back Sooner to one of the private employment agencies. The final portrait, portrait 8, describes the time after the revised sickness benefit legislation is adopted and the central elements in the trial became obligatory in all cases. It portrays what happens when the caseworkers and employees are pushed to the limits of their personal capacities to make sense of what is going on and ultimately stop trying. The chapter concludes that the fundamental urge to make sensible decisions, driving the employees to rebel against local directive and agreements, is the very thing that creates the grounds for institutional absurdity while being in itself the only stable source of meaning. Glenn Goodwin argued that the rebellion against "institutional absurdity" in itself was a source of meaning for students and for blacks of all ages in the USA at the time of his research in the 1960s.

Charity and mutual aid—hierarchical and reciprocal types of ethnic associationalism—divided the St George’s societies from the Sons of St George and the Sons of England. However, such divisions did not create intra-ethnic hostility between them. Regardless of this significant turn in the history of English ethnic associational culture in North America, all associations were united in their patriotism to England, which remained a constant. And despite their different social composition and emphases, the elite and middle-class St George’s societies still shared a number of characteristics with the more working-class organisations focused on providing collective self-help. Chapter 4 traces the inner workings and activities of the different organisations to explore these commonalities both in terms of their structures and membership, but also with respect to the events and socio-cultural pursuits they promoted. St George’s Days, dinners, dances, lectures, day trips and sports, were all used to emphasize shared identity in the new communities. Moreover, the somewhat chauvinistic deployment of Anglo-Saxon rhetoric and of pugnacious, loud expressions of loyalty to the monarchy were critical for all of these English groups, united them behind common principles. Such shared values were customarily expressed at dinners and parades, but also at more specific events organized for coronations and jubilees. War also played a significant role, heightening the sense of loyalty to the crown and shared roots—even in the republican United States. Indeed wars afforded an opportunity for the English in North America to send funds home to aid widows and orphans, with large sums generated. Each of these aspects is explored here.