In Britain and Australia, Labour governments have been experimenting with democratic renewal. This chapter examines Australian and British Labour's interest in one strand of democratic renewal, a desire to create new spaces for public engagement and consultation. A useful way of understanding the changes to both parties and their interest in democratic renewal is to view them as elements of the New Social Democracy (NSD). Basing his analysis on Anthony Giddens's work, S. White identifies the main themes of the NSD, these being 'real opportunity', 'civic responsibility' and 'community'. A central motif of the NSD is that social democrats need to rethink the role of the state. The NSD seeks to reconfigure the relationship between state and civil society in order to shore up political participation and support. Linked to the NSD debates about the changing role of the state is the challenge of the shift from 'government' to 'governance'.

This first chapter sets the scene with a brief historical introduction. It looks at the East End’s immigrant history, at the Bengalis’ Sylheti background, at the first links through lascars in British merchant ships, at the role of Bengali professionals and students, at the enlargement of the community with the arrival of families and through natural growth, at the impact of immigration legislation, and at the development of Bengali neighbourhoods. It gives an introduction to the growing importance of Islam and to the perennial problems around the shortage of housing and the competition this creates. It gives a broad outline of the types of employment Bengalis have taken up, the problems of racism, and the particular and evolving situations and constraints facing Bengali women and young people. It includes statistics from the 2011 census, and ends with a look at recent changes in the area and the impact of gentrification.

This chapter presents a socioeconomic profile of childhood disability in an Irish context. Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) survey, it considers a range of dimensions. These include an analysis of the associations between the childhood disability status of a household and a range of socioeconomic indicators relating to labour market outcomes, levels of parental education, social class, income and economic hardship. The chapter compares households with and without a child with a disability on the basis of these socioeconomic measures. The primary carer of a child with a disability is considerably less likely to participate in the labour market and considerably more likely to turn down work opportunities, when compared to a primary carer of a child without a disability. Parents of a child with a disability are less likely to be educated at third level and more likely to be in the lowest social class.

Carl Erdmann reopened investigation into the nature and origins of the phenomenon, largely ignored or assumed by the functional materialist focus on the crusaders' conquests. Walther Holtzmann took issue with Erdmann's opening distinction between holy war in general and crusading as a specific genre of religious violence. Erdmann's unorthodox career lent him a perspective that differed from the many German scholars who tilled that rich field of political, institutional and ideological conflict. Steven Runciman perpetuated the epic grand narrative, a drama of good and evil, heroism and villainy, civilisation and barbarism. Whole new national traditions of crusade scholarship have sprung up, in parts of eastern and northern Europe. Medievalists of and from Scandinavia and the Baltic, some stimulated by the end of the Cold War and issues of national identity and relations with an apparently resurgent European community, could hardly avoid studying crusading in the later middle ages.

Ireland represents a valuable case-study of disability and the labour market. People with disabilities face many barriers to full participation in the labour market, and as a consequence, their labour force participation rates and employment rates fall far below those for others of working age. The labour market is at the centre of economic research in the disability domain. This chapter describes the extent to which people with disabilities are in paid work in Ireland. The impact of disability on employment, and on earnings for those who are employed, has been widely studied, including a relatively emphasis on dynamic effects making use of longitudinal data that captures the onset of disability. In order to examine the factors affecting labour force participation and the impact of disability, the chapter focuses on econometric analyses of the microdata from large-scale household surveys.

Chapter 2 locates the study of older people’s interest organisations within the sociological, political science and social gerontology literature. The chapter seeks to bridge the divide between these three interrelated yet traditionally distinct disciplines. In doing so it elucidates issues of key salience to the theoretical study of older people interest organisations and discusses the changing meaning of collective identity and identity politics as applied to older people.

Chapter 6 provides a detailed examination of the impact of identity politics. It begins with a critical look at the development of black radical ideas, their dismissal of the ‘white working class’, and their failure to set out how sectorial struggle could lead to working-class unity. It concentrates on the experience of the Bengali Housing Action Group, a squatters’ organisation coordinated by black radical activists from Race Today, and on anti-racist resistance spearheaded by second generation Asian Youth Movements. These campaigns succeeded in securing homes for many families and in generating a sea-change in community consciousness and confidence as Bengalis asserted their right to stay in Britain and be treated decently. However they left a legacy of geographical clustering and of separate community-based organisation that failed to address wider socio-economic inequalities. The chapter compares this identity politics with the 1930s, when the Communist Party used campaigns against racism and for better housing to unite the working class across the racial divide, to undercut support for fascism, and to build support for left ideas. It concludes by looking at how public money has been used to incorporate once-radical organisation into the establishment and institutionalise competition between different community groups.