From Service to Action? Students, Volunteering and Community Action in Mid Twentieth-Century Britain

Volunteering by higher education students in the UK has a long history which remains largely unexplored despite recent research and policy attention. This article offers a brief overview of the development of student volunteering before the 1960s and then discusses a shift from student social service to Student Community Action in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It argues that this shift was underpinned by a growing student movement in support of volunteering overseas; the perceived failures of the ‘youth volunteer boom’ of the 1960s and by the wider questioning of the values of higher education. The article then considers the rapid growth of Student Community Action across universities and colleges in the UK before reflecting upon the success and challenges of the movement.