Unit information: Social Protest in Modern Britain (Level I Lecture Response) in 2011/12

Unit name	Social Protest in Modern Britain (Level I Lecture Response)
Unit code	HIST25011
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Rob Skinner
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

Britain has a long and vibrant history of ‘grass roots’ social protest, political activism that interacted with, while remaining outside, the arena of mainstream politics. This lecture response unit explores the nature of this phenomenon by considering the relationship between individual activism, organised protest and government reaction to and regulation of key movements in modern British history. The unit will be divided into two halves, dealing with the ‘old’ social movements of the nineteenth century and the ‘new’ movements of the twentieth century, the post second world war period in particular. As such, it will draw upon and critique recent theoretical literature on social movements.

Social protest in relation to race, class and gender will be analysed using conventional historical sources as well as the rich cultural sources produced (posters and art, speeches, fiction and poetry, protest songs, etc.) by movements from the campaign to abolish the slave trade at the turn of the nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century rise of environmental movements and anti-globalisation demonstrations questioning how these various movement relate to each other and their legacy for social protest and change today.

Aims:

• To provide a broad grounding in the history of social protest in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries

• To provide particular perspectives on that history to which students can react critically and build their own individual views and interpretations.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• wider historical knowledge of social protest in Britain over the past two centuries

• deeper awareness of how to approach a long term historical analysis

• ability to set individual issues within their longer term historical context

• the ability to analyse and generalise about issues of continuity and change

• ability to select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general historical points

• ability to derive benefit from and contribute effectively to large group discussion

• ability to identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint.

Teaching Information

• Weekly 2-hour interactive lectures

• Tutorial feedback on essay

• Access to tutorial consultation with unit tutor in office hours

Assessment Information

1 x 3000 word essay (50%) and 1 x 2 hour exam (50%)

Reading and References

• J. E. Archer, Social Unrest and Popular Protest in England, 1780-1840 (2000)

• D. D. Porta and M. Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction (2006)

• A. Lent, British Social Movements since 1945 (2001)

• C. Tilly and S. Tarrow, Contentious politics (2007).

• P. Byrne, Social Movements in Britain (1997)