ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the very different ways in which social workers have responded to major political challenges in the past. The importance of the radical social work movement that developed in Britain, Canada, Australia and the US during the early 1970s, fuelled by the rise of the great social movements of the 1960s – the women’s movement, the black civil rights movement and so on – should also be acknowledged. The United States has a long, if often neglected, history of social work radicalism, which suffered during the Reagan–Thatcher years in the same way as did radical social work elsewhere. Social work action network groups have also engaged in a range of campaigns including the defence of asylum seekers, opposition to the privatization of children’s’ services and challenging cuts to mental health services. Radical movements in social work have often developed out of, or been a response to, social movements in the wider society.
