Vaccinating Britain investigates the relationship between the British public and vaccination policy since 1945. It is the first book to examine British vaccination policy across the post-war period and covers a range of vaccines, providing valuable context and insight for those interested in historical or present-day public health policy debates. Drawing on government documents, newspapers, internet archives and medical texts it shows how the modern vaccination system became established and how the public played a key role in its formation. British parents came to accept vaccination as a safe, effective and cost-efficient preventative measure. But occasional crises showed that faith in the system was tied to contemporary concerns about the medical profession, the power of the state and attitudes to individual vaccines. Thus, at times the British public demanded more comprehensive vaccination coverage from the welfare state; at others they eschewed specific vaccines that they thought were dangerous or unnecessary. Moreover, they did not always act uniformly, with “the public” capable of expressing contradictory demands that were often at odds with official policy. This case study of Britain’s vaccination system provides insight into the relationship between the British public and the welfare state, as well as contributing to the historiography of public health and medicine.
Dreikaiserbund (the League of Three Emperors, created in 1873) 2 and for autonomy, making Gyula Andrassy, the Foreign Minister of Austria–Hungary, suspicious of the Russian motives. The British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was incensed with the autonomy idea in a region whose majority were Muslims (that is, loyal to the Sultan) and likened the situation to Ireland. 3 Andrassy came out with what is known as the Andrassy Note (December 1875), which called for modest reforms
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
‘The Trust will pursue debt through all means necessary.’ This is the response that I received to a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request that I submitted to a London-based NHS Trust. I had specifically asked the Trust to ‘provide details of the Cost Recovery Programme, specifically how outstanding charges are enforced and recuperated by the hospital’. Their response, in many ways, encapsulates the aggressive financialization of NHS secondary care for migrants in Britain. In 2015, later amended in 2017, the UK government introduced the
162 Bordering intimacy 2017; Fargues 2017; Gibney 2017), I argue that de facto deprivation of rights and personhood was arguably foundational to modern citizenship. Rather than an aberration of citizenship, the racialised control we see today is better understood as an intensification of this past function. This I argue reveals a particular type of imperial family drama which rages through British citizenship. I conclude the chapter by considering how contemporary rights and citizenship are shaped by the historical figurations of the ‘indentured labourer’ and the
The supposed apathy shown towards diphtheria by certain sections of the British public was largely overcome by the 1960s – or, at least, immunisation rates had improved to such an extent that the Ministry of Health was no longer concerned about widespread diphtheria epidemics. Yet it did not have the same successes with smallpox vaccination. The problem of low rates of infant vaccination and childhood revaccination among the population remained a continual source of irritation for the Ministry. In the government's favour, the success of
-policed natives’ posed a significant threat. This was framed as a threat not only to British society but also imperial rule more broadly. The South African press feared that ‘nothing but vice in a white skin would satisfy [the ‘savages’] thereafter’ (Shephard 1986: 97). The exhibition threatened to trouble the sexual demarcations of the ‘colour line’. By August 1899 the ‘Kaffir kraal’ was officially closed to women. Whilst the press initially raised concerns over interracial sex and the spectre of the ‘black peril’ (which I return to below), focus began to fall on the coupling
migrants from seeking medical attention for fear of Home Office involvement. The unintended outcome? Driving vulnerable people into the shadows, thwarting national efforts to manage public health. Medien looks at the border erected at hospitals, clinics and sites that form Britain's National Health Service or NHS. The NHS is a much-cherished British institution, funded through general taxation, enabling everyone to receive free healthcare at the point of use. Not quite everyone. Medien examines the new reality for migrants who must prove eligibility
, there is a need to represent the neglected stories of the colonized; those who were integral in the makings of modern capitalism but whose roles have been disposed, marginalized and purposely ignored for the benefit of colonialism and imperialism. More closely related to my present story of the Milo tin or, more importantly, its underlying commodity, tin, is Simon Naylor's ( 2000 ) work on the material culture of colonial commodities. Naylor focuses on tin cans, examining their importance to the networks of the British empire, its imperialism and
Indigenous smallpox had been eliminated from Britain in the 1930s, reducing its threat to the day-to-day lives of British people. The public had, however, come to fear a new disease which first reached epidemic proportions in 1947 – poliomyelitis. From that year onwards, regular outbreaks occurred during the “polio season” each summer. No cure was ever found. The only thing authorities could do was provide treatment for acute symptoms and continue research efforts into a preventative vaccine. By the end of the 1960s, the number of annual