In Defence of White Freedom: Working Men’s Clubs and the Politics of Sociability in Late Industrial England

Abstract While ongoing discrimination in jobs, welfare, and housing 1970s England belied the social democratic promise of ‘equality opportunity’ much-touted British value ‘fair play’, racism at door working men’s club told a different story. For reactionaries liberals alike, it spoke to uncertain future working-class politics late industrial England. This article shows how legal political controversies surrounding whites-only men's clubs contribute our understanding ‘white class’ as subject public life. Even more, reveals how—among members—whiteness came be invested with feelings intimacy, kinship, respectability, independence.