The Battle of the Somme in Ulster memory and identity

One of the enduring illusions about Northern Ireland is that its society can be conceptualized through a binary distinction between protestant and catholic. unionist and nationalist. It is increasingly apparent that these broad domains are themselves fractured and diverse and that otherness is often conceived from within rather than without. Northern Ireland can also be viewed as a laboratory for identity formation as unionists and loyalists strive to reconcile themselves with the fundamental political changes that have followed in the wake of the Peace Process. This paper considers one aspect of the contestation of belonging that increasingly characterizes unionism. It examines the competition for the ownership of the mythology of the Battle of the Somme ( 1916), long a key event in the unionist narrative. In particular, the paper addresses the ways in which paramilitary organizations are using the Somme to legitimate their own activities but also to distance the loyalist working classes from the former hegemonic Britishness of official unionism and the sectarianism of the Orange Order. The analysis concludes that loyalist identity is being conceptualized thorough a narrative of betrayal from within and at an intensely localized scale.

Property rights and competing for the affections of Demos: The Impact of the 1867 Reform Act on stock prices

The 1867 Reform Act in Britain extended the electoral franchise to the skilled but propertyless urban working classes. Using stock market data and exploiting the fact that foreign and domestic equities traded simultaneously on the London market, this paper finds that investors in British firms reacted negatively to the passage of this Act. We suggest that this finding is consistent with investors foreseeing future alterations of property rights arising from the pressure that the large newly enfranchised group would bring to bear on government policy. We also suggest that our findings appear to be more consistent with the Tory political competition explanation for the Act rather than the Whig threat-of-revolution explanation.

Sharing education through schools working together

Outline of the Sharing Education Programme and its work in developing and evaluating collaborative networks of schools in Northern Ireland in order to promote more effectiuve education and reconciliation. The paper outlines the numbers of shared classes achieved in the first two and a half years of the programme and provides data on the first pupil and teacher surveys.

Worked to Death? A census-based longitudinal study of the relationship between the numbers of hours spent working and mortality risk

Background There has been an increasing interest in the health effects of long
working hours, but little empirical evidence to substantiate early
10 case series suggesting an increased mortality risk. The aim of the
current study is to quantify the mortality risk associated with long
working hours and to see if this varies by employment relations and
conditions of occupation.
Methods A census-based longitudinal study of 414 949 people aged 20-59/64
15 years, working at least 35 h/week, subdivided into four occupational
classes (managerial/professional, intermediate, own account workers,
workers in routine occupations) with linkage to deaths records
over the following 8.7 years. Cox proportional hazards models were
used to examine all-cause and cause-specific mortality risk.
20 Results Overall 9.4% of the cohort worked 55 or more h/week, but this
proportion was greater in the senior management and professional
occupations and in those who were self-employed. Analysis of 4447
male and 1143 female deaths showed that hours worked were
associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality only for
25 men working for more than 55 or more h/week in routine/semiroutine
occupations [adjusted hazard ratios (adjHR) 1.31: 95%
confidence intervals (CIs) 1.11, 1.55)] compared with their peers
working 35–40 h/week. Their equivalent risk of death from cardiovascular
disease was (adjHR 1.49: 95% CIs 1.10, 2.00).
30 Conclusions These findings substantiate and add to the earlier studies indicating
the deleterious impact of long working hours but also suggest that
the effects are moderated by employment relations or conditions of
occupation. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

War, food rationing, and socioeconomic inequality in Germany during the First World War

Germany experienced a devastating period during the First World War due to severely restricted import possibilities and a general shortage of foodstuffs. This study uses the heights of some 4,000 individuals who served during the Second World War to quantify biological living standards from the 1900s to the 1920s, and focuses primarily on socioeconomic inequality during this period. The results suggest that generally the upper social strata, measured by fathers' occupation, exhibited the tallest average height, followed by the middle and lower classes. These socioeconomic differences became more pronounced during the First World War when the rationing system provided a limited food supply. Wealthier individuals were able to purchase additional foodstuffs on black markets. Therefore, children from upper-class families experienced only a small decline in average height compared to their counterparts from the middle and lower social strata.

Trends and Determinants of Work-Retirement Transitions under Changing Institutional Conditions: Germany, England and Japan compared

Many governments world-wide are promoting longer working life due to the social and economic repercussions of demographic change. However, not all workers are equally able to extend their employment careers. Thus, while national policies raise the overall level of labour market participation, they might create new social and labour market inequalities. This paper explores how institutional differences in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan affect individual retirement decisions on the aggregate level, and variations in individuals’ degree of choice within and across countries. We investigate which groups of workers are disproportionately at risk of being ‘pushed’ out of employment, and how such inequalities have changed over time. We use comparable national longitudinal survey datasets focusing on the older population in England, Germany and Japan. Results point to cross-national differences in retirement transitions. Retirement transitions in Germany have occurred at an earlier age than in England and Japan. In Japan, the incidence of involuntary retirement is the lowest, reflecting an institutional context prescribing that employers provide employment until pension age, while Germany and England display substantial proportions of involuntary exits triggered by organisational-level redundancies, persistent early retirement plans or individual ill-health.

Trade union responses to ageing workforces in the UK and Germany

Ageing workforces are placing conflicting pressures on European trade unions in order to, on the one hand, protect pensions and early retirement routes, and, on the other, promote human resource management (HRM) policies geared towards enabling their older members to extend working life. Using interviews from German and United Kingdom (UK) trade unions, we discuss how unions are both constrained and enabled by pre-existing institutional structures in advocating approaches to age management. In Germany, some unions use their strong institutional role to affect public policy and industrial change at national and sectoral levels. UK unions have taken a more defensive approach, focused on protecting pension rights. The contrasting varieties of capitalism, welfare systems and trade unions’ own orientations are creating different pressures and
mechanisms to which unions need to respond. While the German inclusive system is providing unions with mechanisms for negotiating collectively at the national level, UK unions’ activism remains localized.

Workplace accommodation for older teachers in Japan and Germany: The role of the institutional context in supporting late career options for teachers with ill-health

Due to population ageing, Japan and Germany have to extend individuals´ working lives. However, disability increases with old-age. Workplace accommodation is a means to enable disabled individuals to remain productively employed. Drawing on qualitative interview data, this paper explores how School Authorities in these countries use workplace accommodation to support ill teachers, a white-collar profession strongly affected by (mental) ill-health. It furthermore explores how such measures influence older teachers´ career expectations and outcomes. It finds that even though the institutional contexts are similar, career options and expectations vary, though with similar (negative) outcomes for national strategies to extend working lives.

Max Weber and the First World War: Protestant and Catholic living standards in Germany, 1915-1919

We assess informal institutions of Protestants and Catholics by investigating their economic
resilience in a natural experiment. The First World War constitutes an exogenous shock to living standards since the duration and intensity of the war exceeded all expectations. We assess the ability of Protestant and Catholic communities to cope with increasing food prices and wartime black markets. Literature based on Weber (1904, 1905) suggests that Protestants must be more resilient than their Catholic peers. Using individual height data on some 2,800 Germans to assess levels of malnutrition during the war, we find that living standards for both Protestants and Catholics declined; however, the decrease of Catholics’ height was disproportionately large. Our empirical analysis finds a large statistically significant difference between Protestants and Catholics for the 1914-19 birth cohort, and we argue that this height gap cannot be attributed to socioeconomic background and fertility alone.