'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.     

The Bricks and Mortar of Revolutionary Administration

This article investigates office space during the French Revolution.It argues that material conditions played an important rolein configuring the post-Revolutionary state and its relationshipto the ‘public sphere’. In the 1790s, ministry employeesmoved from Versailles to Paris, from serving individual aristocratsto serving the Nation, from a state of operative obscurity toone of contentious publicity. Although an ideal regulation ofspace in new unified ministry buildings would invite the publicin and make government transparent (preventing a return to theOld Regime), Ministers had to balance this imperative with practicaloperational and financial concerns. By the Empire, ministrieswere consciously constructing antechambers to keep petitionerswaiting. Meanwhile, employees also engineered their physicalenvironment to protect their jobs, constructing corridors andmakeshift walls. The disjuncture between the aims and the outcomesof 1790s administrative reform developed out of the physicalimpossibility of making ‘transparent’ bureaucracywork.     

French public attitudes towards the prospect of war in 1938 1939: 'pacifism' or 'war anxiety'?

This article challenges the received wisdom that French publicopinion was infused with pacifist sentiment during the 1930sand that this sentiment in turn contributed to the French defeatof 1940. It will suggest that French public attitudes towardsthe prospect of war can be better defined as ‘war anxiety’rather than the value-laden term ‘pacifism’. Takingas a test case the period between the Munich Agreement of September1938 and the outbreak of the Second World War less than a yearlater, the article will tease out the necessary distinctionbetween ‘pacifism’ and war anxiety. By employinga notion of ‘representations’ of public opinion,it will be shown how French opinion was demonstrably less pacifistthan many existing analyses assume. Instead, it will be contendedthat the public's anxieties with regard to a future war manifestedthemselves in a variety of ways, of which pacifism was merelyone example. Indeed, war anxiety increasingly demanded thatFrance prepare for an inevitable conflict, in stark contrastto simply retreating into a defeatist mindset. War anxiety wasfar from being a contributing factor in the defeat of 1940.     

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 Good Job for a Girl? The Career Biographies of Women Graduates of the University of Liverpool Post-1945

The opponents of women’s higher education in the nineteenthcentury feared that a university education for women would radicallyalter the ‘separate spheres’ and ultimately leadto a sexual revolution. This article suggests that in termsof the career biographies of university-educated women, theyneed not have feared. Drawing on a range of data sources, thearticle documents the limited, gendered career options thatfaced graduate women post-1945, despite the increase in botheducational and employment opportunities. There remained astoundingpersistence in sexist assumptions about women’s life-plans;even for the academic elite, the role of wife and mother wasnever lost sight of. Graduate women negotiated the labour marketwithin the confines of a discourse that emphasized a ‘goodjob for a girl’ as opposed to a career for a woman.     

'Proactive fast-tracking' diffusion of supermarkets in developing countries: implications for market institutions and trade

Supermarkets have spread extremely rapidly in developing countriesafter the ‘take-off’ in the early to mid-1990s.Former analyses of supermarket diffusion have not adequatelyexplained the sudden burst and then exponential diffusion ofsupermarkets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We argue thatrather than taking demand and market institutional and organizationalconditions as ‘exogenous’, as former analyses havetended to do, modern food retailers instead have treated localconditions as substantially ‘endogenous’. To enabletheir rapid growth, supermarkets undertake ‘proactivefast-tracking strategies’ to alter the ‘enablingconditions’ of entry and growth. Beside the retail investmentsthat have been extensively treated in recent literature, theseproactive strategies focus on improving the ‘enablingconditions’ via (i) procurement system modernization and(ii) local supply chain development. One important strategyretailers have used to facilitate (i) and (ii) is to form symbioticrelationships with modern wholesale, logistics and processingfirms. An example we address is ‘follow sourcing’,where a transnational retailer encourages transnational logisticsand wholesale firms with whom the retailer is working in homemarkets, to locate to the developing country. This is a spurto globalization of services in support of retail. Follow-sourcinghas been treated for example in the automobile manufacturessector (follow-sourcing from spare parts manufacturers)—butnot in the food sector. A second important strategy is thatof multi-network-sourcing, in which supermarkets source fromnational, regional and global networks. We analyze that strategyhere, adding to the literature which to date has touched onthis theme only scantly, and for the first time identify typicalpaths, present preliminary evidence (from Central America andIndonesia) concerning this multi-sourcing-network strategy anddiscuss trade implications. One of these is the move to primacyof South–South trade in supermarket sourcing—a newdimension of globalization. By introducing this link of retailertransformation and trade into the literature, we hope to spura new line of research that is timely in light of the trade,development and globalization debates in developing countries.     

No Hammock for the Idle: The Conservative Party, 'Youth' and the Welfare State in the 1960s

The postwar ‘baby boom’ focused unprecedented attentionon young people in Britain and made ‘youth’ a newand increasingly worrying category of both social and politicalidentity. Belief in the uniqueness of postwar youth was widelyshared among political parties but it caused particular anxietyfor the Conservatives who feared that young people in the 1960swere shaped by values that predisposed them to socialism, notconservatism. This article traces the Conservative party's interactionwith ‘youth’ through an examination of the policy-makingefforts of the Young Conservatives (YCs) organization. Afterthe 1959 election, the Conservative party was anxious to retainthe support of younger voters and saw the YCs as a vehicle topublicize its commitment to them. Departing from the YCs’long-standing emphasis on social activities, the party establisheda Policy Group Scheme to integrate younger members into policy-makingand encourage a ‘youth’ perspective on key policyareas such as the welfare state. However, in 1966, the PolicyGroup Scheme ended as it became clear that young people's loyaltyto the main party was not conditional upon participation inpolicy-making and the YCs’ model of postwar conservatismdiffered very little from that of older Conservatives. Thisanalysis of grassroots discussion of the welfare state thusestablishes the limits of a distinctive ‘youth’perspective on major issues in modern conservatism such as individualfreedom and the role of the state, and contributes to recentdiscussions of the role of age and demographic structure inpostwar Britain.     

Oscar Heidenstam, The Mr Universe Contest, and the Amateur Ideal in British Bodybuilding

During Britain's so-called ‘golden age of bodybuilding’during the 1950s and 1960s, Oscar Heidenstam, through his NationalAmateur Bodybuilders Association (NABBA) and Health and Strengthmagazine, elevated the annual Mr Universe Contest in Londoninto the world's most prestigious physique competition. Whatmade this achievement so remarkable was Heidenstam's commitmentto the Victorian ideal of the gentleman amateur. Eventually,however, this outmoded approach prevented him from staying abreastwith the times and resisting countervailing societal forcesthat were commercial, American and modern. Tradition and parochialismprevailed as NABBA, the Mr Universe Contest, and British bodybuildingwent into ‘relative decline’ in the 1970s. And California,home of the rival Weider organization and Arnold Schwarzenegger,displaced London as center of the bodybuilders’ universe.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

From Propaganda to Modernization: Media Policy and Media Audiences under National Socialism

To date, historians have worked on the assumption that NationalSocialism used the media to powerful propaganda effect. Yetat an early stage a few voices, especially within Anglo-Saxonscholarship, questioned whether the process was so direct. Increasinglythe individual media have been examined, both technically andin terms of their public the reactions they provoked. This essayexamines how the media can be said to have modernized underNational Socialism, and how newspaper readers, radio listenersand cinema audiences reacted to the development of the media.There were major differences. Radio was conceived as a mediumfor music and entertainment; new formats were developed in responseto listeners turning to programmes from abroad, so that Germanradio could no longer keep a monopoly on information. The majorityof feature films were melodramas and light entertainment, andalthough many carried a ‘message’, the cinema wasfundamentally a commercial, non-political sphere. Newspapersremained relatively conservative in presentation. The presswas largely concentrated in the hands of the party, so informationwas highly controlled, and due to difficulties of productionin wartime they became increasingly unattractive, and by 1942were trusted by few readers. The corpus of the media generallybecame technically more efficient, and sought to please itsgrowing audience. Total control of the media by the politicalleaders was not achieved. Particular elements, such as war films,or the ‘Wehrmacht Request Show’, had memorable success.Agenda setting by the media planners put certain key politicalideas into the forefront, and they were able to disseminatekey symbols and rituals of National Socialism. The media werebut one of many agents used, though, to foster political loyalty.The régime also, and more importantly, achieved thisby using existing attitudes, and through its permanent threatof violence towards the population, whom they also seduced withmaterial ‘treats’. It emerges that it is both possibleand helpful in studying the development of the media to examineit as a process of modernization in the media, in their organizationaland technical structures. This process was however underminedwherever in German society anti-modernist ideology and practicespersisted or fought back.     

Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.     

Not Just a 'Dating Game': Origins of the Holocaust at Auschwitz in the Light of Witness Testimony

Historians now view Auschwitz as marginal to the origins ofthe Holocaust. In a surprising volte-face from a generationago, Historians now accept what can be called a ‘transformationnarrative’. That is, most accounts cast Auschwitz, notas first mover, but as late comer to the destruction of theEuropean Jews. This fits a much larger historiographical movementattributing the Final Solution to a local initiative withina disorganized, even ‘debureaucratized’ German state.Once again, this departs completely from, say, Raul Hilbergor Hannah Arendt, who defined the Holocaust as a crime uniqueto modern, organized society. Thus, in the case of Auschwitz,what some have come to ridicule as the ‘dating game’—thealmost obsessive attempt to identify a precise microchronologyof the final solution—has larger implications. It cutsto the heart of whether we see the Holocaust as a crime of amodern, dynamic industrial state or as a haphazard initiative. This article uses testimony from the three most relevant professionalgroups that built the genocidal factories of Auschwitz to reassessthe current consensus. Contrary to the ‘transformationnarrative’, little evidence supports the argument thatthe SS and its independent contractors were somehow divorcedfrom efforts to mechanize genocide from Minsk to Lublin to Oswiecimin the autumn of 1941. The testimony as a whole—drawnfrom civilian managers, SS architects, and prisoner-engineers—leaveslittle doubt that the new crematoria of Birkenau were intendedfrom the beginning (that is, from October 1941) as gas chambers.The ‘transformation narrative’, ironically enough,finds support in only one account: the internally contradictoryand almost desperate testimony given by one former SS architectat his own trial. To put a fine point on it, the ‘transformationnarrative’ hews most closely to a dubious defence narrativegiven by a perpetrator, in which neither his lawyers nor hisfellow defendants placed much credence.     

'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).     

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.     

Stirring Resistance from Moscow: The German Communists of Czechoslovakia and Wireless Propaganda in the Sudetenland, 1941-1945

This is a study of the radio propaganda campaign targeted atthe Sudetenland from the USSR from November 1941 to May 1945.Under the supervision of the Czechoslovak communist party andthe Comintern, the broadcasts were composed and conducted bySudeten German communists stationed first in Ufa and then inMoscow. At first, on the basis of limited information, theystrove simply to divide Sudeten Germans at home from the Nazirégime. But from May 1942 they stepped up their appealfor active resistance alongside that of their Czech ‘brothers’in the Protectorate. Through 1943 the appeal remained positive,assuring all German anti-fascists that they would be secureand treated equally in a future Czechoslovak state. By 1944,however, the message subtly altered in tune with Moscow's decisionto expel most Sudeten Germans. The broadcasts failed to spellthis out, but tried to warn their listeners of what might happenif they did not resist. In reality, though many in the Sudetenlandwere disillusioned with Nazism, the level of active resistanceseems to have been small and the broadcasts probably had a minimaleffect. Nevertheless, they alarmed the Nazi authorities andsome of the propaganda arguments certainly matched the growinganxieties of many Sudeten Germans. By 1944 the Sudeten communistbroadcasters themselves were divided over what tone to adopt.Some still felt a certain Sudeten allegiance and vainly resisteda policy line based on presumed Sudeten ‘collective guilt’.The majority bowed before the official, more critical line,accepting that most Sudeten Germans would be expelled afterthe war. The article seeks for the first time to probe the mindsetof Sudeten German communists, and to set this alongside thatof their target audience in the wartime Sudetenland.     

The Liberal Party and Patriotism in Early Twentieth Century Britain

Many historians have highlighted the role played by ‘languagesof patriotism’ in the political appeal of the BritishConservative Party in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The present article engages with this debate by pointing tothe fact that the Liberals, in the Edwardian period at least,could also articulate patriotic languages That this was thecase is demonstrated by an examination of Liberal attitudesto the Education Act of 1902, the tariff reform controversy,and the issue of the ‘land question’. The widelyheld view that the Conservatives enjoyed a complete monopolyon patriotism is called into doubt. Furthermore, this articlecontends that the Liberal Party's use of patriotic rhetoricprovides a new means of making sense of their policies in thisperiod. These policies, it is suggested, cannot simply be understoodas expressive of a ‘new Liberal’ system of thoughtincreasingly influenced by collectivist ideas ^*I would like to thank Jon Parry for his very many helpful commentsand suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. The researchpresented here was assisted by the financial support of Christ'sCollege, Cambridge, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board.     

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.     

DDR Museum Berlin

In the summer of 2006 a new permanent exhibition on East Germanhistory opened its doors on the banks of the river Spree, justa frog's jump away from the Berliner Dom and the slowly disappearingPalast der Republik. The DDR Museum¹ sets out to show all facetsof life and growing up in the German Democratic Republic inbasement premises measuring just 400m². The exhibition is composed of seventeen thematic areas, rangingfrom earnest topics such as ‘border’, ‘statesecurity’ and ‘construction’ to the more diverting‘fashion’, ‘consumer goods’ and ‘holidays’.The whole space is designed as a miniature pre-fabricated housingdevelopment, the facades of which incorporate display cabinetsand drawers inviting visitors to explore their contents. Eachthematic area is given roughly the same space, and consequentlythe GDR's dozen or so popular bands get about as much room asthe Stasi.     

The Tax Threshold: Policy, Principles, and Poverty

In the absence of an independent poverty standard, postwar Britishgovernments have tended to use current, politically determinedsocial security scales (from Unemployment Assistance in the1930s to Income Support today) as their definition of minimallyadequate income levels, commonly known as an ‘officialpoverty line’. A basic principle of taxation since thedays of Adam Smith, however, has been that incomes below theminimum income required for socially defined necessities shouldbe free of tax. The personal tax allowance which determinesthe income tax-paying threshold thus also provides a practicaldefinition of such an official poverty line. Royal Commissionsand official committees since the nineteenth century have endorsedSmith's principle, but it only acquired major political significanceafter the Second World War when income tax began to affect lowearners, particularly after the 1960s when poverty was ‘rediscovered’in the UK. In spite of this potential coincidence of purpose,a review of evidence and interviews with officials shows thatthere has been no co-ordination of policy between the Treasuryand Inland Revenue responsible for determining the level ofthe tax allowances, and the Social Security ministries responsiblefor the minimum benefit scales. The tax threshold has consequentlycontinued to be determined by considerations of political economyand administration and not by the alleviation of poverty. ^* This paper is part of a larger project on concepts of povertyand need in British income maintenance systems, chiefly the‘Assistance’ schemes which ran from 1934 to 1966.I am grateful to the many people who have helped with the project,regrettably too numerous to name here. I am particularly indebtedto Sir Norman Price and Sir Kenneth Stowe, James Meade, DellaNevitt, and). Leonard Nicholson for information on the tax issues,and want to record my thanks to them and to Fran Bennett, JohnHills, Chris Pond, and Adrian Sinfield, and especially RodneyLowe, as well as participants in seminars at the Universitiesof Edinburgh and Essex, and in Budapest, for their advice onthis paper.     

The Reception of Sir Edward Elgar 1918-c.1934: A Reassessment

It is generally believed that the reputation of Sir Edward Elgarexperienced a disastrous reversal of fortune after the GreatWar. This has conventionally been explained by the changingmusical tastes of the public and by a postwar reaction againstthe unappealingly ‘Edwardian’ character of Elgar'smusic. Both claims, I argue, have been exaggerated. Examiningevidence from concert programmes, gramophone record sales, andBBC broadcasts, this article demonstrates that Elgar continuedto enjoy estimable popularity after 1918. The article also considersthe way in which Elgar came to be seen as an archetype of ‘Englishness’and ‘Edwardianism’ in music. With a legacy of virulentattacks on the composer's ‘complacency’ and ‘jingoism’,critical attention by the 1930s had been refocused onto a perceivedrural nostalgia within Elgar's music. This atavism complementedinterwar visions of the Edwardian period as a prelapsarian ‘goldenage’. The implications of these changing perspectiveson Elgar are twofold. They can be seen to have laid the foundationsfor our ‘mature’ understanding of Elgar's life andwork; and they suggest that our views of the interwar reactionagainst the past might require profound and wide-ranging revision. ^*I am grateful to Professor Hugh Cunningham, Dr Peter Martland,and Dr David Turley for their comments on an earlier versionof this article.