This edited collection was written to ‘celebrate the 35th anniversary of . . . Bailey and Brake's (1975) Radical Social Work’ (Lavalette, 2011: 1): it describes the context in which it was written and subsequent socio-economic and political ‘developments’, considers its current relevance and also the prospects for radical social work today. In relation to the last aim, a number of the authors make reference to the establishment (in 2006) and activities of SWAN, the Social Work Action Network. An important task of the original text was to provide a challenge to ‘traditional social work’ (casework, of a psychodynamic or psychotherapeutic orientation) and also a theoretical basis for a form of practice based on an understanding of the structural roots of poverty and its attendant problems. This text continues that tradition.

After a Foreword by one of the original editors (Roy Bailey) and an Introduction by the current editor (Michael Lavalette), the book consists of eleven chapters by authors who were either already involved in sociology, social policy or social or community work in the 1970s and/or are now active in SWAN. From my perspective (as someone who used Radical Social Work when teaching social work theory in the 1980s), many of the chapters evoked strong memories of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – not least the ones on ‘Case Con’ (Jeremy Weinstein) and social work education in the 1970s (Chris Jones). I also recognised the more recent issues and events affecting social work in the 1990s and the current century. For younger readers, the book provides a very useful ‘potted history’ of an important period in the development of social work in Britain with due attention paid to the political and economic climates – and thus the policy contexts of social work – in the decades described.

The chapters in the current text do not mirror exactly those of the 1975 book. The new structure both identifies some of the possible ‘gaps’ in the original and also illustrates the ways in which the context has changed and ‘new issues’ have arisen. Significantly, the previous text, notwithstanding its encouragement of social workers to ally themselves with wider social movements (see later), did not reflect the importance of the women's and civil rights movements at the time. This ‘gap’ is now redressed in thoughtful chapters on both ‘women's oppression’ (Laura Penketh), and ‘race’ as a social division (Charlotte Williams). What the previous text did do was identify opportunities for engaging with more ‘mezzo- level’/community-based social issues and movements current in 1970s Britain, for instance squatters and claimants unions. The lack of attention to these in the current text illustrates that such (often quite local) movements have ceased to have resonance for social workers in contemporary Britain. For instance, while issues of material need (including housing conditions) are sometimes considered as ‘relevant’ to the problems of individuals and families, they are largely seen as the responsibilities of other workers in specialised agencies.

More fundamentally, I would argue that the previously identified social work focus on working with individuals or small family units has never really shifted and the training and opportunities to work with groups and communities (briefly apparent in community social work or the ‘patch system’ in the 1980s) have all but disappeared, not least in the 1980s and 1990s through formalising the ‘splitting’ of community work from social work and the lack of encouragement (in a largely prescribed curriculum) to include group work training or placements. The one area in which current social workers are officially encouraged (at least, rhetorically) to engage with a ‘movement’ is in relation to service users, a topic well addressed in the chapter by Peter Beresford.

Other themes that are usefully revisited are ‘sexuality’ (Laura Miles); ‘community work’ (Sarah Banks) and ‘class’ (Iain Ferguson). The original text took ‘class’ as a basic and over-riding social division (understandably, given its Marxist orientation) and, in the new text, Ferguson argues that ‘class (still) matters’ (p. 115, Chapter 7): this is an important and timely return to a neglected aspect of social divisions, given the extent to which socio-economic inequalities have increased since the 1970s (Hills, Reference Hills2010) – and poverty has been woefully ignored by social workers (both in the UK and elsewhere).

The other topic which is a recurrent theme in many of the chapters concerns the ‘status’ of social work and its relationship with, not only the welfare state, but also trade unionism (both of which received significant emphasis in Bailey and Brake).

Much of the original ambivalence about ‘professionalisation’ remains in the current text, for instance, there is virtually no reference to the existence of a professional association, whether in the form of an acknowledgement or criticism of BASW's role. Interestingly, the issue of whether social work is a profession or occupation is partly raised in a new chapter, related to international social work (Lavalette and Ioakimidis). This both critiques some of the earlier manifestations of ‘international social work’ (with an excellent case example from Greece) and the ongoing risks of perpetuating professional imperialism, and also suggests that we should think in terms of social work internationalism, rather than ‘international social work’. The authors further suggest recognition of social work, internationally, as a broad term encompassing both a professional (regulated) activity (as it is in many western countries) and a ‘popular’ one. Drawing on experience of social work in Palestine, the authors illustrate the practices encompassed in the latter concept and this is one of the few places in the book where ‘human rights’ are mentioned (but see also the chapter on radicalism and humanity by Mary Langan). The omission of a human rights dimension in a text which has social justice as a core theme – and given the link made between these two concepts in other places (e.g. IFSW, 2000; Wronka, Reference Wronka2008) – is thought provoking.

Additionally, despite a final chapter which aims to illustrate how radical social work can be practised in the current conditions (Mark Baldwin), I missed a concluding chapter which could have attempted some synthesis of the various themes presented by this disparate but well-respected range of authors. It would also have been useful to see some reference to research in this book, partly because research has a much higher profile in social work now than in the 1970s, but also because participatory and action research projects can provide important sites for collective learning and action.

However, overall, this book is a worthy successor to the ground-breaking book it celebrates, providing both stimulus and challenge to a new generation of social workers. It remains to be seen whether the establishment of both a grass-roots movement (SWAN) and a ‘professional body’, the proposed Social Work College – or the suggestion of a ‘social workers union’ – will have any more success than previous attempts at enabling social work to identify its future direction and speak with a unified and authoritative voice. However, as frequently suggested in this book, it is important for social workers to rediscover one of the roots of the profession, the promotion of social justice, and to ally themselves with others sharing the same concern. I would suggest also that greater awareness of the human rights dimension of social work, and identification of this as a collective as well as an individualised value, is important to the future activities of social workers – in whatever organisational arrangements they find themselves – for and with service users.