L2 Civilisation britannique - last year's contrôle final

To help you prepare, here is last year's Contrôle Final

Université Paris 12 Val-de- Marne , Faculté des Lettres, Département d’anglais
Partiel Civilisation britannique L2 janvier 2007 Etudiants en régime général uniquement

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Section A : Write a text commentary on the following passage. Be sure to explain any references, and to show that you are familiar with events before and after the date of the document which help us to understand its importance. (10 points)


o Key elements of the 1980s trade union reforms to stay
There must be minimum standards for the individual at work, including a minimum wage, within a flexible labour market. We need a sensible balance in industrial relations law - rights and duties go together.
The key elements of the trade union legislation of the 1980s will stay - on ballots, picketing and industrial action. People should be free to join or not to join a union. Where they do decide to join, and where a majority of the relevant workforce vote in a ballot for the union to represent them, the union should be recognised. This promotes stable and orderly industrial relations. There will be full consultation on the most effective means of implementing this proposal.
Partnership at work

The best companies recognise their employees as partners in the enterprise. Employees whose conditions are good are more committed to their companies and are more productive. Many unions and employers are embracing partnership in place of conflict. Government should welcome this.

We are keen to encourage a variety of forms of partnership and enterprise, spreading ownership and encouraging more employees to become owners through Employee Share Ownership Plans and co-operatives. We support too the Social Chapter of the EU, but will deploy our influence in Europe to ensure that it develops so as to promote employability and competitiveness, not inflexibility.

A sensibly set national minimum wage
There should be a statutory level beneath which pay should not fall - with the minimum wage decided not on the basis of a rigid formula but according to the economic circumstances of the time and with the advice of an independent low pay commission, whose membership will include representatives of employers, including small business, and employees.

There are over one million fewer jobs in Britain than in 1990. One in five families has no one working. One million single mothers are trapped on benefits. There is a wider gap between rich and poor than for generations.
We are determined not to continue down the road of a permanent have-not class, unemployed and disaffected from society. Our long-term objective is high and stable levels of employment. This is the true meaning of a stakeholder economy - where everyone has a stake in society and owes responsibilities to it.
Extract from the Labour Party manifesto 1997.


Section B. Write a short essay on ONE of the following TWO subjects (10 points)

A) “British foreign policy since World War Two has been much the same under Labour or under the Conservatives.” Discuss with examples.

B) What have been the most important changes in the lives of young people in Britain over the last fifty years ? Give specific examples.