Economic History Society

Now on the Long Run: '‘Offering an Abortion as Part of Contraception’: A Family Planning Research Journey'. In this post Susan Birch (University of Winchester) discusses her ongoing research and resources at the Wellcome in London, supported by the EHS Research Fund for Graduate Students.

ehs.org.uk/offering-an-... ehs.org.uk/award/resear...

ehs.org.uk‘Offering an Abortion as Part of Contraception’: A Family Planning Research Journey - Economic History SocietyIn this post Susan Birch of the University of Winchester discusses her ongoing research and resources at the Wellcome in London, supported by the EHS Research Fund for Graduate Students. — My PhD exam...

How have UK industrial relations changed over the past 100 years? Niall Cullinane considers this as part of a series of articles in the Economics Observatory exploring economic and social changes since 1926, to mark the centenary of the EHS. www.economicsobservatory.com/how-have-uk-...

In that sense, 100 years after the General Strike, we might say that 1926 points to an enduring problem at the heart of UK industrial relations: how are labour markets to be governed, and on whose terms?

ehs.org.ukEconomic History Society (EHS)The Economic History Society exists to support research and teaching in economic and social history. Publications, events, grants & prizes.

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The Labour government’s recent Employment Rights Act 2025 represents a partial response to such challenges:

simplifying statutory union recognition, improving union access to the workplace, altering unfavourable trade union laws around balloting, and providing for new sectoral collective bargaining in the adult social care sector and in the educational (school support staff) sector in England.

The result was not simply a decline in union membership, but an erosion of the institutional and economic foundations on which collective bargaining and industrial action had depended.

In the present period, the consequences of decollectivisation have become a source of renewed concern in academic and policy circles. Recent work links many of the UK’s contemporary labour market problems to the weakening of institutions.

Deindustrialisation weakened large, unionised sectors in which collective bargaining and strike activity had been most deeply rooted, including coal, steel, shipbuilding, textiles and parts of engineering and motor manufacturing.

Anti-union legislation by the state restricted the legal space for industrial action, making it more difficult to organise and sustain. Employment growth increasingly occurred in parts of the labour market that were less hospitable to union organisation.

Thus, the late 1970s would serve to act as both a high-water mark of that system as well as its crisis point.

What followed was a process of decollectivisation; some of which was a product of market forces, some of which was deliberately engineered by the state.

The internal character was also changed. Industry agreements remained important, but workplace bargaining took on significance.

But by the 1960s and 1970s, governments and employers increasingly viewed this dense web of collectivisation as difficult to manage in the context of a rising number of strikes, inflation control, productivity improvement and managerial authority.

From this emerged what industrial relations scholars would later call ‘collective laissez-faire’: the state generally avoided direct wage-setting, while creating the legal and institutional conditions in which employers and unions could themselves regulate wages and conditions collectively.

This system was extended in the post-war decades. Full employment consolidated workers’ bargaining power, while nationalisation, public service expansion and state encouragement of union recognition embedded collective bargaining more deeply across the economy.

The institutional landscape evident in 1926 had older roots. From the late 19th century, major employers and some politicians saw collective bargaining as a way to stabilise fragmented, conflict-prone industries. The 1894 Royal Commission on Labour reflected this shift.

In coal, cotton, steel, engineering, shipbuilding and transport, industry-wide agreements established common standards for wages and working hours. This benefitted employers by limiting wage undercutting and containing disputes within agreed machinery.

As the centenary of the General Strike, 1926 is an apt starting point for considering how the governance of UK labour markets has evolved. But 1979 was the moment when the industrial relations system of high trade union and collective bargaining coverage reached maturity before falling into decline.

ucl.ac.ukEHS Women’s Committee Training EventAI in Economic and Social History: Opportunities and Pitfalls

How can AI help (or hinder) historical research? Join us at UCL on 30 October for the EHS Women’s Committee Training Event, featuring a roundtable and a collaborative hackathon using real historical sources and datasets. Free to attend and open to all. To book: www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...

Keep up to date on the latest work of the Women’s Committee of the Economic History Society by following @ehswomcom.bsky.social

Application deadline approaching! The next application deadline for the EHS Research Fund for Graduate Students is 1 November The EHS considers applications for grants of up to £1,000 to help postgraduate students gather research data and source materials, including travel and accommodation expenses

ehs.org.ukResearch Fund for Graduate Students - Economic History SocietyThe Economic History Society will consider applications for grants – normally of up to £1,000 – to assist postgraduate students (Master’s Degree and PhD) in United Kingdom colleges and universities wi...

More info and to apply: ehs.org.uk/award/resear...

ehs.org.ukData Prize - Economic History SocietyWe invite prize nominations for outstanding contributions to creating, compiling, and sharing data and information in economic history. One prize will be awarded biennially and the winner will be anno...

New Data Prize! Application Deadline 1 December 2026. The EHS is pleased to offer a new biennial prize for outstanding contributions to creating, compiling, and sharing data and information in economic history. #EHS100 Further info and to apply: ehs.org.uk/award/data-p...

Applicants can be at any career stage. The prize may be awarded to an individual or small group (up to five individuals). It cannot be awarded to an organization. The data or information that are the focus of the contribution must have been made freely available to be considered for the prize.

You can self-nominate or nominate others. Nominations should include a description of the data set, its significance, and its dissemination (max. 1,000 words).

How has unemployment in the UK changed over the past 100 years? Meredith Paker considers this as part of a series of articles in the Economics Observatory exploring economic and social changes since 1926, to mark the centenary of the EHS. www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-unem...

Finally, we are increasingly recognising that cyclical and structural unemployment interact and that worker reallocation across industries during economic downturns shapes aggregate unemployment.

ehs.org.ukEconomic History Society (EHS)The Economic History Society exists to support research and teaching in economic and social history. Publications, events, grants & prizes.

ehs.org.uk

First, it is critical that workers can move between industries in response to changes. Many economists have studied the efficacy of various active labour market policies to facilitate these transitions.

Second, we have a better understanding that the effects of structural change on labour markets are unequal throughout the workforce. The shifting types of jobs in the economy displace some workers and help others, and it is important to remember that these effects are often unpredictable.

Research on job polarisation highlights the rise of high- and low-skill occupations at the expense of middle-level routine occupations since the late 1980s, leading to the decline of occupations such as bank tellers and travel agents.

While the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on the labour market are still unpredictable, this new technology may cause even further structural shifts in the balance of industries and occupations within services.

To the extent that deindustrialisation displaced manufacturing workers, it created structural unemployment, especially in periods in which the move towards a service-based economy occurred more rapidly.

But some of these broad shifts happened at the margins, for example, as young people chose different careers and older workers retired.

Unemployment has fallen over the last century, although it is currently rising once again. These figures are driven by both the performance of the economy and the match between workers’ skills and the vacancies that are available.

Over the past century, the UK has experienced broad shifts in the locus of economic activity, having moved away from agriculture towards manufacturing, then shifting from manufacturing to services.

The EHS Research Fund for Graduate Students, next application deadline 1st November. The EHS considers applications for grants of up to £1,000 to help postgraduate students gather research data and source materials, including travel and accommodation expenses. ehs.org.uk/award/resear...

How has children’s health in the UK changed over the past 100 years? Bernard Harris considers this as part of a series of articles in the Economics Observatory exploring economic and social changes since 1926, to mark the centenary of the EHS. www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-chil...

Between 1995 and 2004, the percentage of English children who were defined as ‘obese’ increased from 12% to 19%, and the share has remained between 14% and 17% since 2008. These trends bring worrying implications for potentially life-threatening diseases, such as cancer and type-2 diabetes.

ehs.org.ukEconomic History Society (EHS)The Economic History Society exists to support research and teaching in economic and social history. Publications, events, grants & prizes.

ehs.org.uk

Several studies suggest that changes in average height are associated with both cognitive development and economic productivity. Others show that there is a close relationship between the heights of children and health in later life, although some of these relationships may also be changing.

More recent studies suggest that although height is inversely related to mortality from diseases such as cardiovascular disease, whose overall significance is declining, it may be positively related to deaths from diseases such as cancer, whose relative significance is increasing.

Children’s health is a powerful reflection of economic and social conditions more generally. In turn, better health outcomes among children also influence a range of other indicators.

In 1976, the medical scientist Thomas McKeown identified a number of potential reasons for the decline in infectious disease mortality. These included a reduction in the virulence of certain infections, therapeutic intervention, better sanitation and improved nutrition (McKeown, 1976).

Children are now better nourished, exposed to fewer life-threatening infections and able to access better medical provision. But children in 2026 are also at greater risk of obesity and associated health conditions.