Whose Opinion?: Changing Attitudes Towards Opinion Polling in British politics, 1937-1964

This article examines the early history of opinion polling inBritish politics, focusing on the initial antagonism to pollingmethods within the political and media elite in the 1930s, andthe gradual integration of polling into the political systemafter World War II. It rejects the technological determinismof scholars who assume that the adoption of opinion pollingfollowed naturally on the creation of such methodology; andinstead focuses on the time-lag between the advent of pollingand its integration into political life. While not an explicitlycomparative study, a major question which this study considersis why were British politicians and publishers so much slowerto embrace opinion research than their American counterparts?In answering this question, this article examines various structuralfeatures of the British political system, cultural assumptionsabout parliamentary politics, and specific historical aspectsof the advent of opinion polling in Britain which affected thereception of the new methodology. While this article concludesthat structural factors—namely the return of a competitivetwo-party system after the Second World War—ultimatelyled the political parties to experiment with opinion polling,this article argues that continued ambivalence about the useof poll data can only be understood through a considerationof the cultural and historical circumstances surrounding theintroduction of polling.     

Race and Identity: The Culture of Combat in the Pacific War

This article addresses how the Royal Navy intended to defend the British Isles from invasion before the First World War. Revisionist historians have recently suggested that during his first tenure as First Sea Lord, 1904–10, Sir John Fisher conceived and implemented a radical new home-defence strategy. Fisher's ‘flotilla defence’ system assigned a hitherto unprecedented importance to flotilla craft. This was apparently a marked departure from previous practice, which had been to rely upon armoured warships to deter invasion. These claims are not supported by the evidence and have failed to appreciate that flotilla craft had historically formed the foundation of the naval defence of the British Isles. War Plans drafted in early 1909 confirm that before leaving office Fisher remained committed to the blockade of enemy naval forces and that he identified blockade as key to the security of the British Isles.     

Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945

The Deutsche Akademie (DA) in Munich was founded in the contextof a general upsurge in cultural diplomacy in Germany afterthe First World War and it was the precursor of today's GoetheInstitute. After a difficult start, by the early 1930s the DAhad become the leading institution in the promotion of the Germanlanguage abroad. The emergence of the DA's language policy wasclosely intertwined with the general development of German culturaldiplomacy, which was largely financed by the AuswärtigesAmt but executed by private associations. It was also influencedby the discussions in the 1920s about the role of language inshaping German national identity, by contemporary developmentsin German linguistics and language teaching, and by the discourseof the socalled ‘conservative revolution’. FranzThierfelder, secretary-general of the DA, managed to forge thesedevelopments into a coherent argument as to why Germany shouldintensify its language policy, centre it around the DA, anddirect it mainly towards the Balkan countries. The languagepolicy of the DA remained largely undisturbed by the Nazi seizureof power until the outbreak of war, even though the emphasiswas now on race rather than language as the determining factorin German national identity. The reason for this was, firstly,that the cultural diplomacy of the Auswärtiges Amt andits private institutions such as the DA continued to be dominatedfor some time by non-Nazis and, secondly, that Germany's culturaldiplomacy was dictated more by the constraints and dynamicsof international politics and by economic necessities than byideology. It was only after the outbreak of war that the expansionof the DA's language programme became closely linked to theracially motivated ‘new order’ for a Europe underNazi rule.     

伊拉克哈希姆王朝的建立与英国的委任统治

占领美索不达米亚、控制波斯湾本来是英国一个多世纪的追求,但第一次世界大战结束后,英帝国由占领者变为受任国,这并非英国人的初衷和意愿。战时英国在巴士拉的军事管理搬用印度经验;委任统治的第一步则是创建伊拉克政权,扶持汉志哈希姆家族的费萨尔王子管理伊拉克。在伊拉克的委任统治中引进英国式宪政,但并没有触动美索不达米亚和摩苏尔地区的社会基础,甚至保护和强化了当地的部落制。英国较早地允许伊拉克国家独立,但一直从军事和财政方面控制着伊拉克。伊拉克革命彻底赶走了英帝国主义,但英国在伊拉克委任统治的影响并未在短期内消除,相反,给伊拉克后来的发展埋下了隐患。     

Footfalls echoing in the memory. Britain and Europe: the historical perspective

Britain's difficulties with the European Union have deep historical roots. The events of the Second World War served to emphasize Britain's separation from the continent. Because Britain was fortunate enough not to share the wartime experiences of the continent, it was not exposed to the ideology of European unity, an attempt to transcend the forces of nationalism that had twice involved the continent in ruinous wars.
During the immediate postwar years, leaders of both of the major parties in Britain continued to believe in its special global role. Even when Britain finally entered the Community in 1973, differences between its institutions and those of the other member states caused problems. Perhaps these difficulties would have been equally apparent if Britain had joined the European Community at an earlier stage.
It can be argued that the main division in postwar British politics has been between those who saw its separation from the continent as a historically transient phenomenon, and those who regarded it as a defining feature of Britain's experience. This division cuts across left and right and still has to be resolved.     

Three's a Crowd?: Government, Owners, and Workers during the Nationalization of the British Coalmining Industry 1945-47

The passing of the coalmining industry into public ownershipon 1 January 1947 should have been an occasion for rejoicingby the Labour Party and its supporters, yet celebrations weremuted by the looming shadow of critical coal shortages Despitethis concurrence of nationalization and coal crisis, littleattention has been focused on possible linkages between thetwo events. More generally, scant consideration has been givento the question of what happened to the industry when facedwith nationalization. This article's principal argument is thatthe fuel crisis was rooted not (as other historians have argued)in the atrocious weather, but in the very process of nationalization—or,rather in the combination of a lack of preparation for publicownership and (even more importantly) in the preoccupation withnationalization at the expense of the ‘stabilization’of the industry before entering the uncharted waters of publicownership. The chief conclusion is that during the run-up toVesting Day neither miners nor owners had any substantial incentiveto improve industrial productivity and output The period wasat best a standstill, and in many ways—as the crisis indicated—wastedmonths that a fuel-starved Britain could ill afford ^*This article is based on my MA thesis, ‘Fresh Start orFalse Dawn⁷ the coalmining Industry and Nationalisation, 1945–7'I would like to thank my supervisors, Ranald Midne and PhilipWilliamson for their continued support, and also David Howelland the referees of Twentieth Century British History for theirvaluable comments on earlier drafts of this work.     

Bad Language and BBC Radio Four in the 1960s and 1970s

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a new intensityto complaints from listeners to BBC Radio about the strong languagethey heard on the air. There had long been a public expectationthat the BBC had some form of ‘guardianship’ overthe English language, but there was also now a desire from manyproducers within the BBC to reflect contemporary society moreclosely than it had done in the past, and the use of demoticspeech in dramas and documentaries was one dimension of thischange. Such a desire was part of a broader move towards ‘decensorship’in literature, film, theatre, and popular mores in Britain inthis period. The tension this caused between broadcasters andlisteners was especially acute on Radio Four—the main‘broad brow’ speech network of BBC Radio, and onecharacterized by a fiercely conservative audience. Through previouslyunpublished records of its internal discussions between c.1968and c.1979, this article explores the response of the BBC tolisteners’ complaints and press coverage about swearing.It suggests that BBC Radio reacted strongly to audience concern,but that wider anxiety about the reputation of the BBC as awhole also affected decisions over language. In so doing, itillustrates a previously neglected dimension to the BBC's taskof negotiating a precarious consensus on matters of taste anddecency.     

F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton, and the 'American Plan' for Resolving Britain's Constitutional Crises, 1903-1921

Frederick Scott Oliver was a Scottish businessman, writer, politicalpundit, and friend of many leading Conservatives. Distressedby the serious constitutional problems confronting Britain atthe turn of the century, he proposed solutions based on theideas and methods of the founders of the United States of Americain the late eighteenth century. These notions were set forthin Oliver's biography, Alexander Hamilton (1906), and helpedinspire the constitutional settlement brought by Milner's ‘kindergarten’in South Africa in 1910. Subsequent attempts by Oliver and hisRound Table associates, however, to implement this ‘AmericanPlan’ to resolve constitutional crises over Ireland justbefore and during the course of the First World War were largelyfutile. Austen Chamberlain and others failed to share Oliver'senthusiasm for such idealistic nostrums as constitutional conventionsand federalism as possible means to maintain unity within Britainand the empire. They were regarded simply as too American.     

A FAREWELL TO ‘RURAL BLISS’

The article discusses health policies towards school children in Norway from 1900 until the Second World War. It is concerned with dominant definitions of health threats against children and the variables used in defining the groups conceived as most vulnerable to poor health. A distinct change took place in the period. Whereas in the early 1900s poor and working‐class children in urban surroundings were considered to be under severe threats, in the 1920s a less specific category of ‘children’ were conceived as threatened. Eventually rural children were singled out as the important target group for health measures. The shifts had medical as well as political motivations. Another prominent feature in the period was that poverty took on a new meaning in the dominant medical discourse on children: from having been conceived as a material reality impinging upon health, it came to be considered mainly a cultural problem. Especially medical officers within the social democratic camp contested this argument although they did not rule out education and cultural transformation as a means to promote children's health. Despite the conceptual shift, however, social benefits and equal access to health services – measures that lay at the heart of the post‐war welfare state – remained in the 1930s an essential part of promoting children's health.     

An enduring influence on imperial defence and grand strategy: British perceptions of the Italian Navy, 1935–1943

The Mediterranean was a vital artery of the British Empire. It was a strategic corridor, linking Britain to its Middle and Far East possessions and precious resources. Its control was a central tenet of British imperial strategy, yet by the mid-1930s, this faced a new challenge from Fascist Italy. The Italian Navy was central to expansionist aspirations and forced British reappraisals of the allocation of defence resources both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. It therefore came to exert a generally under-appreciated influence on pre-war British imperial defence policy and war planning. Although consistently viewed as vastly inferior to the Royal Navy, it was still seen as an impediment to Britain's ability to deliver imperial defence across the globe, or conduct a worldwide war against multiple enemies. This view persisted even after important defeats were inflicted on it in 1940–1941, and continued right through to 1943. Awareness of the seriousness with which the British viewed Italian naval strength adds important context to debates about British strategy in the Far East and over Winston Churchill's preference for a ‘Mediterranean first’ strategy. Italian naval power played a greater role in shaping the Allied prosecution of the Second World War than is commonly accepted.     

'Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette': Reflections on the Emergence of Post-colonial Britain

In this article the specifically domestic and cultural propertiesof British decolonization are explored. It is suggested thatthe very category of ‘post-colonial Britain’ invitesus to think in these terms. Conventionally, the question ofthe domestic consequences of decolonization is thought in termsof the native white population of Britain. This article turnsattention to the role of the black migrants resident in themetropolis during the years of decolonization: most especially,to the role of West Indians. By a reading of the West IndianGazette it is proposed that the West Indian migrant played anactive role in the organization of a specifically anti-colonialculture—providing the means by which white Britons, too,could come to terms with the end of Empire.     

'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.     

Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Struggle for the Buraimi Oasis, 1952–1957

Some French writers, most notably Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and André Tardieu, have argued that French strategic interests during the early decades of the twentieth century had been seriously harmed because, alone among the Great Powers of Europe, France lacked a ‘diaspora’ in the United States. As a result of this, they have claimed, France had no advocacy group prepared to defend the interests of the European ‘kin state’ at a time when France’s great rival, Germany, was amply endowed with a sizeable demographic presence in the United States, willing to speak out in defence of Germany and its foreign policy. Moreover, a second large European diaspora had become established in the United States, whose numbers would swell after the mid nineteenth century: the Irish. Not necessarily committed to promoting German interests, the Irish-Americans did militate strongly and consistently against British interests, such that by the time France and Britain had become close security partners preceding and during the First World War, what worked against British interests would also work against French ones. This article constitutes a critical examination of the Duroselle-Tardieu thesis regarding France's allegedly ‘missing’ diaspora, and cautions against attributing too much geo-strategic influence to either the German-American or Irish-American ‘lobby’.     

The Heath Government and British Defence Policy in Southeast Asia at the End of Empire (1970-71)

This article examines the rationale behind the Heath government's1970 decision to negotiate a Five Power Defence agreement withAustralia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and to maintaina small British military contingent in Southeast Asia as a partof this new politico-military framework. It argues that whileits overriding foreign policy concern was to end Britain's problematicrelationship with the European Economic Community and to makemembership of this grouping the cornerstone of its foreign policy,the Heath government was careful not to cast Britain's post-imperialfuture in purely European terms. The successful negotiationof the Five Power Defence Arrangements in 1970–71 wasinstrumental in achieving this by ensuring that London wouldmaintain close links with key Commonwealth partners in the Asianregion. In what was not only an attempt to neutralize potentialdomestic opposition to Britain's entry into the EEC, but alsoa lingering reluctance to do away with the rhetoric of Britainas a leading power with extra-European interests, Heath waseager to show that by making a contribution to the stabilityof Southeast Asia, Britain still had a role to play outsideEurope.     

Imperial Airs: Leo Amery,Air Power and Empire, 1873–1945

In January 1904, at a lecture by a famous geographer, only a few weeks after the first flight of the Wright brothers, a young journalist named Leo Amery argued that air power would become a major ingredient of world power. His prescient comment is often quoted, but only to be glossed over. This article elaborates on it. The origins of Amery's views on air power lay in his childhood, his experience covering the South African War and the ‘national efficiency’ movement of Edwardian Britain. His views developed through his service in a variety of government appointments, including Lloyd George's Cabinet in the First World War and Churchill's Cabinet in the Second World War, and he occasionally managed to get his ideas turned into actions. Thus contextualised, Amery's views on air power illuminate both the man and the times through which he lived.     

'Pomorze' or 'Preussen'? Polish Perspectives on Early Modern Prussian History

The attitudes of Polish historical scholarship towards the historyof early modern Prussia has been deeply marked by the partitionsof Poland and the anti-Polish coalition between Prussia, Russiaand Austria, which denied Poland its own statehood for wellover a century. In contrast to nineteenth-century German ‘Landesgeschichte’,which focused on local research and archival resources, historiansfrom Poland have usually opted to stay more within patternsof national history-writing. When the Polish state was reconstitutedafter the First World War, hostilities built up between Germanand Polish historical schools on Prussia, expressed in the NationalDemocratic-influenced myl zachodnia (Western thought) on thePolish side, and a not less expansionist Ostforschung on theother side of the border. It was only after the catastropheof the Second World War, the redrawing of national borders ineast central Europe, and under the influence of Marxist historicalconcepts in the People's Republic of Poland that nationalistapproaches as well as the ‘black legend’ of thePrussia's past were temporarily suppressed and finally replacedby a more research-led scholarship. During the second half ofthe twentieth century, Polish historiography was in fact muchquicker and more thorough than its German counterpart to forgethe history of Prussia into a major academic subject. Sincethe 1980s, if not earlier, an extremely fruitful dialogue hasdeveloped between scholars—a dialogue which does not alwayspenetrate journalistic and public awareness, as recent polemicssurrounding the controversially planned ‘Centre for Expulsions’in Berlin have shown.     

Countryside-versus-City in European Thought: German and British Anti-Urbanism between the Wars

The idea that the city is a place of sin and immorality is as old as urban civilization. But what does anti-urban thought mean in societies which are highly urbanized under the conditions of modern industrialism? Furthermore, is anti-urbanism in the interwar period a German völkisch phenomenon––one further stride on Germany's special path? And what does rural revival and the “back-to-the-land” cult mean in Great Britain, the first industrial nation? This article seeks to provide an answer to these questions by exploring anti-urbanist writing between the End of the First World War and 1933 in Germany, and 1939 in Britain. By examining two key themes it aims to show that the clear-cut distinction between German anti-urban radicalisation and the West's coming to terms with urbanisation cannot be maintained. Firstly, attention will be drawn to the ambiguity of perceptions of the city in the writings of “Conservative Revolutionary” authors in the Weimar Republic. In a second step, the British “back-to-the-land” movement, whose advocates developed comprehensive anti-urban third-way theories in the interwar period and were themselves part of a broader popular anti-industrial movement and a rural cult throughout the 1930s, will be examined.     

Amplified British Aviation Authority in Africa, 1947–1960: Regulation of Low-cost Overseas Airlines

ABSTRACT

Britain first exerted considerable civil and military aerial authority in Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. The occasional but striking presence of British pioneer pilots and aircraft was soon followed by formal agreements about Empire airbases, and operation of imperial airline service. During the Second World War, all British aviation resources in Africa were tailored to mobilising and executing military action. At the end of the War, Britain’s nationalised airline resumed scheduled commercial services to and from Africa. In the post-War Commonwealth there was demand for air services at lower prices than Britain’s flag-carrying airline offered. Private charter airlines provided long-haul but low-cost ‘trooping’ flights, ‘colonial coach’ passenger flights, and ‘tramp’ cargo flights, and consolidated and extended British aerial presence and influence in Africa. Mostly, London set and managed the regulatory regime under which they operated. Coloniality provided a key licensing element. In the 1950s, before widespread decolonisation, the authority for the least expensive long-haul flying across Africa vested in layers of complex regulation in Britain.     

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.