Anti-fascism is along with anti-militarism, one of the most successful campaigns with which the left in Britain has been associated. The key moments, such as the Battles of Olympia, Cable Street or Lewisham were events at which the activities of the left forced themselves into the news and through which whole generations of activists came into the movement. Seasoned anti-fascists viewed New Labour's victory at the 1997 general election with scepticism. Between 1997 and 2001, the British National Party (BNP) grew noticeably, albeit without achieving the electoral breakthroughs which were to follow later. Between 2001 and 2005, the BNP enjoyed sustained electoral success. In 2009, 2010 and until summer 2011, the United Against Fascism (UAF) and English Defence League (EDL) numbers were usually broadly even. In June 2009, a rival far-right organisation, the EDL, was founded, as a street-fighting Islamophobic group.

The introduction establishes the book’s historiographical and methodological contours. In doing so, the introduction sets the study in the context of both debates about British national identity in general and popular imperialism in particular. It also explains the topicality of the book by demonstrating how, in near-contemporary debates about the politics of national curriculum history teaching, some invoke a ‘golden age’ of past practice to justify alterations to the curriculum. Through use of the concept of cultural restorationism, I argue that a deeper understanding of the relationship between educational psychology and the development of history teaching is necessary; especially so since the political construction of a golden age has led to misleading depictions of the history of history teaching.

This chapter suggests the need for strategizing environmental engagement within our institutions of higher education and provides an example of such measurement in Chiapas, Mexico. The inclusion of organizational and financial goals, as well as, provision of an organizational structure to accommodate complex environmental issues is discussed.

The historical relationship between economic crisis and social democracy is both intrinsic and far from straightforward. In terms of electoral performance, an overview suggests that social democratic parties have fared badly as a result of the global economic crisis. The crisis of neo-liberalism creates the potential to consider a shift towards an alternative socio-economic model and set of ideas. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the relationship between social democratic parties and what they claim were two 'Faustian pacts' entered into: one with European integration, and the other with the knowledge-based economy. In the case of the British Labour Party, the book further identifies the absence of ideological alternatives to the 'there is no alternative' (TINA)-logic that prevailed under the leadership of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The family has been central to Irish culture and society, evincing an anxious preoccupation with marital and familial relationships. This chapter examines two particular stories of single women, authored by men, to consider fictional stereotypes of singlehood and womanhood. William Trevor's short story 'The Ballroom of Romance', set in the 1950s, concerns a turning point in the life of Bridie, a single woman caring for her widowed father, labouring on the family farm, tending to cows and hens. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore begins with Judith, a woman in her early forties, settling into another, cheaper, boarding house in Belfast of the 1950s. Sociology is concerned with stories of people's lives and relationships. Sociological models of rural communities in the 1970s placed men at the centre of their analyses, married women and children at the outer perimeters, with unmarried women hovering at the limits of community.

Herbartianism posited that the creation of moral, patriotic, citizens was to be achieved most effectively through the teaching of moral biography. This chapter, then, examines how history lessons were used to encourage hero worship. The first section demonstrates how heroic attributes, endemic to characters from the Anglo-Saxon period onwards, were explained to be traits of an imperial race. Secondly, the chapter demonstrates the impact of the pedagogical concept of the ‘pedestal’ – that is, children were not only intended to worship hero figures, but both emulate them and engage in acts of collective commemoration. The third section analyses representations of ‘specifically’ imperial heroes and shows how Nelson, Clive, Wolfe and Gordon were depicted as embodiments of historical progress. Lastly, the chapter makes analysis of the class and gendered dynamics of hero worship and assesses why texts for younger children were far likelier than textbooks to include stories of ‘everyday’ heroes and heroines.

This chapter sets out to explore the question of being Irish in Britain. It addresses national or ethnic difference in producing simplistic positive stereotypes of the Irish. The chapter attempts to unpack the meanings that underpin notions of Irish difference. It maps the shifting images of Irish men and masculinities within a British context of local and global change. The chapter explores changing self-representations, social practices and cultural journeys among Irish men. It focuses on the health, accommodation and social care needs of older Irish men in the city of Birmingham. The city of Birmingham became a major destination for Irish emigrants after the Second World War when the British economy was in the process of expanding. In British race and ethnic relations literature, Irish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were represented as one of the main recipients of British colonial exploitation.

The 1911 census boycott has till recently been regarded as a fairly minor theme within the wider suffrage narrative. Retrospective accounts began in 1913 (Margaret Nevinson); and in 1914 Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story claimed ‘many thousands of women all over the country refused or evaded’. Sylvia Pankhurst's 1931 The Suffragette Movement ignored the boycott (she was in America at the time); but Laurence Housman's 1937 The Unexpected Years gives a telling account of how ‘the women had come off victors from the field’: ‘Honest John Burns…climbed down in a night’, and there was not a single arrest. From the 1980s, demographic historians began analyzing anonymized 1911 schedules, but census historians generally did not look at Votes for Women. By the 1990s however a new generation of suffrage historians had emerged, who wanted to look beyond Sylvia Pankhurst's The Suffragette Movement well-known version. Family historians and others waited for the hundred years to elapse ~ till January 1912 ~ for the individual schedules to be released by the National Archives.

Western knowledge is often linked to universality and spatial transferability while indigenous knowledge is considered to be part of a traditional and outdated way of life. Development agencies, The World Bank and Higher Education Institutions alike have sought to reconcile these two apparently discrete forms of knowledge. In recent times the value of indigenous knowledge has come to be recognised in various fields including medicine, agriculture, science and education. Alongside this has been growing recognition that if communities and universities are to engage as co-workers in finding solutions to trans national issues then there has to be meaningful dialogue between the epistemologically different knowledge systems.