Anti-drink driving reform in Britain, c. 1920-80.

AIM: The goal of this report is to provide a framework for understanding and interpreting political, scientific and cultural attitudes towards drink driving in 20th-century Britain. Exploring the inherent conservatism of successive governments, Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public towards the issue during the interwar years, the contribution seeks to explain the shift from legislative paralysis to the introduction of the breathalyser in 1967. DESIGN: Based on governmental, parliamentary and administrative records, the report follows a mainly narrative route. It places particular emphasis on connections between post-war extra-parliamentary and parliamentary movements for reform. SETTING: The paper follows a linear path from the 1920s to the 1970s. Britain lies at the heart of the story but comparisons are made with nations--particularly the Scandinavian states--which took radical steps to prosecute drinking and dangerous drivers at an early date. FINDINGS: The report underlines the vital post-war role played by Graham Page, leading parliamentary spokesman for the Pedestrians' Association; the centrality of the Drew Report (1959) into an 'activity resembling driving'; the pioneering Conservative efforts of Ernest Marples; and Barbara Castle's consolidating rather than radically innovative activities between 1964 and 1967. CONCLUSION: Both before and after the Second World War politicians from both major parties gave ground repeatedly to major motoring organizations. With the ever-escalating growth of mass motorization in the 1950s, both Conservative and Labour governments agonized over gridlock and 'murder on the roads'. Barbara Castle finally took decisive action against drink drivers, but the ground had been prepared by Graham Page and Ernest Marples.

A kind of consensus on the roads? Drink driving policy in Britain 1945-1970.

The history of drink driving and legislative responses to it remain virtual terra incognita. This contribution traces developments in Britain between 1945 and the aftermath of the Road Safety Act in 1967. The first section focuses on the formation of an extra-parliamentary pressure group in the 1950s. This is complemented by an interpretation of the impact of the government-backed Drew Report (1959), and the ways in which Drew's research was rhetorically and creatively deployed by Graham Page, leading spokesman for the Pedestrians' Association and Ernest Marples, the Conservative Minister of Transport. The final section interrogates key debates leading up to the introduction of the breathalyser. The article concludes that belated introduction of road safety legislation in Britain in the 1960s revealed a high degree of cross-party consensus. Only senior officials at the Home Office, and to a lesser extent, at the Ministry of Transport, repeatedly threatened to delay reform.

At the margin: continuing crisis in British environmental history?

An understanding of historical relations between gender and nature, whether within the context of 'untouched wilderness' or the pulsating vibrancy of the industrial city, is central to collective self-knowledge in the world in which we all live. However, have British historians been less successful than their American counterparts in engaging with key aspects of the environmental past?