Dismantling the class war

Paul Addison

  • The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950: Volume 1: Regions and Communities edited by F.M.L. Thompson
    Cambridge, 608 pp, June 1990, ISBN 0 521 25788 3
  • The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950: Volume 2: People and Their Environment edited by F.M.L. Thompson
    Cambridge, 392 pp, June 1990, ISBN 0 521 25789 1
  • The Temper of the Times: British Society since World War Two by Bill Williamson
    Blackwell, 308 pp, £30.00, August 1990, ISBN 0 631 15919 3

In a chapter of the Cambridge Social History V. C. Gatrell describes the relationship between policing and crime. ‘More policing,’ he writes,‘leads to more reported crime; more reported crime results in the unfortunate statistical corollary of lower clear-up rates; these in turn unleash a call for additional police resources; more resources lead to more reported crime.’ A similar model applies to the writing of British social history. Since the Sixties more and more historians have been recruited to the field. Inevitably the number of historical problems has multiplied, giving rise to more and more debates and controversies – thus proving the need for more research.

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