Cainozoic euphorbiacean wood from the Canning Basin,Western Australia

A new species of fossil wood is described, Bridelioxylon canningense Bamford & McLoughlin, belonging to the Phyllanthoideae group of the Euphorbiaceae. The woods occur in indurated sandstones and conglomerates preserved in palaeochannels incised into the Upper Permian Condren Sandstone in the Landrigan Cliffs, northern Canning Basin, Western Australia. Based on the presence of the dicotyledonous woods and the geomorphological setting of the palaeochannel, a Palaeogene age is suggested for the host rocks. This is the first record of fossil euphorbiacean wood in Australia; pollen has been previously recorded. The fossil wood is most closely comparable to extant members of Bridelia that currently occupy the warmer and wetter parts of Australia.     

The International Lenin School: A Response to Cohen and Morgan

This paper challenges the methods and conclusions of an articleon British students at the International Lenin School by GidonCohen and Kevin Morgan published in a recent issue of TwentiethCentury British History. It questions their model of relationsbetween the Comintern and its national affiliates, and theirassertion of the prominence and total nature of the Lenin Schoolas a control mechanism of the former over the latter. Afterdemonstrating the inadequacy of their data and methodology,it indicates significant deficiencies and omissions in theirhandling of qualitative evidence relevant to the influence ofthe school on its students. It concludes by showing that theauthors underestimate the scale and duration of the impact ofthe school's graduates upon the apparatus of the Communist Partyof Great Britain.     

'Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away'? The SDLP and the Failure of Northern Ireland's Sunningdale Experiment

This article examines the part played by the Social Democraticand Labour Party (SDLP) in both the making and the breakdownof the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. In particular, the articlelooks at the party's relations with the Irish government inthis period. Specifically, it considers the charge that theSDLP—by obliging the Irish government to support its approach—pushedunionist negotiators too far at Sunningdale, producing a settlementwhich was predetermined towards Irish reunification, and sowhich justified loyalist claims that ‘Dublin is just aSunningdale away’. The article draws on recently releasedarchival material to show how the SDLP was, to a significantdegree, able to dictate Dublin's policy on Northern Irelandin the early 1970s, suggesting that this led to a uniform andhighly ambitious agenda on the part of nationalist participantsat the Sunningdale conference. However, it also argues thatthis agenda was not realized, and that the deal made at Sunningdalewas not as favourable towards the SDLP as has sometimes beensuggested. Nonetheless, the article maintains that the dynamicrhetoric and perceived momentum of Irish nationalism—orchestratedlargely by the SDLP—served to distort that which was actuallyagreed, and in this helped to undermine unionist support forSunningdale.     

The politics of the public and private spheres: the High Court’s decision in Monis and the gendered privileging of free speech

The High Court of Australia’s decision in Monis v The Queen and Droudis v The Queen concerned whether Monis and Droudis’s use of the postal service to send offensive letters warranted the constitutional protection of the implied freedom of political communication. The outcome was a split decision: the three men judges found for Monis and Droudis, and the three women judges against. We argue that this decision was significant because it draws attention to the law’s key role in framing political understandings of the nature of and demarcation between public and private spheres. The Court’s interpretations concerning how we should understand and apply the foundational relationships binding the state, the individual, and the public and private spheres in the twenty-first century highlights the gendered complexities of the politics shaping those relationships. It also highlights the gendered privileging of what sort of speech should be exempted from the law’s immediate purview, and in so doing, further reveals the masculinism upon which Australia’s constitutional framework rests.     

Nogoa nom. nov., a replacement name for Cometia McLoughlin

MCLOUGHLIN, S. June 2012. Nogoa nom. nov., a replacement namefor Cometia McLoughlin. Alcheringa, 279–281. ISSN 0311-5518.

A junior homonym was detected among the Rigbyaceae (Glossopteridales). The replacement name Nogoa is here proposed for Cometia McLoughlin, 1990 McLoughlin, S. 1990c. “Palaeobotany and palaeoenvironments of Permian strata, Bowen Basin”. 312Queensland: PhD thesis, University of Queensland. (unpublished) [Google Scholar] with a single included species, Nogoa biloba (McLoughlin) comb. nov.

Stephen McLoughlin [steve.mcloughlin@nrm.se], Department of Paleobotany, Swedish Natural History Museum, Box 50007, S-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden. Received 29.9.2011, revised 10.10.2011.