“Nobody could say our heart was not in the right place”: Barbara Castle, the Labour Party and the Morality of Aid and Development Seminar
- Time:
- 16:00 - 17:00
- Date:
- 1 November 2016
- Venue:
- Room 65/2115, Avenue Campus, SO17 1BF
For more information regarding this seminar, please email Dr Joan Tumblety at J.Tumblety@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
After the British empire ended, ideas about ‘civilising missions’ and imperial burdens did not melt away; instead, they were absorbed into a wider dialogue about Britain’s (and Britons’) place in the world. This paper explores the attitude of the British Labour party to overseas aid and development across the twentieth century. It examines how the Labour Party, but also the wider British government and British public, dealt with the transition from colonial development to overseas aid. It argues that development policy was both an expression of, and an influence on, images of Britain, the Labour Party and the developing world across the twentieth century, and that this was fundamentally shaped by the on-going legacy of British colonialism and decolonisation.
Speaker information
Dr Charlotte Riley ,is a historian of twentieth century Britain, especially the Labour Party, aid and development, and decolonization, with broader interests in the culture of British politics and society, especially issues around gender politics and the British state. She is currently working on a monograph exploring the Labour Party's aid and development policies from the 1920s to the 1970s, and it will examine how Labour developed a specific political economy around overseas aid, both informing and reflecting Labour's wider attitudes to foreign policy and the development of its ideas about poverty, inequality and Britain's role in the wider role over this period.