Studies in the Politics of Environmental Protection: The Historical Roots of the British Clean Air Act, 1956: III. The Ripening of Public Opinion, 1898–1952

Abstract

This is the last of three articles about the campaign to abate smoke in the cities of England which began early in the 19th century and culminated in the Clean Air Act 1956. It describes the third sustained wave of activity by lobbies for smoke abatement and the way the public conscience was raised to a level which made it practicable to bring in laws to control domestic as well as industrial smoke. The impediments to this evolution of public opinion were (a) social: the Englishman's sentimental attachment to an inefficient and wasteful way to heat and cook in his home; (b) technological: the practical difficulties in producing a solid smokeless fuel which could be used in an open grate; and (c) administrative: the difficulties in enforcing laws against smoke when smoke could be neither defined nor measured with the precision necessary in a court of law.     

Industrial Militancy, 1945-79: The Failure of the British Road to Socialism?

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) embarked upon aconsistent industrial policy after the Second World War whichcentred around wage militancy. The article examines the natureof this commitment and in so doing reveals both the confusedrationale for the Communist promotion of militant trade unionismand the hidden weaknesses of the CPGB’s industrial interventions.     

Trade,Politics and the Navy in Latin America: The British in the Paraná, 1845–46

When military conflict and economic disruption in the river Plate region led to a British naval occupation of the river Paraná in 1845–46, traders from many nations followed the warships upstream hoping to conduct business in the Argentine interior and with Paraguay. Since the 1920s historians have uniformly disparaged this Paraná expedition as a commercial failure, insisting that the foreign intruders found neither trade nor welcome among the local populations. In Argentine historiography, the episode is consistently presented as a successful assertion of national identity in the face of European imperial assault. Research here, however, demonstrates not only the expedition's economic success but, again contrary to established opinion, its military and strategic achievements, before the British government abandoned its policy of armed intervention. The Paraná was eventually opened to foreign navigation by international treaties in 1853.