Reporting by Letter: The 2nd Earl of Hardwicke and his Parliamentary Correspondents

For much of the 18th century, letter writing remained an important means of communicating news about proceedings at Westminster. Members of leading parliamentary families such as the Hardwickes were prolific letter writers and their correspondence has long been valued as a source for the period before the regular reporting of debates became established in the newspaper press. This article focuses on reporting by letter in the correspondence of the 2nd earl of Hardwicke and his circle. It reconstructs Hardwicke's network of informants and considers how the nature of their connection with the earl affected the way they conceived of their role as reporters. With reference to the epistolary conventions of the time, it asks how the circumstances in which letters were composed and read may have shaped the style and content of the reports. Finally, the article examines the impact made on the epistolary tradition by the emergence of newspaper reporting in the later 18th century and assesses the extent to which this development led letter writers to adjust their methods and goals.     

The Impact of Back Benchers in the Creation of Social Reform: The Indefatigable and Honourable Exertions of Mr Gilbert*

During the 18th century, back-bench members of parliament played a critical role in creating social policy. This article provides a case study of the political campaigns of the Lichfield MP, Thomas Gilbert, and his attempts at a comprehensive reform of the poor law in 1765 and 1782. These individual endeavours were energetic, sophisticated, but unallied to a particular agenda or based on Gilbert's original perspectives. Instead, he harnessed the power of local interests and extra-parliamentary forces, particularly magistrates, through the adept use of print culture in his later campaign to form social policy based on a broad political consensus. A skilled political operator, he used these same methods to help navigate his bills through parliament. To better fit the context, the campaigns were moulded around political expediency and influenced by the development of Gilbert's humanitarian reputation and the burgeoning of the press, parliamentary reporting, and political debate. The political environments of 1765 and 1782 were, therefore, different, and broader trends influenced the two campaigns. This article demonstrates the importance of the press to political campaigning and suggests that to be successful (in social policy at least) a would-be reformer was required to engage with a developing participatory political culture. However, given Gilbert's approach, the importance of ideology as a basis for social reform in an 18th-century context is questioned.     

Parliament,the Church of England and the Last Gasp of Political Protestantism, 1963–4

Political protestantism has been an enduring theme in parliamentary and ecclesiastical politics and has had considerable influence on modern Church and state relations. Since the mid 19th century, evangelicals have sought to apply external and internal pressure on parliament to maintain the ‘protestant identity’ of the national Church, and as late as 1928, the house of commons rejected anglican proposals for the revision of the prayer book. This article examines the attempts by evangelicals to prevent the passage through parliament of controversial measures relating to canon law revision in 1963–4. It assesses the interaction between Church and legislature, the influence of both evangelical lobbyists and MPs, and the terms in which issues relating to religion and national identity were debated in parliament. It shows that while evangelicals were able to stir up a surprising level of controversy over canon law revision – enough for the Conservative Party chief whip, Selwyn Lloyd, to attempt to persuade Archbishop Ramsey to delay introducing the vesture of ministers measure to parliament until after the 1964 general election – the influence of political protestantism, and thus a significant long‐term theme in British politics, had finally run its course.     

Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th Baronet: An Unconventional Politician?*

The political life of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th baronet has traditionally been seen in line with Sir Lewis Namier's views of 18th‐century politics and this article seeks to reinterpret his political life, taking into consideration not only his activities within parliament, but also his role within local government and his cultural activities. It will particularly consider the importance of his role within the concerts for ancient music, his lord lieutenancy of Merioneth and the central part he played in the 1778 treasury warrant crisis as well as his vigorous attempts to defend his interest during the 1774 Montgomeryshire election. This article will also argue that the cultural activities of back‐bench country gentlemen within the 18th‐century house of commons can shed new light upon their political views and activities.     

An argument manqué: Kate O'Brien's Pray for the Wanderer

Kate O'Brien wrote Pray for the Wanderer (1938) as a riposte to the Irish Censorship of Publications Board for the banning of her novel Mary Lavelle (1936). While Irish writers routinely fell afoul of the government, Pray for the Wanderer stands alongside only Liam O'Flaherty's The Puritan (1932) as a novelistic response to censorship. However, despite the historical importance of these two books to Irish Studies, there has been very little of substance written on either of them. It has instead become a short-hand method of discussing censorship for scholars to simply gesture towards these works and their authors as exemplary. In the end, this approach does nothing to enhance our understanding of how censorship functions, the contentious debates it engenders, or the social nature of such a text. The article addresses these lacunae by examining Pray for the Wanderer as a critique of censorship. By setting the novel alongside contemporary press reports and editorials, the article demonstrates that while the book might be critical of censorship and its effects on artists, there is much in it that undermines the anti-censorship position it purportedly takes.     

The Nor’-Wester and the Saskatchewan Gold Rush

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of how news about the discovery of gold on the North Saskatchewan River in British administrated Rupert's Land was propagated by the press in the early 1860s. It tracks the resonance of gold rush news first in the Nor’-Wester, a newspaper published in the Red River Settlement, and then reveals how this paper's coverage was re-published and transmitted across the Anglophone world. The article shows how news about the Saskatchewan gold rush was highly politicised. In the Red River Settlement, editors of the Nor’-Wester sought to spur on the British parliament to implement responsible government in the colony, issuing dire warnings about the potential repercussions of a mass migration to the region and the need to act precipitously. Likewise, in newspapers across North America, editors republished and endorsed news from the Nor’-Wester about the Saskatchewan gold fields to benefit their own communities. But while editors championed the Saskatchewan gold fields to lure potential gold rushers to the region, no large-scale migration to the Northwest occurred. While news about the Saskatchewan gold fields may have been popular across the Anglophone world, it was not actionable. While news reports conveyed the impression that a gold rush was ongoing on the North Saskatchewan River, the reality on the ground did not match the press coverage.     

From Head‐hunter to Organ‐thief: Verisimilitude,Doubt, and Plausible Worlds in Indonesia and Beyond

In the last few years, occult head‐hunters – elusive figures that have haunted communities and the public imagination in Indonesia since at least colonial times – appear to have adopted a novel and troubling tactic. Instead of decapitating their victims and using the heads in construction rituals as they are said to have conventionally done, head‐hunters are now allegedly harvesting their victims’ organs to sell them on the global market of body parts. Based on a comparison of ethnographic material from North Maluku, a province in the eastern part of Indonesia, and news reports in regional and national papers, I trace how accounts about headhunting have morphed with narratives about organ theft. I argue that this plasticity is not a merely a change in symbolic ideas of the occult that reflects changing political and economic realities. Rather, I propose that their turn to organ theft enrols head‐hunters in a contemporary and global ‘travelling package’ that includes and entangles organ trafficking practices, media accounts, political imaginaries, and social anxieties within the same field of reality and possibility, a field of verisimilitude in which fiction and fact, rumour and reality, are fundamentally blurred. The article proposes a ‘more‐than‐representational’ approach to the organ‐stealing head‐hunter that sees him not just as a representation of particular political and historical circumstances but as a co‐producer of these circumstances, of particular political worlds and their attendant scales of anxiety. This approach, I argue, challenges the epistemological distinction between symbolic representation and political reality that informed (but also incommoded) the analyses of headhunting rumours in the 1980s and 1990s – and that continues to inform anthropological analyses of ‘the occult’ more generally.     

Independence and Corporations in Pre‐Reform Freeman Boroughs: A Case Study – Newcastle‐under‐Lyme in the 1810s

This article draws on a wide range of evidence – corporation records, pollbooks, newspapers, squibs and broadsides, and private correspondence and accounts – to put forward some significant revisions to the electoral history of the borough of Newcastle‐under‐Lyme in the early 19th century. In the process, the article contributes to our understanding of the conflict between ‘oligarchy’ and ‘independence’ which characterised politics in this and other freeman boroughs. The independent party in the town emerges as a powerful force in its own right, one which came to monopolise access to the ‘rhetoric of independence’, rather than being a mere vehicle for ambitious candidates. The ability of the corporation to influence events by manipulation of the voting roll is also reassessed, and is seen to have been less significant than has been supposed.     

‘A rancour and a passion would be introduced into politics’: Perceptions of the Woman MP in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain*

On 21 November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed, which enabled women over the age of 21 to stand for parliamentary election. Unlike women's suffrage, there was no sustained campaign to allow women to sit in parliament. However, this does not mean that the issue was ignored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This article traces perceptions of the woman MP in the pre-1918 period and offers the first detailed exploration of the topic. It argues that although discussions on the matter were not widespread like women's suffrage, there is value in examining these lesser-known debates. This article studies the parliamentary candidacy of Helen Taylor in the 1885 General Election, in addition to how male politicians, the press, suffrage, and anti-suffrage organisations engaged with the idea of women sitting in parliament. Women's supposedly emotional nature played an integral role in how contemporaries approached the subject of women MPs. Indeed, women's emotions, and more specifically their passionate temperament, were often used to discredit their political capabilities and portray women as emotionally, intellectually and physically inferior to men.     

Writing Scottish Parliamentary History,c.1500–1707

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholarship on the Scottish parliament was heavily informed by a narrative of ‘failure’, directed at explaining why its members voted it out of existence in 1707. Part of the problem was the tendency to see any deviation from the practices of the Westminster parliament as weakness. By reappraising parliament in terms of its utility to those who comprised its membership, notably the titled peerage and the monarch, historians have revealed its adaptability and inventiveness, especially in times of crisis. This essay considers how fresh approaches both to what constituted the parliamentary record and what can – and cannot – be found within it have exerted a transformative influence on our understanding of parliament's evolving role in Scottish political life. Although the Reformation crisis of 1560 and the accession of the ruling house of Stewart to the English throne in 1603 effected profound changes on parliamentary culture, this essay emphasises how parliament sustained its legitimacy and relevance, in part, by drawing on past practices and ideas. Historians have become more attentive in recent years to the means by which social groupings ordinarily excluded from formal parliamentary activity were nonetheless able to engage with, and influence, its proceedings. Gaps remain in our knowledge, however. Some periods have been more intensively studied than others, while certain aspects of parliamentary culture are understudied. The writing of Scottish parliamentary history will continue to offer rich possibilities in future.     

浅议如何搞好地市级党报的新闻策划

地市级党委机关报是发布党的路线、方针、政策和地方党委政府具体工作布署、督办措施的主渠道。在新时期,地市级党报只有做好新闻策划,彰显本土新闻亮点,充分体现党报性质,凸显新闻策划的针对性,强化编辑策划意识,做好新闻的选题策划,才能实现传播效益的最大化,增强报纸的影响力、吸引力和战斗力,进而增强党报的竞争力。     

Conservative Journalists’ Myth Making in South Korea: Use of the Past in News Coverage of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil

This article explores the role of three conservative newspapers in South Korea as storytellers that create and maintain the collective memory of Korean conservatives through textual analysis of news stories on one particular recent event, the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil. Several protests since the 1980s in which the democratic-progressives were a leading force have been used as a source of historical analogies that have helped conservative journalists to interpret contemporary events and issues, including the 2008 vigil. These past protests were framed as anti-American, pro-North Korean leftist actions in the news stories. Some aspects of these past events were omitted – for example, former democratic-progressive activists’ contribution to the democratisation process – while other aspects were emphasised, notably the violent nature of the earlier generation of activists. In addition, conservative journalists constructed a revisionist version of one particular past protest, the 2002 Korean Candlelight Vigil, and used it to serve present political purposes, conflating the rhetoric and language of the earlier protests into their reporting of the current protest. These discourse strategies helped to incorporate the current protest into a larger discourse of “the threat posed by the leftists”, which is embedded in the collective memory of Korean conservatives.     

Where are the women? Evaluating visibility of Nigerian female politicians in news media space

This study examines the spatial representation of Nigerian women politicians in the news media of Africa’s most populous country. Through a content analysis of newspaper coverage of four high-profile women politicians during the 2015 electoral cycle, the study investigates the visibility of the women in three national newspapers. The analysis shows that women do not only occupy limited space in the news media but are also marginalised in political news despite decades of advocacy for gender equality. Although women have become more active politically since the end of military dictatorship in 1999, their participation and engagement in politics is not reflected in media coverage. The study argues that the degree of visibility of women in political news entrenches marginalisation and reinforces assumptions that ‘only men do politics.’ From this standpoint, the study illustrates how newspapers reinforce patriarchal understanding of politics and consequently highlights the manifest and latent obstacles that women encounter in the political arena. It comes to the conclusion that the relative absence of women in media spaces is emblematic of public perception of their political status.     

Strassburg, 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe

English-language examinations of the history of the press oftenbegin with the 1620s or the 1640s, when this new medium beganto be more widespread in England. On the continent, however,around the year 1600 all the necessary technical, infrastructuraland communication elements were already in place for the developmentof the modern newspaper. Book-printing techniques enabled themass production of news reports; a regular relay post system,available to the general public, served the needs of a networkof professional correspondents from around the world. The timewas right for the first periodical news sheet, which appearedin Strassburg in 1605. The change from hand-copied to printednewspapers was of far-reaching significance, as the mass circulationof news gave regular publicity to the events and personalitiesof political life. By the 1620s a variety of newspapers werecirculating in central Europe, and in the second half of theseventeenth century newspapers were the most widely read secularmaterial. They provided a seedbed for the broadening politicaleducation which fostered the development of the Enlightenment.     

Buggery and Parliament, 1533–2017

Over nearly five centuries the UK parliament, and its earlier incarnations, frequently legislated to ensure the regulation and punishment of buggery, a form of sexual conduct once generally accepted to constitute one of the most serious criminal offences known to law. In the early 21st century, parliament abolished the offence of buggery and, subsequently, granted pardons to certain individuals previously convicted of it. While some aspects of the history of parliament's approach to buggery are well known – particularly in respect of homosexual law reform – much of this history remains obscure. This article provides an in‐depth consideration of the making of statute law in parliament relating to buggery that reveals the dramatically changing attitudes of legislators towards this aspect of sexual conduct and highlights the significance and importance of the pardons granted to those convicted of the offence.     

A Bible,an Ax,and a Tablet: Tocqueville's Newspapers and Everyday Political Discourse

The relationship between the free press and democracy is at the core of much modern political theory. With the advent of digital media and the decline of newspapers, there is a need to reexamine this relationship. Tocqueville was an astute observer of the importance of newspapers to democratic life and the drawbacks of the medium. This article examines the central features of Tocqueville's view of newspapers, the issues he saw with the tone of newspapers in Jacksonian America, and the value of newspapers. I argue that this analysis shows the importance of a free press to democratic life but that digital media often lacks the local element that Tocqueville saw as an essential feature of newspapers, and this deficiency is problematic for maintaining democratic liberty.     

The Decline of the Scottish Conservatives in North‐East Scotland, 1965–79: A Regional Perspective

This article takes a fresh look at the decline of the Conservative Party in post‐war Scotland, a phenomenon that has provoked much debate. The analysis presented here is innovative in that it takes a regional approach, whereas other contributions to this field have tended to ignore the considerable regional diversity of Scottish political behaviour. By examining one particular region of Scotland – the rural north‐east – this article demonstrates that the Conservatives’ decline occurred at the hands of parties – the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalists – that did not brand themselves as left wing or right wing; the latter in particular eschewed conventional political labels. This marks another departure from the established literature, which has tended to discuss the decline in terms of the Conservative Party or the Scottish electorate moving ‘left’ or ‘right’. Furthermore, the article makes it clear that a serious decline befell the party between 1965 and 1979: before the advent of Thatcherism that has widely been held responsible for the Scottish Conservatives’ electoral woes. This analysis is conducted by examining the local press coverage of the region, as well as the national and regional records of the parties concerned. It therefore seeks to make a contribution to the wider study of post‐war British politics, by demonstrating the benefits of local and regional approaches in this period where they have been largely overlooked. This article demonstrates that even in the 1960s and 1970s, when politics seemed so nationally uniform, there is considerable diversity to be appreciated in different parts of the country.