The British Parliamentary Labour Party and the Government of Ireland Act 1920

Immediately after the First World War the British Labour Party was forced to reconsider its relationship with an increasingly militant Irish nationalism. This reassessment occurred at the same time as it was becoming a major political and electoral force in post‐war Britain. The political imperative from the party's perspective was to portray itself as a responsible, moderate and patriotic alternative governing party. Thus it was fearful of the potential negative impact of too close an association with, and perceived sympathy for, extreme Irish nationalism. This explains the party's often bewildering changes in policy on Ireland at various party conferences in 1919 and 1920, ranging from support for home rule to federalism throughout the United Kingdom to ‘dominion home rule’ as part of a wider evolving British Commonwealth to adopting outright ‘ self‐determination’ for a completely independent Ireland outside both United Kingdom and empire. On one aspect of its Irish policy, however, the party was adamant and united – its opposition to the partition of Ireland, which was the fundamental principle of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Bill of 1920 which established Northern Ireland. Curiously, that aspect of Labour's Irish policy was never discussed in the party at large. All the running was made by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the house of commons in 1920. The PLP's outright opposition to the bill acted as balm throughout the wider party, binding together the confusing, and often contradictory, positions promulgated on the long‐term constitutional future of Ireland and its relationship with Britain.     

COEVOLUTIONARY CONTRADICTIONS: PROSPECTS FOR A RESEARCH PROGRAMME ON SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Insights from social system–environmental system coevolutionary thought experiments are abstract, mind opening, and can only be conveyed by leading readers through the experiment themselves. Undertaking applied coevolutionary analyses requires one to bound processes and fix some of the categories, contrary to the nature of the broad, opening nature of coevolution itself. Being conscious of these contradictions makes it difficult to engage in a sustained research programme or form a community of coevolutionary scholars. In this article we engage with the epistemological tensions of conducting coevolutionary research and put forward tentative strategies for managing them.     

Richard Oastler,Toryism, Radicalism and the Limitations of Party,c.1807–46

Richard Oastler (1789–1861), the immensely popular and fiery orator who campaigned for factory reform and for the abolition of the new poor law in the 1830s and 1840s, has been relatively neglected by political historians. Few historians, however, have questioned his toryism. As this article suggests, labelling Oastler an ‘ultra‐tory’ or a ‘church and state tory’ obscures more than it reveals. There were also radical strands in Oastler's ideology. There has been a tendency among Oastler's biographers to treat him as unique. By comparing Oastler with other tories – Sadler, Southey, and the young Disraeli – as well as radicals like Cobbett, this article locates him much more securely among his contemporaries. His range of interests were much broader (and more radical) than the historiographical concentration on factory and poor law reform suggests. While there were periods when Oastler's toryism (or radicalism) was more apparent, one of the most consistent aspects of his political career was a distaste for party politics. Far from being unique or a maverick, Oastler personified the pervasive anti‐party sentiments held by the working classes, which for all the historiographical attention paid to popular radicalism and other non‐party movements still tends to get lost in narratives of the ‘rise of party’.     

ENACTMENTS OF URBAN NATURE: CONSIDERING INDUSTRIAL RUINS

Post‐industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structures and organization. This article discusses the question of how interactions between urbanity and nature are articulated and enacted within the redesign of industrial ruins. The socio‐ecological configurations produced in this process include multiple realities about nature that become fragmented and contested in practice described by various authors using different concepts which are viewed critically. The concept of urban nature is elaborated because it enables one to problematize more‐than‐human entities in making particular commons and can reveal some interactions between semiotic and ecological systems. Theoretical approaches are illustrated by a case study of initiatives taking place in the former heating plant of Tallinn. The study indicates that engagement with nature has evolved through abstract vitalization visions of the ruins and moved to tactile encounters of experimental gardening. The evolutionary aspects of nature were used as guidelines for enabling weak structures of creativity, and the rationalities behind the experimental garden got contested and partly refocused over time.     

ARCHAEOMETRICAL INVESTIGATION OF SICILIAN EARLY BYZANTINE GLASS: CHEMICAL AND SPECTROSCOPIC DATA*

A series of early Byzantine glasses, recovered in Ganzirri (Sicily, Italy), was analysed for major, minor and trace elements. All the analysed fragments were found to be natron-based silica–lime glass. Concerning minor and trace elements, the samples can be divided into two groups: glass with high Fe, Ti and Mn contents ( HIMT glass) and glass with low levels of Fe, Ti and Mn. These results, strictly in agreement with literature data for glass of the Mediterranean region, can be interpreted as a consequence of the wide trade network established in this region and of the intense circulation of raw glass and artefacts from different Mediterranean areas. X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies at Fe and Mn K-edges, performed on HIMT glass, indicate that Fe is in the oxidized form while Mn is in the reduced form.     

INVESTIGATION OF THE CONTENT OF ANCIENT TIBETAN METALLIC BUDDHA STATUES BY MEANS OF NEUTRON IMAGING METHODS

Many important cultural and religious objects from Asia consist of outer metallic shapes, usually bronze, which fully enclose inner contents made of organic materials such as wood, bark, paper, textile, plants and others. Bronze and other metallic materials, such as copper and silver, are generally more transparent to neutrons than to X‐rays. However, organic materials are less transparent to neutrons than to X‐rays and therefore organic materials, enclosed by metallic materials, can be made visible with neutrons. Therefore, neutron imaging (radiography and tomography) was found to be an ideal tool for the inspection of objects that consist of metal outside and organic materials inside. This has been successfully demonstrated here with four metallic Tibetan Buddha statues, providing archaeometry with a powerful new tool. The first successful applications of this novel technique are described in this article. Further possible and useful applications of neutron imaging of cultural objects are outlined.     

Mapping international flows of electronic waste

In this paper, we map the international trade in electronic waste (e‐waste). We quantify the directions and magnitude of this trade at the global scale and examine the utility of the pollution haven hypothesis for explaining the observed trade patterns. Our results demonstrate four key findings: the international trade in e‐waste is a more complex story than being one about ‘rich’ countries dumping waste in ‘poor’ countries; the trade in e‐waste is highly regionalized, with intra‐regional trade accounting for most of the total trade flows; the pollution haven hypothesis is an important, but partial, explanation of observed trade patterns; and there is a need to conceptualize the trade and traffic of e‐waste as open ended and contingent processes facilitated by situated practices of wasting and valuing that rely on geographic difference and mobility for the exchanges between the domains of waste and value to occur.     

SCIENTIFIC CHARACTERIZATION OF THE POHORJE MARBLES,SLOVENIA

As a former part of the great Roman Empire, Slovenia has many archaeological sites featuring buildings and objects entirely or partly constructed from marble whose provenance is doubtful. In Slovenia, the most probable source of such marble is the Pohorje Mountains. For the purpose of supporting further provenance studies, these marbles are fully scientifically characterized. The techniques used are petrographic and geochemical analysis, stable isotope ratio analysis and EPR spectroscopy. The results show that the Pohorje marbles are highly heterogeneous in both their isotopic and geochemical parameters as well as grain sizes. The parameters of the different Pohorje marble outcrops are compared between themselves and with the parameters of known ancient quarries in the Mediterranean and Austria. The use of a multi‐technique approach with combined parameters allows the best possible discrimination.