Internal Decolonization? British Politics since Thatcher as Post-colonial Trauma

In recent years a growing number of commentators, especiallyones associated with the idea of a ‘new imperial history’,have argued that British politics and culture remained moreheavily shaped by colonialism and decolonization than had previouslyconventionally been thought. This paper pursues that line ofthought in relation to political debates during and since the1980s, especially those concerning devolution, constitutionalreform, and race relations. It then, however, highlights somemajor problems with and limitations of this kind of argument,suggesting that the emerging historiography of Britain's ‘internaldecolonization’ remains at present empirically weak, conceptuallycloudy, and often unhelpfully polarized.     

Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s

This article assesses the inter-war campaign against traffickingin women and children, with a particular focus on the leadingrole played by British and British-dominated voluntary associations.This humanitarian campaign was conducted by social relief organizationssuch as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH)and the International Bureau for the Suppression of the Trafficin Women and Children (IBSTWC). While organized opposition totrafficking in persons was not new, these groups consciously‘internationalized’ their advocacy and lobbyingefforts in the 1920s and 1930s. Although their work againsttrafficking in the Straits Settlements, or the prostitutionrings operating in the Mediterranean, was driven in part bythe desire to protect Britain's national prestige, their moralimpetus and their cooperation with non-British bodies reflectedwider international concerns. The article also explores theuse of public diplomacy as a new political tool, with a particularfocus on the public-private cooperation evident in the Leagueof Nations' work to combat the trade. Finally, the article advancessome conclusions as to why British women's political organizationsin particular were some of the earliest ‘internationalists’,how successful internationalists were in combating transnationalsocial problems, and to what extent inter-war internationalistsestablished a precedent for the subsequent growth of internationalsocial relief organizations.     

The Decline of the Empire and the Economic 'Decline' of Britain

In the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization coincided with the ‘goldenage’ of British capitalism, with record rises in popularliving standards. Economic historians have understandably usedthis coincidence to suggest that by this period the BritishEmpire was no longer offering substantial economic benefitsto the mass of the metropolitan population. Yet there were linksbetween economic performance and the decline of the Empire.First, despite the good performance, profoundly pessimistic‘declinist’ accounts of British society and theeconomy abounded in the early 1960s, and these had a major impacton policy formation. A key underpinning for such accounts wasthe ‘culture of decline’ intimately linked withthe loss of imperial status. Secondly, while it has become acommonplace of discussion of post-war Britain to assume thatreversing ‘decline’ and modernizing the economyrequired a re-orientation of policy away from the Empire andCommonwealth towards Europe, such a reorientation was not aconstant feature of modernization strategies. Indeed, a centralfeature of the initial period of Wilsonian ‘modernization’after 1964 was its attempt to use closer links with the Commonwealthto achieve this objective.     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

British Students at the International Lenin School 1926-37: A Reaffirmation of Methods, Results, and Conclusions

Alan Campbell, John McIlroy, Barry McLoughlin, and John Halsteadhave offered a sweeping, if incoherent, criticism of the researchpresented in ‘Stalin's Sausage Machine’, our recentarticle on British students at the International Lenin School.By expanding upon and reaffirming the methods, results, andconclusion of our original article, we address each of the maincriticisms made and show that none can be substantiated. Usingstatistical analysis based on matched samples, we demonstratethat we did not underestimate the school's impact on the apparatusof the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). We also showthat none of the supposed ‘significant deficiencies’in our handling of qualitative analysis has any foundation.We deal briefly with the sole alternative explanation our criticsoffer for the CPGB's internal leadership changes, namely ‘lifeitself’ and natural causes. We suggest that such a de-politicizedinterpretation not only lacks any evidential basis but revealsa profound ignorance as to the internal workings of communistparties and flies in the face of all available literatures onthe subject. We also document the contrast between our critics'methodological pretensions and the ways in which their casedepends for its plausibility on methods of an extremely dubiousnature. Every possible academic rationale for the attack uponus is disposed of. We therefore end with a plea for a less personalizedapproach to the writing of Communist Party history.     

'More carrot than stick', British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941-1944

During the Second World War, economic factors became a centralaspect of Spain's relations to both Britain and Nazi Germany.In 1940, when the Franco regime was on the brink of joiningthe war on the side of the Axis, Britain tried to use Spain’sdependence on imports from the west to convince Franco to retainhis country's neutrality. Although, at the time, British ‘economicappeasement’ was not a major factor in the failure ofGerman-Spanish negotiations, it contributed to Spain's verygradual detachment from Nazi Germany over subsequent years.Between1941 and 1944, the focus of British policy towards Spain movedfrom keeping the country out of the war to restricting the servicesSpain rendered to the German war economy. Franco's sympathiesfor the Nazi regime and the economic and financial benefitsof continuing trade with Germany made British and US economicwarfare activities however only a partial success.     

Amnesty International in Crisis, 1966-7

During 1966, Amnesty International, which had been establishedin 1961 to campaign for the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’,was shaken by a severe internal crisis. It was alleged thatAmnesty had been penetrated by British Intelligence agents,and that it had channelled secret British government fundingto the families of political detainees in Rhodesia. Althoughthe organization survived the crisis, it resulted in the resignationof Amnesty’s founder Peter Benenson as President, andprovoked a re-evaluation of its operational methods. This articleoffers the first detailed account of this episode, drawing onhighly significant new archival and documentary sources.     

Networking Health Research in Britain: The Post-War Childhood Leukaemia Trials

The treatment of childhood leukaemia is seen as a successfulhistorical example of the operation of the randomized controlledtrial and continues to inform contemporary policy making onsuch trials within health research. This article analyses thescientists’ ‘story of success’ through historicalresearch. It tells us about the organizational and professionalstructures of such research post-war in the United Kingdom,and examines the history of the cancer clinical trial throughthis particular example. The story reveals a more complex picturethan the ‘heroic’ one, with key developments inthe operation of post-war science, both in terms of its infrastructureand of its scientific networks, not least the rise of co-operativeworking among clinicians and the growing importance of statisticiansin medical research and practice. It also underlines differencesbetween the British and US approaches in which the role of onehealth system, the National Health Service, helped structuredifferent, initially less intensive, patterns of response.     

Queuing up in Post-War Britain

This article traces a history of the queue in post-war Britain,both in relation to its changing social organization and itsshifting symbolism. In the immediate post-war period, with thecontinuation of rationing and shortages, the queue was exploitedfor its political capital by Conservative politicians like WinstonChurchill, who equated queuing with meddling socialism. As queuingceased to be an explicitly political issue in the 1950s and1960s, it began to be linked implicitly with the issue of national‘decline’, which dominated political discussionand social commentary from the late 1950s onwards. The queuesin banks and post offices, in particular, were seen as a symptomof the ‘British disease’ of badly trained, poorlymotivated employees and mediocre management. In the 1970s and1980s, the ‘dole queue’ also became part of a politicizedmythology of decline, although much of its imagery was borrowedfrom the 1930s. In the Thatcher era, queuing was increasinglytransformed by queue management theories and technologies. Beingprimarily market-led, this queuing revolution was an unevenphenomenon. In low-status public spaces, such as bus stops,people were still left to improvise their own queue discipline;and organizations like banks used queueless services to focuson valued clientele. The changing nature of the queue thus revealsmuch about the relationship between quotidian routine, politics,and the market in the post-war era. ^* J.Moran{at}livjm.ac.uk     

A Matter of Foreign Policy: 'Final Solution' and 'Final Victory' in Nazi Germany

The primacy of foreign policy in Nazi Germany has been debatedfor decades. This article seeks not to re-open an old debate,but focuses on the two big aims of Nazi policy: ‘FinalVictory’ and ‘Final Solution’. In order toanalyse their relationship, they are identified as war aims;there follows an examination of both the role of the war inNazi doctrine and Hitler's role in decision-making in general.It can be shown that Hitler's original war plan saw ‘FinalVictory’ as a prerequisite for the ‘Final Solution’,but that from August 1941 the implementation of the ‘FinalSolution’ followed the intention of achieving ‘FinalVictory’ through the extermination of the European Jews.‘Final Victory’ and the ‘Final Solution’thus appear as goals which illuminate the primacy of foreignpolicy in Nazi Germany.     

The Annaberg as a German--Polish Lieu de Memoire

This essay analyses a fiercely contested transnational lieude mémoire in twentieth-century Polish—German history:the Annaberg. Historiography has thus far largely neglectedthe role played by this ‘holy mountain’ of UpperSilesia, a symbol that has stood at the heart of a number ofcompeting identity-forging narratives. The competition overthe Annaberg as a site for multiple collective memories occurredon three distinct but often overlapping levels: first betweennation-states, secondly between ideological camps, and thirdlybetween national- and local-level actors. Drawing on a substantialbody of primary sources, this article contributes both to thescholarly investigation of a political myth that cast a longshadow over German—Polish relations and to the growingacademic interest in transnational ‘realms of memory’.     

Imperial Identity in Colonial Minds: Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples, 1931-50

This article examines how the League of Coloured Peoples, foundedin London in 1931 by the Jamaican Harold Moody, used its versionof a British identity to seek equal rights for Britons of colour.I argue that by invoking an imperial British identity that drewon widely accepted elements of Britishness, namely respectabilityand imperial pride, the League gained support from black colonialsand white English people in its fight for equality. This wastrue despite the fact that a major element of the League's conceptionof British identity, racial equality, challenged the dominantidea that ‘true’ Britons were, by definition, white.The article focuses on the workings of the organization's ideologyin the context of two news-making issues: the campaign to restoreBritish citizenship to ‘coloured’ seamen in Cardiffin 1936, and the parliamentary and judicial reaction to discriminationby London's Imperial Hotel against League member Learie Constantinein 1943. The story it tells indicates that British identitieswere claimed and manipulated not only by natives of the BritishIsles, but also by colonial peoples. It further suggests thatunder the conditions of empire colonial peoples could simultaneouslyidentify with the imperial power and their (potentially national)home colony.     

From Barbarism to Religion: Church History and the Enlightened Narrative in Germany

The subject of this essay is the historical vision of the GermanCatholic Enlightenment as seen in the work of Michael IgnazSchmidt, a Catholic priest and author of the eleven-volume Historyof the Germans (1778–1793). A proper acknowledgement ofSchmidt's career helps us revise the standard account of Germanhistoricism and historical practice in the eighteenth century,and also sheds light on the place of religion in the GermanEnlightenment. Schmidt wrote a thoroughly modern ‘historyof manners’ that was indebted both to Voltaire and toRobertson. Yet his work passed into obscurity largely becausehe focused on the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Church—thetwo great casualties of the Napoleonic passage. Schmidt's viewof the Reformation, and, more importantly, of the history ofthe pre-Reformation German national Church, stands out in theprominence it assigns the Church as part of the history of thedevelopment of German manners. Schmidt's account throws intoquestion the common view in the history of the German ‘nation’that Germany could not be accorded the normal attributes ofa state and existed only as a ‘cultural nation’.The essay addresses the German problem of bi-confessionalism,and Schmidt's awareness of developments in Protestant theologyin the eighteenth century. While this paper does not try todeal comprehensively with all these issues, the essay showshow the agenda of reformist religion, national history, andthe Enlightened vision of Europe's Christian past coalescedin this unjustly forgotten work.     

Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept

This essay explores the origins and the development of a ‘communicationsrevolution’, which would give rise to a new concept withinhistoriography. It proposes that the Communications Revolutioncan be explained as a macrohistorical process, comparable tothe Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, whichhave both had permanent and irreversible consequences in themodern era. The communications revolution, like the other two,began in the early modern era, and is still ongoing. The conceptof a Communications Revolution encompasses smaller ‘mediarevolutions’, more easily ascribed to a specific historicalperiod, and to a large extent mutually interrelated and dependent.The development of postal services gave rise to a new understandingof space and time, and it is this development that the essayidentifies as the mainspring of change in the communicationsrevolution. Postal services enabled faster movements of people,goods, and information. The new medium of the printed book,newspaper or sheet magnified the effects of this faster disseminationof information and news. So the Communications Revolution canbe argued to have been the motor that enabled the constructionof the infrastructure of the modern world, newspapers, cartography,and the ‘public sphere’ of politics, of warfareand diplomacy. Indeed, there is scope for discussion as to whetherit was in fact the Communications Revolution which may haveopened the way for both the Scientific Revolution and the IndustrialRevolution.     

Harold Macmillan and the Deadline Crisis Over Berlin 1958-9

This article examines postwar British foreign policy by analysingthe decision-making process in Whitehall during the ‘deadlinecrisis’, the months between Khrushchev's ultimatum inNovember 1958 and Macmillan's famous voyage of discovery inFebruary 1959. The role played by the then British governmentduring this critical period of the Cold War was widely ignoreduntil the opening of the British archives for the late 1950sand early 1960s, under the thirty-year rule. Since then, scholarshave paid more attention to it. Diplomatic history is affectedgreatly by lack of access to public records; by utilizing previouslywithheld government documents, this paper results in a considerablereassessment of Britain's policy during the early cirisis months.Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that Macmillan'scontinuous attempts to shape alliance policy from behind thecurtain put alliance consensus at risk, provoked a deep breachof confidence and so diminshed his scope for effective actionseverely. His visit to Moscow did, in fact, achieve very little,if anything at all.     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).     

'An unholy row in Lancashire': The Textile Lobby, Conservative Politics, and Indian Policy, 1931-1935

This article argues that the ‘Lancashire lobby’remained a vital presence in British politics in the 1930s,not relegated to the political sidelines by ‘gentlemanlycapitalists’ at Westminster. The region's strength, inConservative circles especially, was based not on its numericalstrength in MPs, or in its economic might, but in the symbolicimportance Lancashire had for Conservatives. As this articledemonstrates, this was most evident during the debates overthe Government of India Bill between 1931 and 1935, when theparty's leadership made great, and successful, efforts to keepthe region's representatives from opposing the Bill, and potentiallyswinging many other Tories into opposition as well.     

'A Matter of Regret': Britain, the 1983 Grendada Crisis, and the Special Relationship

When the USA launched a military intervention in Grenada inOctober 1983 it was against the wishes of its closest ally,Britain, who felt deliberately misled as to Washington's intentions.As a former British colony and member of the Commonwealth, withthe Queen as Head of State, Grenada remained of interest toBritain. This article will provide a detailed analysis of Anglo-Grenadianrelations and the events and contacts between the USA and Britainduring and after the 1983 crisis and assess the role of the‘special relationship’ in shaping Britain's reactionto the intervention. I conclude that the conventional wisdomthat Britain was ‘in the dark’ about what was happeningis not entirely accurate. ^*The views expressed in this article represent those of theauthor alone.     

The Commonwealth and the Oath of Allegiance Crisis: A Study in Inter-War Commonwealth Relations

Recent historical treatment of Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s has overlooked the complex nature of the legal disagreements between the two countries during that period. This article provides an account of some of the fundamental points of legal disagreement between the countries. It explains how differences of opinion as to the structure of intra-commonwealth constitutional relations led to conflict between the British government and that of the Irish Free State, with particular reference to the oath of allegiance crisis. It considers how other commonwealth countries saw these points of conflict. It concludes with a re-appraisal of the roles of Lord Hailsham and de Valera in Anglo-Irish relations, as examples of differing attitudes towards the commonwealth relationship.     

Herbert Butterfield, the English School and the Civilizing Virtues of Diplomacy

This article seeks to establish the elements of a diplomatic theory of international relations and argues that this is implicit in the works of Herbert Butterfield on international relations, historiography, diplomatic history and Christian ethics. As a founding member of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, Butterfield shared with his colleagues the conviction that diplomacy and diplomatic systems lie at the heart of what happens, might happen and ought to happen in international relations. Like his colleagues, however, he failed to produce a work on diplomacy that attracted the sort of attention garnered by their work in other areas, for example on international systems and societies. Indeed, his own theoretical work on diplomacy is often regarded as a blind alley exhibiting nostalgia for the 'old diplomacy' of eighteenth-century Europe or a fatal attraction towards the more scientistic elements of political realism. It is argued, however, that in the broader corpus of Butterfield's work there is to be found a theory of diplomacy advocating self-restraint and charity towards others based upon recognizing both our common humanity and the impossibility of achieving a full understanding of one another. For Butterfield, this would have been a theory applied to states; but, employing one of Butterfield's own techniques for interrogating dead historians, it is argued that this holds up as a theory of how to conduct relations between groups that regard themselves as distinctive, hold their separation from one another to be a good and, hence, value their independence.