Time: 9:30amVenue: Map Room, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London
Every student of post-war Britain is familiar with the idea of “decline”.
It is a concept that has been used to describe and analyse a variety of aspects of British history, including decolonisation, diminishing diplomatic and military influence, gradual erosion of cultural and industrial exports, and a stagnating domestic economy plagued by industrial dispute and heavy debt.
The notion of “decline” is so commonplace in twentieth-century British historiography that it seems reasonable to ask: can historians even talk about Britain in this period without producing a narrative of “decline”?
Read James Southern's blog on the conference
Programme
Keynote: Professor David Reynolds
Panel 1: Postwar Britain IntrospectsSara Hiorns (QMUL): ‘Women doctors, hard cash, and bullshit bingo: How did the Foreign Office deal with change, 1970-1990?’;Paul Stocker (Teesside University): ‘National decline, international conspiracy: the postwar radical right in Britain, 1946-1967’;Josh White (UCL): ‘Declinism in punk and the national press in 1970s Britain’.Chair: Dr Robert Saunders (QMUL)
Panel 2: Soft Diplomacy and Special RelationsTodd Carter (University of Oxford): ‘An unshakeable commitment? Britain, America & National Liberation in Southern Africa in the 1970s’;Dan Feather (Liverpool John Moores University): ‘Maintaining influence and halting the decline in ‘liberalism’: British Council Scholarships to the Republic of South Africa, 1961-65’;Darius Wainwright (University of Reading): ‘Britain’s approach to Iran and wider British foreign policy, 1971-79’.Chair: Dr Luke Gibbon (FCO Historians)
Panel 3: The Falklands War and Other "Dots on the Map": New Directions in the Decline DebateJohn Bagnall (Newcastle University): ‘Continental relations: Britain and Europe through the Falklands crisis, 1982-1990’;Matthew Jones (Keele University): ‘Popular understanding of decline during and after the 1982 Falklands conflict: evidence from Mass Observation and focus groups';James Brocklesby (Liverpool John Moores University): ‘Remnants of Empire and Britain’s place in the post-colonial world’.Chair: Dr Mathias Haeussler (University of Cambridge)
Closing Roundtable: “Decline in Conversation”: Dr James Ellison (chair); Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield; Dr Sue Onslow; Professor Patrick Salmon.