Sexual Politics

The Labour government of 1966–70 saw the introduction of a remarkable run of liberal legislation—legalising abortion and, in a limited way, homosexuality, reforming divorce, abolishing capital punishment and theatre censorship, and easing access to birth control. Its successors between 1997 and 2010 also had an impressive, all too often unremarked, record, including equalising the age of consent for same-sex with heterosexual relationships, introducing civil partnerships for same-sex couples, and improving rights for older and disabled people, gypsies and travellers. The real progress towards social equality embodied in this and other legislation has received surprisingly little scholarly study. A central aim of Brooke’s volume is to place it in the longer run of British labour history and class politics. This is an easier task for the period since the Second World War than before it. This is partly because of the extreme reticence in Britain about openly discussing sexual matters, which only fully broke down from the 1960s onwards. The sensitivity of the issues among Roman Catholic Labour supporters also muted public discussion. Also, most labour activists, especially men, believed that improvements in working and living conditions were more urgent than issues of sexual politics. Women were much quicker to recognise that birth control and abortion were indissolubly linked to improving conditions for working-class families. Birth control and legal abortion could reduce family size, hence increasing real incomes and the life chances of future generations, while rescuing women from ill-health due to repeated pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth and the sometimes lethal effects of illegal abortion. From the later nineteenth century these issues were promoted by working- and middle-class women, including those in the labour movement, notably the large, mainly working-class Women’s Co-operative Guild. Homosexual law reform was more remote from the lives of working people, and was promoted instead by intellectuals, including those close to socialism such as Edward Carpenter and his circle. Brooke surveys the sexually radical ideals of middle-class intellectuals and activists between the 1880s and 1920s, including Carpenter, Olive Schreiner and Stella Browne, as well as the growing contribution of women in the labour movement

Abortion · Birth control · Family planning · Human sexuality · Legislation · Political science · Politics · Population · Pregnancy · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law