This detailed new study--the first academic monograph on the history of British employers' organizations--develops a much-neglected theme in social history. Using previously untapped primary sources, Organised Capital explores these institutions from a regional, comparative perspective, analyzing their growth and activities during their heyday, and challenging current interpretations of employers' groups. Arthur McIvor's study will be of interest both to historians and to students of industrial relations.

A balanced and richly informed survey that investigates how, why and to what degree working lives have been transformed over the last sixty years. McIvor covers themes such as gender, race, class, disability and health in his exploration of how the meaning of employment has been signified by the workers themselves.

Men in reserve focuses on working class civilian men who, as a result of working in reserved occupations, were exempt from enlistment in the armed forces. It uses fifty six newly conducted oral history interviews as well as autobiographies, visual sources and existing archived interviews to explore how this group articulated their wartime experiences and how they positioned themselves in relation to the hegemonic discourse of military masculinity. It considers the range of masculine identities circulating amongst civilian male workers during the war and investigates the extent to...