Academic staff

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• HIST 5020, The Making of Modern Britain: Politics, Society and Culture, 1815-1997 [Year 2]
  • Examines how industrialisation, immigration, war, political conflict, the growth of cities and the rise and decline of heavy industry helped to forge modern Britain.
• HIST 6008, Britain and the Sea since 1600 [Year 3]
  • What does it mean to be an ‘island nation’, and how has Britain’s relationship with the sea affected warfare, immigration, the economy, the environment, travel and tourism?

Postgraduate

• HIST 7010, Britain and the European Communities, 1945-2016
  • What were the main reasons for Britain’s troubled relationship with what became the European Union, and what were the issues that both marred Britain’s short membership and caused its eventual exit?

Supervision

PhD supervision

• George Gosling, 'Co-Ordinating Diversity: The Mixed Economy of Healthcare in Bristol, 1918-48' (completed in September 2011).
• Catherine Flinn, '"In Spite of Planning": Reconstructing Britain's Blitzed Cities, 1945-54'' (completed in December 2011).
• Nicholas Saunders, 'The Suez Crisis and Britain's European Allies' (completed in May 2015).
• Jenny Wright, 'Female Consultants in the National Health Service since 1947' (completed in May 2016).
• Melanie Bashor, 'Engineering Tolerance: The Origins of Multicultural Education Policies in the Atlantic World, c.1941-c.1988' (completed in June 2016).
• Cat Rushmore (as second supervisor to Dr Viviane Quirke), 'Chemicals and their Users in the British Home: From the 1930s to the 1960s' (completed in January 2017).
• Emily Stacey (jointly supervised with Dr James Cooper), 'Preparing for Power: Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Visits as Leader of the Opposition' (completed in September 2021).

Professor O'Hara is primarily interested in British central governments' economic and social policies, focusing especially on the period since the First World War, and has written and edited a number of books on this subject. In 2012 he released a full-length monograph on British politics between the 1950s and the 1970s, entitled Governing Post-War Britain: The Paradoxes of Progress (2012), and he followed that up by publishing The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain in 2017. Professor O'Hara is now writing a history of the domestic policies of the Blair Governments between 1997 and 2007, while acting as Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'In All Our Footsteps: Tracking, Mapping & Experiencing Rights of Way in Post-War Britain'. He is also Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded programme 'Spaces of Hope: The Hidden Histories of Community-Led Planning in the UK'. He writes regularly in the media on current affairs and policy, for instance in The Guardian and The New European, and can be followed on Twitter as @gsoh31.

Books

• O'Hara G, The politics of water in Post-War Britain, Palgrave Macmillan (2017)
  ISBN: 9781137446398 eISBN: 9781137446404
  Abstract The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain is the first book to look across the entirety of late twentieth century Britons’ engagement with water. The British Isles, a relatively wet and rainy archipelago, cannot in any way be said to be short of liquid resources. Even so, it was the site of highly contentious and revealing political controversies over the meaning and use of water after the Second World War. A series of such issues divided political parties, pressure groups, government and voters, and form the subject matter of this book: problems as diverse as flood defence to river and beach cleanliness, from the teaching of swimming to the installation of hot and cold running water in the home, from international controls over maritime pollution, and from the different housework duties of men and women to the British state’s proposals to fluoridise the drinking water supply.Website 
• O'Hara G, Governing post-war Britain: the paradoxes of progress, 1951-1973, Palgrave Macmillan (2012)
  ISBN: 9780230230569
  Abstract Post-war Britain emerges as a country that experienced increasingly tense relations between governors and the governed. The electorate demanded ever wider access to fairly-provided and universally-available social services; elites looked to other European and American countries for how this search for quality might be mounted. However, new solutions became ever more complex, and increasingly likely to conflict with one another or involve unintended additional effects. Drawing on new archival findings from across the United Kingdom, among personal and political papers as much as the files of national and international governance, O'Hara uses the new economics of organization, management and complexity to draw a compelling picture of the post-war settlement as it came under strain during the 1950s and 1960s.
• Crook T, O'Hara G, Ed., Statistics and the public sphere: numbers and the people in modern Britain, 1800-2000, Routledge (2011)
  ISBN: 9780415878944 eISBN: 9780203818671
  Abstract Contemporary public life in Britain would be unthinkable without the use of statistics and statistical reasoning. Numbers dominate political discussion, facilitating debate while also attracting criticism on the grounds of their veracity and utility. However, the historical role and place of statistics within Britain's public sphere has yet to receive the attention it deserves. There exist numerous histories of both modern statistical reasoning and the modern public sphere; but to date, there are no works which, quite pointedly, aim to analyse the historical entanglement of the two. Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c.1800-2000 directly addresses this neglected area of historiography, and in so doing places the present in some much needed historical perspective.Website 
• O'Hara G, Britain and the sea since 1600 , Palgrave Macmillan (2010)
  ISBN: 9780230218291
  Abstract In this first full-scale treatment of Britain's relationship with the surrounding oceans, Glen O'Hara examines the history of British people's maritime lives and, in turn, the formation of British cultural identities. A lens through which to view British life, Britain and the Sea spans more than 400 years, beginning in 1600 and taking us through to the present day. Tying together every aspect in the development of Great Britain, from state formation, industrialization and modernization, through to histories of transport, migration, slavery, warfare and crime, this book illustrates how the rich tapestry of Britain's narrative was decided not among the fields of the 'green and pleasant land', but out at sea.
• O'Hara G, From dreams to disillusionment: economic and social planning in 1960s Britain, Palgrave Macmillan (2006)
  ISBN: 9780230013476;9781349284 eISBN: 9780230625488
  Abstract The experiment with planning, which permeated every aspect of national life in the 1960s, is absolutely central to understanding post-war British history and its discontents. While familiar approaches to this period in British history may have focussed on the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s, or the inadequacies of economic or social policy at the time, From Dreams to Disillusionment goes beyond all this to try and reveal the true problems of planning in a so-called 'affluent society', such as it was seen at the time by the policy-making community of politicians, civil servants, academics and journalists. It uses a wide range of sources; from newly-available official government documents, political parties' files, the papers of trade unions and employer's asssociations, to the private papers of civil servants and industrialists. It demonstrates how and why the overstretched central government tried to plan the economy, and exactly why this planning eventually failed.Website 

Journal articles

• O'Hara G, '"The Russian revolution has not yet taken place": British views of the Soviet economy between the 1950s and the 1970s'
  Historical Research 92 (258) (2019) pp.814-837
  ISSN: 0950-3471 eISSN: 1468-2281
  Abstract

  This article examines British officials’ and ministers’ attitudes towards the Soviet Union’s economy in the post‐Second World War era. In the nineteen‐fifties and early nineteen‐sixties, public and some expert commentary posited Soviet economic ‘success’ based on the country’s increasingly rapid growth rate, its potential for consumerization, the promise of economic reform, and the Soviet state’s emphasis on education, science and the application of computer technology. New evidence from British official archives, presented here, makes clear that Westminster and Whitehall were never persuaded of this view, and always believed that political meddling and microeconomic inefficiencies would ultimately restrain and undermine Soviet growth.
  

  Website 
• O'Hara G, 'How can experts help governments think? Inaugural lecture'
  Journal of Cultural Economy 12 (1) (2019) pp.1-20
  ISSN: 1753-0350 eISSN: 1753-0369
  Abstract

  Britain’s exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the Second Iraq War in 2003 are two infamous examples of disastrous policy, but governments blunder all the time – whatever party is in power. Infrastructure projects overrun. The aims and techniques of different departments clash. Scandals erupt among officials and politicians. Controversies stymie attempts at agreement and consensus. But why exactly do these failures happen? Are they more or less widespread than in the private sector? And can studying British governments’ decision-making across the twentieth century improve it in the future? In his May 2018 inaugural lecture, Professor O'Hara recommended a slow, deliberative, transparent, democratic and above all humble and sensitive approach in order to avoid another Black Wednesday or ruinous war – an approach in contrast to the populist tone of much recent debate.
  

  Website 
• O'Hara G, Stewart J, '"The land with the midas touch": British perceptions of New Zealand, 1935-1979'
  New Zealand Journal of History 52 (2) (2018) pp.42-65
  ISSN: 0028-8322
  Abstract For many British commentators, especially on the social democratic left, mid-century New Zealand, or at least its ‘settler’ population, was a society with much to admire – particularly in the field of social policy. British Labour Party leaders looked enviously at, for example, the Dominion’s 1938 Social Security Act, legislation which significantly added to the provision of state-backed health care and social security for New Zealanders. This was seen as building on earlier reforms which had established New Zealand’s reputation as a ‘social laboratory’, a key component of the Dominion’s sense of identity. In addition, the very fact of its Commonwealth membership made the potential transfer of its practices to the ‘motherland’ all the more viable. New Zealand was thus a key participant in the transnational exchange of ideas about social welfare which characterized the era. But after the Second World War doubts began to spread, both inside and outside of New Zealand. These were focused on, for instance, a purportedly ossified political system and concerns over the absence of a broadly-based intellectual culture. From being a ‘social laboratory’ which could be fruitfully emulated, New Zealand became an example of a society in which a lack of vision and foresight could prove highly problematic. 
• O'Hara G, 'Time, exhortation and planning in British government, c.1959 - c.1979'
  Journal of Modern European History 13 (3) (2015) pp.338-354
  ISSN: 1611-8944
  Abstract

  The early 1960s witnessed a number of long-term plans being issued by the British government – for roads, hospitals, new towns, city centres, social care and even the whole economy. A ‘Very Long Term Planning Group’ within Whitehall even looked twenty five years into the future, to inform central planning and the setting of priorities. By the 1970s, however, this effort seemed to have entirely broken down, and the UK Government was involved in a day-to-day struggle even to keep electricity supplies flowing. Incomes policies and industrial subsidies focused, not on the twenty first century, but on day-to-day negotiations in particular sectors of the economy, or even specific companies. This article will explore this retreat from forethought and pre-commitment. What factors explain this remarkable retreat from ambitious and hopeful plans of a ‘scientific’ and an optimistic future? Why did the time-frame of Britain’s governments, and her policy-making elites, shrink so dramatically and so rapidly? And finally, what implications for British politics and policy-making did the shortening time-horizon imply?

  Website 
• Brownill S, O'Hara G, 'From planning to opportunism? Re-examining the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation'
  Planning Perspectives 30 (4) (2015) pp.537-570
  ISSN: 0266-5433 eISSN: 1466-4518
  Abstract

  East London’s former docklands have been at the centre of planning and regeneration debates for the past four decades. The setting up of the LDDC has been variously interpreted as ‘3-D Thatcherism’ in action, a symbol of the death of comprehensive planning and the replacement of a corporatist, Keynesian era of urban policy with a more neo-liberal approach. Moving away from simplistic and straightforward interpretations of the processes happening at this time, this paper uses new archival and interview material to re-examine the setting up of the LDDC and its early years, revealing a more complex and contradictory picture than existing accounts suggest. It focuses on three themes: changing forms of state intervention; the uncertain ‘break’ in the post-war consensus as evidenced by the changes in approaches to the regeneration of Docklands; and the unintended, disordered process of actual policy change. As such we aim to reveal  how shifting visions, modes of governance and practices can compete and co-exist in the midst of seemingly coherent ‘eras’, as Docklands as a place and as an approach to regeneration was constantly made and re-made – a process that continues to this day. 

  Website 
• O'Hara GS, 'The British Labour governments of the nineteen-sixties = Il governo laburista britannico degli anni Sessanta'
  Ricerche di Storia Politica 17 (2) (2014) pp.155-164
  ISSN: 1120-9526
  Abstract This article analyses the rise and fall of a «modernising», technocratic and scientific left-of-centre consensus in British politics between the early and the late 1960s. The British Labour Party under Harold Wilson posed as a new, «go-ahead», purposeful and dynamic group of experts who would bring economists, engineers and businessmen into government, sweeping away years of stagnation or decline. The exercise of power itself, however, proved much more difficult: Labour's National Plan, released in 1965, was never realised, and the promise of science, technology, education and investment took much longer than Labour's advisers expected to pay off in terms of higher economic growth. Although growth speeded up in this period, and ultimately reached its post-war peak, problems with inflation, productivity and industrial management persisted - to the frustration of voters and activists alike, who during the 1970s would turn to more radical solutions from both neo-liberal and collectivist traditions.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'The complexities of "consumerism": choice, collectivism and participation within Britain's National Health Service, c.1961-c.1979'
  Social History of Medicine 26 (2) (2013) pp.288-304
  ISSN: 0951-631X eISSN: 1477-4666
  Abstract This article explores the overlapping and conflicting points of contact between"consumerism" , collectivism and participation in Britain's National Health Service during a period of relatively well-funded expansion during the economic"golden age" of the 1960s and 1970s. Despite recent neo-liberal attempts to define"consumerism" around the wishes and choices of the individual, and to conceptualise areas such as individual hospital referrals as particularly"consumerist" , this article demonstrates that collective provision, the protection of disadvantaged groups and the concept of"participatory" citizen involvement were all alternative meanings of the concept during this period, co-existing uneasily with the competitive concepts that have become more familiar since the late 1980s. This insight is then utilised to show how health care debates today might become better informed, ignoring extreme claims for all three concepts and focusing instead on a theoretically informed but ultimately empirical grasp of constant flux in any health care system.Website 
• O'Hara G, ''Parties, people and parliament: Britain's "Ombudsman" and the politics of the 1960s'
  Journal of British Studies 50 (3) (2011) pp.690-714
  ISSN: 0021-9371
  Website 
• O'Hara G, 'New histories of British imperial communications and the "networked world" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries'
  History Compass 8 (7) (2010) pp.609-625
  ISSN: 1478-0542
  Abstract A number of recent histories of Britain" s late-19th century telegraph network have taken inspiration from many sources, not least historians" concern to test and delineate the contemporary and modern world of transnational policymaking, the return of maritime history to the forefront of historical studies, and the desire to understand the late 19th century empire that seemed to be drawing strength from technological progress. But another key reason for this new interest in the electric telegraph is clearly the communications revolution of the last 20 years, and the internet" s development as the main means of dealing with information in the modern world. This article demonstrates just how important this present-mindedness has been, but it also shows just how unlike the internet was the Victorian telegraph system, for it was expensive, patchy and often unreliable, encouraging letter-writing and ship-borne commerce just as much as electronic communication. The telegraph" s inauguration reinforced local and imperial nationalisms and rivalries, and arms races, whatever the liberal hopes invested in it; its arrival often led to the concentration of press ownership and a sense of intra-imperial, rather than global or trans-continental, links. The example of the telegraph, it is contended, should form a cautionary example of how problematical it is to take present-day developments and apply them - even as organising concepts - to the past.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'The Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, the Foreign Office and the Sachsenhausen case, 1964'1968'
  Historical Journal 53 (3) (2010) pp.771-781
  ISSN: 0018-246X eISSN: 1469-5103
  Abstract This communication follows the evolution, reception, and implications of the parliamentary commissioner's critical 1968 report on Foreign Office"maladministration" regarding compensation for British concentration camp inmates. It explores officials' and ministers' attitude to the investigative techniques associated with this new office, as well as their hostile reaction to the publicity and parliamentary controversy to which his work gave rise. It concludes by exploring the wider implications of the case, especially the inherent problems faced by governments seeking closer and more harmonious relationships with the governed.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'How (not) to cut government spending and reduce public sector debt'
  History & Policy (Policy Paper 95) (2009)
  Abstract Executive summary * Politicians are now decrying British government borrowing and levels of state debt as unsustainable; some of them have been calling for 'savage' spending cuts. * These debts, while high, are hardly unparalleled and should be cause for concern, but not panic. Britain has run much higher levels of debt in both wartime and peacetime since the creation of the national debt in 1690. * Even so, public spending increases will have to slow down in the next five to ten years if government debt is to be reined back to normal, rather than 'emergency', levels. * British history since 1945 demonstrates that these reductions are unlikely to be fast, easily-achieved or delivered through 'softer' administrative or technical changes. * The creation of a political 'mood' of shared endeavour, including genuine collective responsibility by the Cabinet, with tax rises as well as public expenditure restraint, may be critical to success. * It is important that new policies to tackle the national debt are based on accurate historical information, not the myths that abound in current political discourse: that public debt is unprecedented and unsustainable, that governments should immediately slash public spending, that public finances are 'out of control', and that tax rises can be avoided.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'The sea is swinging into view: modern British maritime history in a globalised world'
  English Historical Review 124 (510) (2009) pp.1109-1134
  ISSN: 0013-8266
  Website 
• O'Hara G, ''What the electorate can be expected to swallow': Nationalisation, transnationalism and the shifting boundaries of the state in post-war Britain'
  Business History 51 (4) (2009) pp.501-528
  ISSN: 0007-6791
  Abstract This article attempts to show that there were three key elements to the changing policy mix as regards state economic intervention and ownership in post-war Britain. These have been relatively neglected by economic historians in favour of questions concerning 'objective' performance. They were: the uncertainty, confusion and competition of the two main political parties as to what the nationalised sector was for; attempts to escape an unpopular and bureaucratic policy model; and recommendations and techniques copied from other countries. It is posited that these three analytical categories provide an explanation for the shifting boundaries of the state in post-war Britain.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'This is what growth does': British views of the European economies in the prosperous 'golden age' of 1951-73'
  Journal of Contemporary History 44 (4) (2009) pp.697-717
  ISSN: 0022-0094
  Abstract This article attempts to deconstruct and analyse British views of the European economies during the post-war years of fast growth, low unemployment and subdued inflation. Though there had been a great deal of academic attention paid to Britons" self-perceptions, less research has been conducted as to how they saw the most relevant"other" : the societies and economies on either side of the English Channel. Two case-studies are utilized here to suggest both how Britons saw themselves by reference to their near-neighbours, and to study how policy ideas moved around the international world of advice, interpretation and global governance that was emerging after the Second World War. The French and Soviet examples, so scrutinized and apparently fascinating at the time, are the main focus of the article, though other sources of inspiration -” German, Scandinavian, Italian -” are also suggested. The article concludes with a brief sketch of the main reasons other Europeans" apparent"success" came to seem so important. These include a national sense of"declinism" ; the importance of international bodies such as the United Nations; and the intertwined relationship between domestic and foreign policy during the Cold War.Website 
• O'Hara G, ''Applied socialism of a fairly moderate kind' Scandinavia, British policymakers and the post-war housing market'
  Scandinavian Journal of History 33 (1) (2008) pp.1-25
  ISSN: 0346-8755
  Abstract This article analyses general opinions of Scandinavia held by British policymakers in the post-war period, before going on to examine a particular instance of Britain's attempts to copy 'Scandinavian policies' in the early 1960s. Given the generally positive views held as concerned Scandinavian economic and social policies at the time, and the influence those countries wielded in international economic and social policy networks, such attempts were only to be expected. During the 1959-1964 Parliament, the British Conservative Government attempted to adopt housing policies from Scandinavia, in particular housing co-operatives subsidized by the state, but organized by owners and tenants. They failed to entrench such new ideas in the British policy system, for four reasons. The first was the very strong institutional position of municipal housing and owner-occupation; the second was the taxation system, which proved impervious to change; the third was the obviously politically-motivated attempt to change British behaviour in a very short time-frame; and the fourth, crucially, was the lack of knowledge as to how Scandinavian housing markets actually worked. This failed experiment demonstrates the allure, but also the superficiality and some of the dangers, of direct policy transfer between nations.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'Towards a new Bradshaw: economic statistics and the British state in the 1950s and 1960s'
  Economic History Review 60 (1) (2007) pp.1-34
  ISSN: 0013-0117 eISSN: 1468-0289
  Abstract This article outlines the attempts of British central government to react to the perceived inadequacy of official economic statistics. A huge amount of work went into this project, the main aim of which was to speed up the production of statistics so that the economy could be analysed in more detail, and thus better managed. If this was to work, more data was required on the labour market, on productivity, on production, and on the interlinkages between those indicators. British official statistics clearly were more comprehensive and more detailed at the end of this period than they had been at the start. Even so, the effort was usually thought to have been a failure by the early 1970s. More detail took time to produce; it was difficult to recruit the necessary staff; successive administrative reorganizations also absorbed energies. The devolved informality of British government hampered the emergence of an overall picture. Businesses and trade unions resisted attempts to collect more data, especially when it showed them in an unflattering light. Above all, the elite, specialist, and technical nature of the reform process meant that very little political and popular pressure built up to force through further changes.Website 
• O'Hara G, '"We are faced everywhere with a growing population": demographic change and the British state, 1955-64'
  Twentieth Century British History 15 (3) (2004) pp.243-266
  ISSN: 0955-2359 eISSN: 0955-2359,
  Abstract The early 1960s was a period of relative expansion for the welfare state, and the return to the use of planning techniques in macroeconomic policy. This has hitherto been explained by reference to a number of general causes. These have included party political electoral necessity, the need to gain popular support for the cold war by spreading the benefits of liberal capitalism, the power of welfare professionals, the growing realization that the post-war welfare state was not working as well as previously thought, and generational changes in politics and the civil service. Whilst not denying the importance of all these factors, this essay seeks to make clear the importance of another vital element in this story: the implications for the welfare state and the managed economy of the rise in the birth rate, and the perceived ‘population explosion’, of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Statistical estimates are presented here that show just how large the implied expansion of the welfare state, and just how serious the pressure of a growing dependent population, would have been had the population predictions of the early 1960s proved to be accurate.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'The limits of US power: transatlantic financial diplomacy under the Johnson and Wilson administrations, October 1964-November 1968'
  Contemporary European History 12 (3) (2003) pp.257-278
  ISSN: 0960-7773
  Abstract Historians' views of the transatlantic financial diplomacy of the later 1960s have been dominated by the idea of a secret deal made between President Lyndon Johnson and Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1965, which traded US financial help for a continuation of the United Kingdom's world defence role. This notion has become extremely widespread, and is often taken for granted in historical writing. There was a high level of co-operation between the two men: as a number of writers have made clear, Wilson and Johnson shared a number of unspoken objectives which may have tied the interests of the two leaders together without any formal pact. However, the difficulty with arguments focusing on their ‘deal’ is that such work often underestimates the extent to which Britain was able to manipulate the relationship to its own ends. The United States still required British help, and needed therefore to support Britain in a number of fields – diplomatic, economic and military.Website 

Book chapters

• O'Hara G, 'The fall and rise of Harold Wilson' in Yeowell N (ed.), Rethinking Labour's past, Bloomsbury / I.B. Tauris (2022)
  ISBN: 9780755640164 eISBN: 9780755640195
  Abstract

  The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn is charting a new direction. Here, Nathan Yeowell has brought together a remarkable array of contributors to provide expert insight into twentieth-century British history and Labour politics – and how they might shape thinking about Labour's future.

  Reframing the span of Labour history and its effects on contemporary British politics, the book provides fresh thinking and analysis of various traditions, themes and individuals. These include the shifting significance of 1945, the need for more grounded interpretations of Tony Blair's legacy, and the enduring importance of place, identity and aspiration to the evolution of the party. Contributions from leading historians such as Patrick Diamond, Steven Fielding, Ben Jackson, Glen O' Hara and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite are supplemented by those with experience of Labour electoral politics, such as Rachel Reeves and Nick Thomas-Symonds.

  The result is an intellectually rich and politically relevant roadmap for Labour's future.

  Website 
• Hickman C, O'Hara G , 'Delineating the landscape: planning, mapping and the historic imaginings of Rights of Way in twentieth-century England and Wales' in Svensson D, Saltzman K, Sörlin S (ed.), Pathways: exploring the routes of movement heritage, White Horse Press (2022)
  Website 
• O'Hara G, 'Who are the Corbynites?' in Andrew Roe-Crines (ed.), Corbynism in perspective, Agenda Publishing (2021)
  ISBN: 9781788212915 eISBN: 9781788212922
  Website 
• O'Hara G, 'Imagining New Zealand’s economy in the mid-twentieth century' in D.Thackeray, A.Thompson and R. Toye (ed.), Imagining Britain's economic future, c.1800-1975: trade, consumerism and global markets, Palgrave Macmillan (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319712963 eISBN: 9783319712970
  Abstract
  Mid-twentieth-century British commentaries on New Zealand were usually positive, focusing on the industrial peace and general high living standards that New Zealanders enjoyed—all conceived as to some extent the opposite of the British experience. Many explanations of New Zealand’s apparent success focused on its fortune in terms of natural resources and its distance from political instability. Other, more sceptical, voices did however argue that New Zealand was a dependent economy reliant on the UK, and that its economy would find it difficult to deal with the removal of British patronage. This chapter explores the oscillating balance between these two interpretations, and examines some of the deeper intellectual reasons behind their adoption by different writers and policy-makers, throughout the post-Second World War era.
  Website 
• O'Hara G, '"Maximum supervision": risk, danger and public water in post-war Britain' in T Crook and M Esbester (ed.), Governing risks: danger, safety and accidents in modern Britain, c.1800-2000, Palgrave Macmillan (2016)
  ISBN: 978-1-137-46744-7 eISBN: 978-1-137-46745-4
  Abstract Focusing on the anxieties surrounding playing in and near water in post-Second World War Britain, O’Hara analyses the contrast between the low and declining likelihood of drowning and the panic that the possibility of drowning generated. He shows how risks were embedded social and economic phenomena, tied up in concerns about the management of spare time and young people’s ‘aimless’ leisure arising from the ‘affluent society’, and the perceived dangers of ‘outward-bound’ activities. In a widening sphere of governance, charities, schools, local authorities, professionals and central officials hastened to respond to concerns, attempting to answer the human fears and worries that came with a dynamic society that was stretching established norms of consumption and self-control.Website 
• O'Hara GS, Gosling GC, 'Healthcare as nation-building in the twentieth century: the case of the British National Health Service' in Weindling P (ed.), Healthcare in private and public from the early modern period to 2000, Routledge (2014)
  ISBN: 978-0415727006
  
• O'Hara G, 'Britain and Norway: trade and commercial relations in the post-Second World War era' in H. Pharo and P. Salmon (ed.), Britain and Norway: special relationships, Akademika Forlag (2013)
  ISBN: 9788232101771
  Abstract Is there anything special about the Anglo-Norwegian relationship? The contributors to this volume cover many aspects of this relationship from the early 19th century to the present day. They range from Ibsen to Nansen, from shipping, trade and financial relations to the bilateral political relations between the two countries, including those between political parties. Anglo-Norse relations are also traced within international organisations and in the High North. Even if they discover 'no special relationship' they identify many shared experiences and attitudes which may constitute special relationships.
• O'Hara G, 'Attempts to "modernise": nationalisation and the nationalised industries in Post-War Britain' in F. Amatori, R. Millward and P.A. Toninelli (ed.), Re-appraising state-owned enterprise: a comparison of the UK and Italy, Routledge (2011)
  ISBN: 9780415878326 eISBN: 9780203818749
  Abstract After a quarter century of almost general condemnation and rebuttal of the entire nationalization experience, it appears that there are second thoughts about governmental direct intervention in the economy. Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise deals with a topic often undervalued in the past decade but which now, with the crisis of 2008-2009, calls for greater attention: the direct intervention of the State as Entrepreneur. The collection of essays in this volume - prepared by some of the leading authorities in the field - offers a contribution to this debate by providing a balanced assessment of two of the most relevant experiences of mixed economies, the United Kingdom and Italy. In this respect, a comparison between these two countries is very much appropriate since in both nations the State played an important role as "Entrepreneur" starting in the early 20th century. In Great Britain and Italy, the heyday of the "State as Entrepreneur" was in the years right after WWII when it was used as a tool for promoting a modern society in which citizens acquired a stronger sense of belonging to their nations. The UK and Italy saw the State take on a too-pervasive role in the 70s; the two nations responded in different ways. In the 1980s Great Britain embarked on a harsh process of privatizations while Italians struggled on until finally submitting to privatizations in their nation in the following decade. The deep crisis of the final years of the 21st century forced both nations to reconsider State interventions as an appropriate tool in order to protect the wellbeing of the national economy.Website 
• O'Hara G, 'The intellectuals' ideal: British views of Scandanavia in the 1950s and 1960s' in J.E. Myhre (ed.), Intellectuals in the public sphere: in Britain and Norway after World War II, Oslo University Press (2008)
  ISBN: 9788274772915
  Abstract In this volume, three Norwegian and three English scholars probe the issue of the role of intellectuals in the two countries following World War II. The intellectuals studied comprise many kinds: from academics in general (particularly sociologists) to journalists and politicians, amongst others. The book investigates the influence of intellectuals on politics and also between the two countries. Several tendencies in post-war societies have shaped the role of intellectuals: secularisation, professionalisation, internationalisation and the rise of populism, to name but a few. Although 'intellectual' is a fairly common term in both countries, it often tends to fall between two chairs as an analytic concept. Therefore, it should perhaps rather be viewed as a terminological meeting point where several interesting societal phenomena may be studied.

Conferences

Conferences organised since 2001

• 'The Management of Scarce Resources: Space, Time, History', Oxford Brookes University, November 2016
• 'Promoting Engagement with the Teaching of Economic History', Oxford Brookes University, March 2012.
• 'Health Care and the People', Glasgow Caledonian University, January 2009.
• 'Numbers, Norms and the People: Statistics and the Public Sphere in Modern Britain', Oxford Brookes University, September 2008.
• Interdisciplinary conference on the Wilson governments of 1964-1970, New College, Oxford, June 2003.

Conference papers (selected since 2001)

• ‘The Intellectuals’ Ideal: British Views of Scandinavia in the 1950s and 1960s’, University of Oxford Modern European History Research Centre/ University of Oslo Forum for Contemporary History Workshop, Oxford, May 2006.
• ‘Numbers, Experts and Ideas: International Organisations, International Surveys and Perceptions of the Outside World in Britain, c.1950-1970', Economic History Society Annual Conference, Exeter, March 2007.
• ‘Attempts to Reform and Modernise Britain's State-Owned Enterprises and Manufacturing Industries, 1951-1979', Fondazione Instituto per la Riconstruzione Industriale Conference on State-Owned Enterprise, Rome, May 2008.
• ‘Economic Advice and the British Government in Sterling's “Crisis Decade”, 1961-1969', History of Economics as History of Science Spring Workshop, ENS Cachan, Paris, June 2010.
• ‘Accounting for Political Discontent in Post-War Britain’, Western Conference on British Studies Fall Conference, Austin, Texas, September 2010.
• ‘Green, White and Blue Nation: Britain, the Sea and National Identity since 1600’, National Maritime Museum Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies Annual Public Lecture, Greenwich, September 2010.
• ‘Sir Alec Cairncross: Economics as Administrative Art’, History of Political Economy Group Fall Conference, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, October 2010.
• ‘Paradoxes and Complexities in British Economic and Social Policy after the Second World War’, Cambridge University Seminar on Modern Economic and Social History, Cambridge, January 2011.
• ‘Planning Timeframes in British Government, 1961-1973’, German Historical Institute Conference on 'Time, Futures and Politics in West Germany and Britain: From the 1960s to the 1980s', London, March 2011.
• ‘“The Turn to the Sea”: Historians and the Recent Recrudescence of Britain’s “Blue Water” History’, National Museum of the Royal Navy Conference on ‘The Navy is the Nation’, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth, April 2012.
• ‘The 1976 IMF Crisis: Cuts, Austerity or Growth?’, HM Treasury/ History and Policy Briefing, HM Treasury, London, December 2012.
• ‘Numbers, Power and Government in the “Golden Age” of Economic Growth’, The Theory and Practice of Measurement: Perspectives from Economic History and the History and Philosophy of Economics, London School of Economics, London, September 2013.
• ‘Socialism, Social Democracy and the British Labour Party in the 1960s’, Italian-German Historical Institute/ University of Bologna/ Gramsci Institute Conference on the Centre-Left, Bologna, October 2013
• ‘Positively Northern: The Idea of “Scandinavia” in British Economic and Social Policy, c.1951-c.1979’, University of Oslo Public Lecture, Oslo, October 2014.
• ‘British Views of the Soviet Economy, c.1950-c.1979’, Queen’s University Belfast/ Society for the Study of Labour History Conference on ‘Socialism and the Cold War in Western Europe’, Belfast, April 2015.
• 'What is the Role of Business in Britain’s Relationship with the EU?’, Mile End Institute/ British Academy One-Day Conference on ‘Britain and Europe: The Lessons from History’, British Academy, London, November 2015.
• ‘“Inadmissable and Cruel”: Fear and Risk in Britain’s Post-War Fluoride Debate’, University of Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities/ The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, March 2016.
• ‘Britain’s Troubled Relationship with “Europe”: Why Did the UK join the EEC, and Why is it Thinking of Leaving the EU?’, Museum of Oxford Public Lecture, Oxford, June 2016.
• ‘Domestic Water and the Politics of the Home in Post-War Britain’, Institute of Historical Research Contemporary British History Seminar, London, January 2017.
• ‘Is the Sea Still Swinging into View? Contemporary British History and the Maritime Turn’, International Security Studies Brady-Johnson Colloquium in Grand Strategy and International History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, April 2017.
• ‘Demons Unleashed? Why Did Brexit Happen, and What Does it Mean?’, Yale Public Lecture, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, April 2017.
• ‘Britain Divided: Brexit and its Consequences’, Keynote lecture, University of Northampton Conference on 'Brexit in Context', Northampton, July 2017.
• ‘“The Land with the Midas Touch”: British Perceptions of New Zealand Between the 1930s and the 1970s’, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/ Wellcome Trust Symposium on 'Entwined Health System Histories', New Zealand High Commission, London, October 2017.
• ‘Britain, the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, and the Battle Over Maritime Pollution in the 1960s and 1970s', Oxford University Transnational and Global History Seminar, Oxford, November 2017.
• ‘Britain’s Post-War Fluoride Debate’, Academy of Medical Sciences/ Wellcome Trust Workshop on ‘Oral Health Inequalities, Oral Hygiene Cultures: Past, Present and Future’, University of Kent, Canterbury, June 2018.
• ‘Politicians and Others: How Have the Reputations of Public Figures Changed over the Past Thirty Years?’, PRMoment Global Reputation Forum, Rhodes House, Oxford, July 2018.
• ‘The Legal, Economic and Ethical Frameworks of Water Management in Post-War Britain’, World Economic History Congress, Boston, Massachusetts, August 2018.
• ‘“Aesthetically Revolting”: Coastal Britain as a Modern Version of Pollution and Purity’, I.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History Workshop on Perennial Problems: Histories of Health and Environment across Borders, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, September 2019.
• ‘New Labour in Office: Neoliberal or Social Democratic?’, Edge Hill University Department of Law and Criminology Lecture in Politics, Lancashire, November 2019.
• (With Clare Hickman, Newcastle University), ‘Delineating the Landscape: Planning, Mapping and the Historic Imaginings of Rights of Way in Twentieth Century England and Wales’, Malmö University Workshop on Movement Heritage: Histories of Path Dependence, Malmö, Sweden, April 2021.
• ‘“Nature Does Not Make a Leap”: The British Government’s Very Long-Term Planning Committee in the 1960s’, University of Gothenburg Centre for European Research Conference on The Century of Sputnik and Chernobyl: Science and the European Left during the Twentieth Century, Gothenburg, Sweden, April 2021.
• (With Clare Hickman, Newcastle University), 'Contesting Access to England's Land: Who Owns England's "Right to Roam"?', Transport, Traffic and Mobility T2M Annual Conference, 'Mobilities in Transition', Lisbon, Portugal, November 2021.
• (With Clare Hickman and Abbi Flint, Newcastle University, and Tom Breen, Oxford Brookes University), ‘In All Our Footsteps: Tracking, Mapping and Experiencing Rights of Way in Post-War Britain’, Institute of Historical Research People, Place and Community Seminar, January 2022.

Further information

Consultancy

• Member, Advisory Committee, UK National Archives Cabinet Papers Digitisation Project