A Very Moderate Socialist Indeed? R. H. Tawney and Minimum Wages

R. H. Tawney has been placed alongside G. D. H. Cole and HaroldLaski as one of the most important contributors to British socialistthought this century. But, on the issue of poverty wages, Tawneywas circumspect and conventional. In supporting such a modestreform as the 1909 Trade Boards Act, he was concerned with pragmaticconsiderations. His two studies of chainmaking and tailoring,funded by the Ratan Tata foundation and carried out at the LondonSchool of Economics, show him to be more concerned with moderate(and, in his opinion, workable) policies rather than radicalideas. In order to prove the boards a success, Tawney exaggeratedtheir advantages. It can be argued that what was required toend low pay was not industry-based trade boards, but a nationalminimum wage based on an agreed living income. Whilst Tawneyrejected Beatrice and Sidney Webb's national minimum wage asbeing overly based at the subsistence level, he also dismisseda more generous minimum on the grounds that it might be abovewhat an individual trade could bear. Although Tawney's ideaswere highly influential, they were an inadequate guide to solutionsto the problems of low pay in the twentieth century.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF DRESSEL 1 AMPHORAE IN NORTHWEST EUROPE

The dating and distribution of the trade in Italian wine to northwest Europe in the last two centuries BC is discussed. The previously recorded Atlantic emphasis is shown to be a product of differential research; many new finds in north-eastern France, the Benelux countries, Germany and Switzerland are documented but finds are absent from 'Germanic' areas. The trade may start in the later second century BC, and around the middle of the first century BC there appears to be an increase in the availability of wine in non-maritime Gaul and eastern England, possibly at the expense of the Atlantic routes. The debut of the trade in Spanish wine to north-west Europe is discussed. Attention is briefly drawn to the importance of the revised distribution both to cross-Channel links between Belgic Gaul and Britain and to the difference between 'Celts' and 'germans' and the idea of a 'Nordwestblock'.     

BRONZE AGE CHILDHOOD MIGRATION OF INDIVIDUALS NEAR STONEHENGE,REVEALED BY STRONTIUM AND OXYGEN ISOTOPE TOOTH ENAMEL ANALYSIS*

Contrasting lifestyles are recorded by the isotope composition of Bronze Age Beaker people (c. 2500–2000 bc ) from three burial sites (Boscombe Down, Normanton Down and the ditch around Stonehenge) at or near to the Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire, southern England. Seven individuals (three adults, a sub‐adult, two juveniles and an infant) were recovered from a single grave at Boscombe Down. Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel from two teeth (a premolar and third molar) from each of three of the adults in this grave (referred to as Boscombe Bowmen) show that they had all shared a pattern of mobility and migration during their lives. The three adult males spent their early childhood (as represented by data from the premolar teeth) in an area with a radiogenic ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope signature of around 0.7135. They each then moved, during early adolescence (as represented by the third molar results), to a less radiogenic area, where they acquired an ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signature of around 0.7112. This implies that they must then have travelled to the Stonehenge area of Wiltshire at a later time in their lives. Wales provides the closest area with rocks that supply suitable ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios and δ¹⁸O isotope compositions for these individuals, although other areas of Palaeozoic rock, such as Scotland and parts of Europe, cannot be ruled out. Enamel from the two juveniles from the Boscombe Down burial yields ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of 0.7098 and 0.7099, and strontium concentrations for both of 55 ppm. The very close match of the data for the two juveniles supports the possibility that they were raised in the same environment. The difference in strontium isotope data between the juveniles and three adult males described above shows that the children did not come from the same homeland as the adults with whom they share a grave. The two adult males from the single burials at Normanton Down, and from Stonehenge itself, had static lifestyles and show no evidence of migration, in contrast to the Boscombe Bowmen. Their oxygen and strontium data are consistent with a childhood in the Stonehenge area.     

REVISIONISM IN SOVIET HISTORY

This essay is an account of the “revisionism” movement of the 1970s and 1980s in Soviet history, analyzing its challenge to the totalitarian model in terms of Kuhnian paradigm shift. The focus is on revisionism of the Stalin period, an area that was particularly highly charged by the passions of the Cold War. These passions tended to obscure the fact that one of the main issues at stake was not ideological but purely disciplinary, namely a challenge by social historians to the dominance of political history. A similar challenge, this time against the dominance of social history on behalf of cultural history, was issued in the 1990s by “post‐revisionists.” Although I was a participant in the battles of the 1970s, the essay is less a personal account than a case‐based analysis of the way disciplinary orthodoxies in the social sciences and humanities are established and challenged, and why this happens when it does. In the case of Soviet history, I argue that new data and external events played a surprisingly small role, and generational change a large one.