The Catholic Neoconservative Misreading of John Paul II's Centesimus Annus Revisited

ABSTRACT

In the twilight of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholic theologians and journalists who identified as members of the neoconservative political movement crafted a narrative of John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus as a representing a sea-change in Catholic social teaching. In this neoconservative reading, the Catholic Church embraced a specifically American style of late twentieth century laissez-faire capitalism. However, an examination of Centesimus Annus reveals that the text is consonant with the teaching of twentieth century popes. What is more, recent publications enable us to get a clearer view of how neoconservatives were able to craft their narrative of the encyclical.     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

George III and Parliament*

Circumstances were auspicious when George III came to the throne in 1760, but soon his political actions were much criticized and he was accused from early in his reign until well into the 20th century of weakening the independence of parliament and undermining the constitution. Some contemporaries did defend him and these views received powerful support from Sir Lewis Namier and his followers in the 20th century. Both interpretations have their flaws, however, because of the failure to recognize the profound changes in the context in which George acted over his long reign and the subtle changes that occurred in Britain's unwritten constitution over that half century. By examining how the king appointed and dismissed ministers, sought to influence the composition of both houses of parliament, and endeavoured to shape government policy, this article seeks to revise our understanding of the king's relations with parliament and the constitution and to relocate our overall assessment of him between those offered by his many critics and defenders both during his reign and long afterwards.     

MANUSCRIPT XXXIV: ‘The feelings of friendship which We have always entertained’: Fragments of Tongan–Hawaiian Relations, 1880–8

ABSTRACT

After the Hawaiian Kingdom had played an important part as a model for Tonga's transition to a modern constitutional monarchy from the 1850s to 1870s, Tonga's government attempted to reconnect with Hawai‘i in the 1880s by suggesting a friendship treaty between the two kingdoms but then failed to follow through, despite Hawaiian enthusiasm for the project. Correspondence in the Hawai‘i State Archives, hitherto unacknowledged by historians, documents these late 19th-century fragments of Hawaiian–Tongan relations.     

George VI in cartoons: the king vanishes

ABSTRACT

This article examines the depiction of George VI in cartoons. These important hybrid journalistic/artistic forms reflect a subtle shift in understandings of the monarchy, from emphasising the individual personality of the incumbent (e.g. Edward VIII), towards a focus on the crown as an impersonal institution, symbolic of Britishness. Prince Albert’s low profile prior to his accession continued as a vehicle for the new manner of imagining the monarch in cartooning. Symbols of office, national and imperial allegories of monarchy, became more common in cartoons than depictions of George’s own features. Comparison to non-British cartoons underscores the findings of the research.     

Norman Gash and the Making of Mr Secretary Peel

In May 1961, the firm of Longmans published the first volume of Norman Gash's monumental life of Sir Robert Peel. Mr Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel before 1830 was hailed at the time as a landmark and has proved surprisingly durable as an interpretation of Peel's early life and formation. This essay is concerned with locating Gash's work within its political, biographical, and historiographical context. It begins by considering the reaction of Peel family members to Gash's biography, before tracing the antecedents of his historical preoccupations and intellectual development in the years leading up to the publication of Mr Secretary Peel. It presents a wide range of new evidence relating to Gash's life and emergence as a political and parliamentary historian, drawing upon sources which have come to light in the decade since his death in May 2009.