social issues Flashcards
describe issues with workers:
didn’t identify as a working class party
-only 26% TU membership by 1997
-no repeal of Thatcher’s TU legislation
-block-vote reformed under smith and blair
-promoted privatisation and public-private partnerships e.g. london underground
-Transport Workers’ Union expelled from the party in 2004 - seen as troublemakers
-EU social chapter - employment/social rights, opted out of directive on maximum working hours
-embraced globalisation
-get back to work schemes
-minimum wage introduced 1998
-tax credits for families with low incomes
describe changes for youth:
-aimed to end social exclusion
-Sure Start and Connexions
-target = 50% of school leavers go to uni
-anti-social behaviour order - law to reduce youth crime/ disorder and to reduce vandalism + graffiti
describe changes for women:
-1997 = 120 female MPs
-all women shortlists in safe seat constituencies
-margaret beckett = foreign secretary 2006-2007
-childcare provisions extended to help women in work
-pension credits for women with caring responsibilities
but how was progress for female equality still limited?
still limited progress in terms of equal pay and allocation of domestic duties
describe progress towards multiculturalism:
-greater movement of people since EU expansion and globalisation
-Paul Boateng became first black cabinet minister in 2002
-corporate organisations launched initiatives to put mosques in more towns and cities and to celebrate people’s differing cultural backgrounds
-in 2005 london bid to hold the 2012 olympics on the basis of it being a multicultural city
but evidence that Britain was not yet a fully multicultural society:
-1998 Macpherson report on racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence
-BBc workforce ‘hideously white’
-people of a different ethnic background, even when born in britain, were excluded
-2005 terrorist attack - 52 killed - criticisms that not enough emphasis was being placed on the responsibilities of immigrants to properly integrate into british culture, and that some were alienated from british society and culture
