Lay Defender of Catholicism: Dr. Edward Swarbreck Hall in Tasmania 1833–1881

Tensions between Protestants and Catholics persisted throughout nineteenth‐century Australia. Historians have tended to examine the part played by the clergy, pressure groups or newspapers in sectarian disputes in the main colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. This article contributes to an understanding of anti‐Catholicism in the Australian colonies by focusing on the actions and writings of one Catholic layman, Dr Edward Swarbreck Hall, in mid nineteenth‐century Tasmania. To minimise religious hostility, Hall was tolerant towards Protestants, loyal to the British Crown, and worked co‐operatively with other creeds in helping the poor. This approach made Catholicism more acceptable to Protestant society until the late 1860s. Thereafter religious divisions became more pronounced with the appointment of Irish Bishop Daniel Murphy, who adopted the authoritarian policies of the papacy and asserted the rights of Catholics. Feeling threatened by Catholic assertion and antagonised by Catholic doctrinal beliefs, Evangelical Protestants expressed anti‐Catholic sentiments at public meetings and in newspapers. In showing how Hall defended Catholics when aspersions were cast on their clergymen, their character, or their religious practices, this article concludes that Catholics were not passive victims, but Hall's fierce polemical style worked against his desire for religious peace.     

Catholic Relief and the Political Awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1780–1830

Over the course of the eighteenth and early-to-mid-nineteenth centuries the Irish, who moved throughout the British Empire, helped to build the social, political and economic structures that would enable the success of countless colonial settlements. They were merchants, traders, fishers and labourers, and a significant proportion of them were Catholic. While many would go on to play pivotal roles in the development of Catholicism in the colonies, the Irish were not alone and often joined or were joined by other Catholic groups such as the French, Spanish and Scottish Highlanders. That the Irish achieved greater political and economic success, though, had a knock-on effect for the other Catholic groups could then use the foundation that the Irish established for their own progress and development. This article considers the place of Catholics on Britain’s expanding colonial landscapes by examining the political awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, two of Britain’s north Atlantic colonies, between 1780 and 1830. These two colonies, like many others, witnessed the growth of an Irish Catholic laity that was ambitious, pragmatic and adept at using the political structures available to reframe their legal status. The election of Laurence Kavanagh, a second-generation Irish Catholic merchant from a tiny fishing outpost on Cape Breton Island, to Nova Scotia’s legislative assembly in 1820, is offered as an example of how this process actually worked on the ground and opens up a broader discussion about the importance of minority populations like Catholics to Britain’s imperial programme.     

Battle of the bedroom

The Philippine government's position on aggressive population management is in conflict with the Catholic Church's opposition to artificial means of birth control, particularly sterilization. The Episcopal Commission for Family Life plans to increase its campaign against contraception at their local level. The government effort through the Department of health will provide access to contraception in a network of 600 hospitals and 1500 rural health units. Government support comes from 2 Protestant churches, the Church of Christ, which is the largest independent church in the Philippines, and the United Church of Christ. Leaders of both churches gave the Minister of Health letters of support which stated that family planning (FP) was necessary to curb population growth which was too high, and China and Thailand are countries which are economically better off with population planning. The government position is similar to former President Corazon Aquino's. The new President, Fidel Ramos, is a protestant and wants economic prosperity for the Philippines; part of the formula for achieving economic growth is slowing population growth. There is limited resources in a sluggish economy and the push for zero population growth can be accomplished through effective contraception. The birth rate fuels poverty is the position of Juan Flavier, Health Secretary. Annual population growth is 2.3% and family size is 4.8/couple while agricultural growth is only 1%. The ideal family size recommended is 2 children/family. The Philippine Commission on Population in its 6-year plan is hoping to obtain 200 million in foreign aid and involve a larger network of nongovernmental organizations. Choice is the key component. Women need to be convinced that birth spacing will reduce maternal and infant mortality. Flavier has reassured Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Catholic Church that Natural methods or the rhythm method would be taught. Health experts argue that the discipline and sacrifice necessary for effective natural methods is lacking.     

Faith,philanthropy and the aged poor in nineteenth-century England and Wales

In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the aged poor as social investigators sought to explain their dependency and poverty. Elderly men and women who were unable to care for themselves, and without a family or community to attend to their needs, had few alternatives outside the workhouse in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Catholic homes for the elderly managed by communities of women religious such as the Sisters of Nazareth provided an important option to the aged poor who often needed both accommodation and medical care. These homes provided a unique form of social welfare which attracted the attention of Protestants as well as Catholics as benefactors. Protestant reformers, looking for different approaches to maintaining the aged poor, inspected these Catholic homes in order to develop their own institutional solutions. Perhaps more pointedly, this interaction between Protestants and Catholics offers a counter narrative to the usual histories that emphasise anti-Catholicism, sectarianism and conflict. Despite the anti-Catholic tenor of the times, the homes for the aged of the Sisters of Nazareth were recognized and funded by both Catholics and Protestants as they were seen as providing a much needed form of charitable aid for the aged poor. As an alternative to poor law workhouses, the institutions created and managed by Catholic women religious formed an integral part of the mixed economy of welfare in the nineteenth century.     

Harry Holland's ‘Samoan Complex’

ABSTRACT

‘Harry’ Holland, one of the early leaders of the parliamentary Labour Party in New Zealand, was an anomalous figure in early 20th-century New Zealand politics. In addition to a principled adoption of militant socialism, he stood apart from the rest of the House of Representatives due to his pronounced interest in Samoan affairs. This interest was so acute that one of his Labour colleagues, John A. Lee, remarked that he possessed a ‘Samoan complex’. This paper addresses the lack of critical attention paid to this facet of his career. Even though Holland's attitudes towards Samoa were sometimes couched in the same vocabulary as the coloniser, he always stood on the side of the colonised. His endorsement of Indigenous self-government was ahead of its time, and his campaigning played a key role in the Samoan struggle for independence. At a broader level, Holland was possibly the most significant of a cohort of colonial critics who questioned New Zealand's right to govern Pacific Islanders and who sought to rein in New Zealand's more overbearing Pacific Island administrations.     

Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility, 1945-62

The Beveridge Report and the election of a Labour governmentin 1945 both reflected and created a new climate for Catholics,no less than for other groups. A debate raged about how Catholicteaching, with its emphasis on limiting state encroachment,squared with the Welfare State, with respect to the way in whichpeople should make provision for the basic needs of themselvesand their families. The battle lines were drawn between thosewho rejected the notion that the state should provide socialservices, believing instead that individuals should be freeto make their own arrangements, and those who felt at ease withthe new system of state-prescribed benefits. While the vastmajority of Catholics fell into the later camp, others, notablythe eminent economist Colin Clark and his Jesuit champion FrPaul Crane, were firmly in the former. They drew upon ideasfrom a well-established tradition of native Catholic thought(typified by the Distributist movement) to argue against a Britainbased on Beveridge, and that society should be organized soas to provide each individual with the opportunity to fulfiltheir godly destiny. ¹Thanks are due to Tony Carew and Peter Thompson and the refereesfor Twentieth Century British History for their comments onearlier drafts of this piece     

"A Troubled Godless Place": Catholic Practice and Local Politics in the Communes of the Central Vaucluse, 1830–1905

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, men and women in the French communes of the central Vaucluse began to defer or neglect vital Catholic rites of passage. Against a backdrop of turbulent regional politics and economic upheaval, formal adherence to church doctrine declined sharply, never again to regain its previous levels. This article assesses the religious gestures of individuals and communities through the analysis of their sacramental participation, the only recorded response of Catholics to the church's presence in their lives. The implementation of the lay republic in the community by means of both local and national secularizing policy from 1878 to 1905 was the primary precipitant of general, dramatic decreases in formal Catholic practice. It was only upon the official secularization of communal society and politics that significant numbers of central Vauclusiens began to relinquish their attachment to Catholic rites of passage surrounding birth, marriage, and death.     

Success,swing and gender: The performance off women candidates for parliament in New Zealand, 1946–87

New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote, and it has a higher proportion of women as Members of Parliament than any of the other Anglo‐American first‐past‐the‐post democracies. An examination of the vote‐pulling powers of women candidates for Parliament in all the general elections in New Zealand since the end of the Second World War finds that female candidates for the Labour Party have done statistically significantly better than their male counterparts, but for National Party candidates the reverse is the case — men perform better than women. Various reasons for these findings are canvassed, including the possibilities that Labour in New Zealand is benefitting from its initiatives with respect to women's affairs, and from the female equivalent of an ‘old boys’ network.     

Political Marketing and the 2008 New Zealand Election: A Comparative Perspective

Political marketing is a growing phenomenon and few political parties would seek to compete in an election without utilising at least some of its tools to help them understand their market and compete more effectively. The current range of tools available includes pre-election strategy, branding, e-marketing, opposition research, multiple forms of direct marketing and GOTV utilising market segmentation, tangibility tools, insights marketing and leadership re-marketing. New developments in practice transfer quickly between countries. In the 2008 New Zealand election, both major parties, Labour and National, utilised different aspects of political marketing with varied effects, showing the importance and limitations of global strategies, as well as the need for parties to utilise all aspects of political marketing for government and re-election.     

Change and continuity in strategic culture: the cases of Australia and New Zealand

The relationship between strategic culture and defence policies has not yet been much explored. Australia and New Zealand provide some evidence of the impact of strategic culture on defence policy. Australia has a dominant strategic culture which is strong enough to prompt both the major political parties to adopt realist defence policies, even though Labor has a traditionally ‘idealist’ outlook. Until the 1970s, New Zealand had a similar dominant strategic culture which influenced both major political parties, but it was always less strong than Australia's. In recent years, the Labour Party has rejected that culture, and allowed an alternative strategic culture based on its ideology to influence its defence policies. The result has been that on the last two occasions when Labour has been in government, New Zealand's defence policy has changed dramatically.     

"Hopelessly entangled in Nordic pre-suppositions": Catholic participation in the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s

While American Catholics stand out as some of the few voices of cultural opposition to the eugenics movement in the United States, Catholics and eugenicists actively engaged in conversational exchanges during the late 1920s. In association with the Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen of the American Eugenics Society, John A. Ryan and John Montgomery Cooper engaged in a process that Sander Gilman and Nancy Leys Stepan call "recontextualization," whereby they challenged the social and scientific basis for eugenics policy initiatives while constantly urging American eugenicists to rid their movement of racial and class prejudice. In the process, they participated in a revealing debate on immigration restriction, charity, racial hierarchies, feminism, birth control, and sterilization that points to both the instances of convergence and divergence of Catholic and eugenic visions for the national community.     

The ultimate return: Dissent,apostolic succession,and the renewed ministry of roman catholic women priests

ABSTRACT

Significant numbers of practising Roman Catholics dissent from the Church’s orthodox teachings, especially those relating to sex, gender and contraception. Many such dissenters even occupy positions of ecclesiastical authority themselves. This raises interesting questions about how dissent manifests differently in various Christian traditions; how disagreement about fundamental principles only become legible if expressed in particular ways. This paper draws on research on Roman Catholic Woman priests whose claim to sacerdotal legitimacy rests on their having been ordained in apostolic succession by bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. It asks how do women priests negotiate both difference and repetition at the very same time. The ethnography prompts deeper reflection on Christianity’s long history of dissent which I argue has been written from a predominantly male and Protestant perspective. One in which dissent that leads to institutional differentiation is prioritized over dissent borne quietly that seeks to contain itself.     

The birth control movement before Roe v. Wade

This essay synthesizes the history of the birth control movement in the US and describes changes in sexual behavior, social values, and public policy in order to provide a context for the changes in human reproductive public policy. After an introduction, the essay outlines the history of contraception from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Part 3 covers the period of World War I to the Depression when civil libertarians and eugenicists began to question the suppression of contraception and Margaret Sanger organized her clinics. The fourth part of the essay carries the history forward to the end of World War II, a period in which Dr. Clarence J. Gamble began to expose the marketing of defective contraceptive methods and to illustrate the willingness of poor women to accept contraceptives. The social changes which began in the 1950s are the subject of the fifth section of the essay. During this period, Roman Catholic opposition to contraception lessened, and social scientists began to focus world attention on overpopulation. Frank Notestein was appointed the first head of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, and John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council which conducted research into the IUD and began to attempt to influence population growth in nonindustrialized countries. This period also saw the development of the oral contraceptive. The changes of this era were institutionalized in 1967 when the federal government took a positive stance towards family planning in its Social Security Amendments. The decade of the 1970s is the subject of the last part of this essay. This period saw the Supreme Court assign a constitutionally protected right to abortion and Congress pass the Helms Amendment which denied the use of foreign aid funds for abortions. Challenges to the right to individual birth control practice continued during this period, and debate centered around the specter of overpopulation, the threat of adolescent pregnancy, and perceptions of "family values."     

A Parliamentary Victory: The British Labour Party and Irish Republican Deportees, 1923

After the 1918 general election the Labour Party became the official opposition party at Westminster. In response to the growing Irish republican campaign to establish an independent Irish state the Labour Party had to re-assess its relationship with Irish nationalism. The Labour Party was now acutely conscious that it was on the verge of forming a government and was concerned to be seen by the British electorate as a responsible, moderate and patriotic government-in-waiting. Although it had traditionally supported Irish demands for home rule and was vehemently opposed to the partition of Ireland, the Labour Party became increasingly wary of any closer relationship with extreme Irish nationalism which it believed would only damage its rapidly improving electoral prospects. Therefore the Labour Party supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 even though it underpinned the partition of Ireland and sought to distance itself from any association with Irish republicanism as the new Irish Free State drifted into civil war. In early 1923 the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) alighted upon the new issue of the arrest and deportation without trial, to the Irish Free State, of Irish republicans living in Britain who were obviously British citizens. The attraction of this campaign for the Labour Party was that it enabled the party to portray itself as the defender of Irish people living in Britain without having to take sides in the Irish civil war. In addition the Labour Party was able to present itself as the protector of civil liberties in Britain against the excesses of an overweening and authoritarian Conservative government. One of the main reasons the issue was progressed so energetically on the floor of the House by the new PLP was because it now contained many Independent Labour Party (ILP) ‘Red Clydesiders’ who themselves had been interned without trial during the First World War. Through brilliant and astute use of parliamentary tactics Bonar Law's Conservative government was forced into an embarrassing climb-down which required the cobbling together of an Indemnity Bill which gave tory ministers retrospective legal protection for having exceeded their authority. By any standard, it was a major achievement by a novice opposition party. It enhanced the party's reputation and its growing sophistication in the use of parliamentary tactics benefited it electorally at the next election which led to the first Labour government.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

‘A Rather Novel Constitutional Experiment’: The Formation of the 1977–8 ‘Lib‐Lab Pact’

By March 1977, the Labour government which had narrowly been re‐elected in the October 1974 election, had lost its parliamentary majority, and was facing a vote of confidence tabled by the Conservative opposition. Senior Labour figures thus desperately sought to secure support from one of the minor parties. Unable to broker a deal with either the Ulster Unionists or the Scottish National Party (SNP), largely due to ideological differences, the Labour leadership entered into negotiations with the Liberal leader, David Steel. The result was that the Liberal Party agreed to provide the Labour government with parliamentary support, in return for consultation, via a joint committee, over future policies, coupled with the reintroduction of devolution legislation, and a pledge to provide for direct elections for the European parliament (ideally using some form of proportional representation). There was some surprise that Steel had not pressed for more, or stronger, policy commitments or concessions from the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, but Steel was thinking long term; he envisaged that Liberal participation in the joint consultative committee would foster closer co‐operation between Liberals and Labour moderates/social democrats, and eventually facilitate a realignment of British politics by marginalising both the Labour left, and the increasingly right‐wing Conservatives Party.     

Licensed Native Interpreter:

Many of the cross-cultural intermediaries who figure in the New Zealand historiography operated in ‘middle ground’ situations. However, in New Zealand as elsewhere in the Pacific, intermediaries also had roles to play in settings where the authority of the colonial state was more or less assured. Working from government records and the 1920 diary of the Pakeha interpreter Ben Keys, this article examines the sorts of cross-cultural expertise involved in negotiating sales and leases of Maori land and probes the relationship between such instrumental uses of knowledge of Maori culture and the ethnographic interests that this work nurtured. For some settlers, Keys included, amateur ethnographic inquiry constituted the active intellectual work of being a New Zealander. By examining the work of an intermediary and amateur ethnographer in an age of automobiles and cinemas, I seek to demonstrate — in a modest, textured way — how the colonization of New Zealand was an ongoing, twentieth-century process in the sphere of economics and law as well as culture and identity.     

New Labour’s overseas development aid policy – charity or self-interest?

Robin Cook argued that New Labour’s foreign policy would have ‘ethical dimensions’,(Cook, “Robin Cook’s Speech on the Government’s Ethical Foreign Policy.”) and an assumption is often made, within existing literature, that this is an accurate statement when considering the overseas development agenda of New Labour government’s between 1997 and 2010. Tingley argues that the more left-wing a party, the more likely they are to increase attention on, and funding of, overseas development aid (ODA) projects.(Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics.”) This article uses the New Labour governments, from 1997 to 2010, as a case study to test the argument of Tingley and determines that his conclusions are accurate in the case of the UK. This article will then argue, using the work of Breuning that the motivations of the New Labour governments, and the way they conveyed their policy to the electorate changed overtime rather than remaining morally focused for the duration of their time in power.(Breuning, “Words and Deeds.”) By focusing on the rhetoric of the Labour Party, the changes in motivation can be identified in the period 1997–2010, with a distinct move from moral justifications to more self-interested pragmatic reasoning, which confirms Breuning’s argument.     

The Hornby Castle Estates: Agrarian change from the 1582 Survey to the 1751 Sederunt

Abstract

English Catholicism has generally been ignored by mainstream historiography. In the last decade work on the early seventeenth century has shown that English Catholics actively engaged in ensuring their own survival and played a prominent part in national politics. Catholicism in the latter half of the century has received no such attention. Using a case study of the Lancashire Catholic, William Blundell, from the Civil War period to his death in 1698, it will be argued that by manipulating existing power structures and creating networks of both Protestants and Catholics who protected him, he was able to avoid the extremes of the penal laws and assert an influence on local and national affairs. Despite his professions of loyalty, many of his activities in support of English Catholicism and religious houses abroad posed a direct threat to the Protestant regimes under which he lived.     

Party Interests,Public Opinion and Institutional Preferences: Electoral System Change in New Zealand

Explanations of the origins of electoral systems tend to rely heavily on rational choice assumptions: essentially the common sense inference that political parties prefer electoral arrangements that promote their interests. Accounts of electoral system change in New Zealand support either a partisan interest interpretation on the basis of survey evidence from voters, or point to other deeper causes in historical, institutional and cultural phenomena. Using survey data from the 1993 referendum, covering both voters and political party elites, we seek to reconcile these approaches by establishing the limits of the party interest approach. We construct an argument which also stresses the effects of cultural and institutional variables-most notably, many New Zealanders' frustrated expectations that governments be accountable between elections as well as on election day, and their hopes that multi-party government may facilitate such accountability.