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.     

Playing Both Sides Against the Middle: The Labour Party and the Wholesaling Industry 1919 1951

This article examines the Labour party's attitude towards thewholesaling industry. During the inter-war period wholesalers,‘middlemen’ as they were commonly called, occupiedthe position of bogeyman in much Labour party thinking and literature.As a result the Labour governments of the 1920s took actionsdesigned to achieve two ends: to improve the efficiency of fooddistribution, and to limit the power of middlemen to exploitboth ends of the food production chain, farmers and consumersalike. This ideological positioning of the middleman by Labour,and the reforms introduced under the MacDonald governments,stressed the need to establish farmers’ co-operativesand consumers’ protection agencies, and also emphasizedthe importance of other measures designed to boost efficiency.However, by the time of the Attlee governments the cornerstoneof the inter-war policy, the producer co-operative, had beenabandoned and the focus of debate shifted to various forms ofnationalization. This change of policy is examined in this article.Though post-war Labour manifestos pledged to nationalize sectionsof the wholesaling industry, and despite the fact that the partyunder Attlee discussed the nationalization of wholesaling atlength, the industry remained in private hands. An attempt tounderstand how and why the nationalization of wholesaling wasopposed within the party and shelved by the Attlee governmentsis central to this study.     

有关30年代中后期贵州禁烟运动的由来及其认识

贵州曾是旧中国的鸦片主产区和外销地,鸦片给贵州各族人民带来的灾难十分恶劣,罄竹难书.30年代中后期,在国民政府的领导下,贵州再次开展禁烟运动,取得了积极的成果.本文分析30年代中后期贵州禁烟运动的由来,认为禁烟运动的开发既寓有断绝黔省军阀的财源、消除割据势力的一面;也包含改造黔省、建设抗战后方的需要.在此基础上,本文从禁种、禁运和禁贩三个方面着手,介绍其措施的演变、作用,以及成败得失.最后,影响贵州禁政的某些因素.政治的原因是:1.地方势力没有什么反抗的力量,禁令推行较为顺利;2.民族地区种植现象不甚突出,缺乏有“组织“的反抗,解决偷种问题比较容易;3.推行禁种的步伐较为稳妥,对社会经济的触动力度不大.经济的原因是:1.避免与烟商争利,谋求其积极支持,消化存土,积累资金,投资新兴产业;2.积极实施作物替代,促进经济的发展,转移支付收入,弥补禁烟后遗留的缺口.     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

1928——193O年中国国民党党员总登记

1927年4月,国民党开始“清党”,其中,党员登记是“清党”、整理党务的中心。国民党意欲通过此举纯化党员成分,强化党员意识,统计全国党员数量。经过党员总登记后,国民党党员数量、社会结构及党员分布均发生了显著的变化。     

George V and Repulicanism, 1917-1919

This article is a study of the British monarchy's reaction towhat it saw as a republican threat at the end of the First WorldWar. It challenges the widely received view that the most importantrepublican moment in modern British history was in the early1870s. Written from previously unused material in the RoyalArchives, it chronicles the emergence of Palace worries aboutthe rise of militant socialism, which the royal family equatedwith republicanism; and it illuminates the tactics designedby the King and his advisers to take the republican edge offthe labour movement and to deal with the immediate social andeconomic crisis. Lord Esher summed up Palace policy in the phrase‘the "democratization" of the monarchy’. In practice,this meant expanding the royal family's social and charitablepurposes to ensure the Crown's survival. The policy would havean enduring influence on royal thinking and behaviour. ¹ This article was written for the Visiting Fellows' Colloquium,All Souls College, Oxford. It expands a line of argument thatwas put more tentatively and with far less documentation inChapter 6 of my book Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy(London, 1995). By gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen,I have been able to make use of material from the Royal Archivesat Windsor.     

The Evolution of British Labour Party Policy on Israel from 1967 to the Intifada

The formation of Israel and the succeeding rival nationalistclaims have been particularly taxing for the social-democraticleft committed in principle to national self-determination.This article explores how the British Labour Party respondedto the Israel—Arab conflict in the post-1967 period. Itshows that Labour's consensus of support for Israel outlastedthe challenge of the 1967 war. It was not until the early 1980sthat a significant shift towards the Palestinian cause tookplace. However, a combination of internal controversies andexternal historical and political developments led to a furtherpolicy revision, ending in a new consensus of support for bothIsraeli and Palestinian nationalism in the late 1980s and early1990s. In outlining these changes, the article sheds light notonly on the intrinsically interesting issue of Labour's attitudetowards Israel but also on the more general question of partypolicy change.