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In the early cold war, the British government founded a voluntary civil defence service designed to protect the nation and the population from the effects of enemy attack in the event of war. Although civil defence was a site of massive voluntary effort—around 500,000 people joined—it was also considered a ‘failure’. This article examines the propaganda utilized to recruit these volunteers in the ‘atomic age’, and argues that the messages used reveal a range of concerns about the conflict, patriotism, and voluntarism in the early post-war years that existed in tension. In particular, it analyses the tensions between duty and service on the one hand, and leisure on the other, symptomatic of the wider debates surrounding citizenship and participation in the period. It also explains the importance of the Second World War and the gendered perceptions of civil defence in attempting to mobilize potential recruits. The article concludes that civil defence propaganda succeeded in mobilizing significant levels of participation, but was perceived as a failure due to an understanding of patriotic citizenship rooted in the cultural context of the Second World War. In a period of cultural change, propaganda began to emphasize leisure as well as duty, but struggled to reconcile the two messages in a way capable of convincing recruits in large enough numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the end of the First World War, the British government put into operation a Free Passage Scheme for ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their dependants to emigrate to the colonies and dominions of the Empire. This scheme was driven by a complex network of interlinked beliefs and policies concerning both the relationship between the metropole and the Empire, and the perceived necessity for social stability in Britain and in the dominions and colonies. This article examines the Free Passage Scheme, paying particular attention to the ways in which it was envisaged as a means of restoring a gendered balance of the population in Britain, where young women outnumbered young men at the end of the war, and in the dominions, where men outnumbered women, and was also seen as a way of emigrating women whose wartime work experiences were understood to be in conflict with gendered identities in the post-war period. The article argues that the Free Passage Scheme needs to be understood as gendered, as it envisaged the transformation of female members of the auxiliary wartime services into domestic servants for the Dominions. The scheme’s failure, it is argued, prefigures the failure of the far larger Empire Settlement Act of 1922 to emigrate large numbers of British women as domestic servants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses British policy towards Iraq during the period following the Second World War until the 1958 Iraqi revolution. Using British archival sources it demonstrates how Britain covertly tried to stem the rise of communist and nationalist anti-imperialist sentiments in Iraq through an insistence on employing ill-fitting anti-communist propaganda designed as a Cold War weapon with which to counter Soviet influence. Failing to appreciate the level of indigenous politicization, because of their own rigid ideas about the nature of the 'Iraqi mind', British officers were incapable of devising local responses to the growing threat of anti-imperialism, instead inadvertently handing over the initiative to Iraqi political groups to set the agenda. In this way Britain gradually lost the battle for hearts and minds in Iraq despite maintaining a huge propaganda apparatus in the country and the wider region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sale of buses by the Leyland Motor Company to Cuba proved contentious, not only in the realm of Anglo-American relations, but also in the domestic sphere of a behind the scenes inter-departmental disagreement within the British government. This is because the bus exports pitted political against economic interests at the height of the Cold War and in the midst of a British export drive. As Her Majesty's Government readily recognized, Washington was particularly sensitive over any issue related to Cuba, which by 1963 was firmly in the communist orbit of the Soviet bloc and which the United States was determined to isolate economically through the application of a trade blockade. The decision to approve the sales came at the end of the Macmillan and Kennedy administrations, and clouded the short-lived partnership of Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The bus exports became an election issue in the campaigns of both leaders in 1964, assuming a political significance that belied the buses' seemingly innocuous function and outward appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a roundtable of reflections discussing the contributions and potential trajectory of British historical studies from scholars in the United States and Canada. Questions addressed within the section include the status of teaching 20th-century British history and issues at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the methodology and historiography used by North American scholars, and the influence of imperialism and globalization in the examination of 20th-century history. Multiple entries also reflect on the individual accomplishments of the authors as historians within the field.

The article discusses the political efforts of American and British labor movements during World War II, focusing particularly on the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The author explores the impact of national foreign policies upon the labor movements and considers whether national interests or the interests of the trade unions are considered most important by the unions. Other subjects considered include the trade union movement, internationalism, the International Labor Organization, international labor standards, interactions between the TUC, AFL, and the Soviet International Federation of Trade Unions, and union leaders Sir Walter Citrine and William Green.

The author comments upon various reports published within this special issue on the history of labor unions and foreign relations, including one by Elizabeth McKillen on labor during World War I, one by Geert Van Goethem on government policies regarding American and British labor movements during World War II, and one by Daniel Garcia on class relations within the U.S. armed forces at the end of World War II. Some of the subjects explored include the public opinion of the working-class in the U.S. regarding foreign policy, the study of international labor movements, and the inability of marginalised groups within the U.S. to influence political decision making.

In contemporary culture, soldiers held as prisoners-of-war (POWs) or as hostages are considered at significant risk of mental illness, in particular post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This assumption contrasts with the psychiatric orthodoxy of the First World War when it was concluded in both Britain and Germany that POWs were protected against ‘war neurosis’. Although ‘barbed wire disease’ was identified during time of captivity, post-release effects were not recognized. The repatriation of ‘protected’ POWs in 1943 prompted a reassessment of the psychological impact of imprisonment when servicemen of previous good character began to behave aberrantly. Rehabilitation programmes were designed to enable soldiers to re-adapt to service or civilian roles. Difficulties of adjustment were cast in social and cognitive terms, and corrective measures were occupational and educational. Psychiatric disorders found in POWs were explained in terms of a pre-conflict predisposition to, or a history of, mental illness. However, retrospective studies of veteran POWs have found a high prevalence of PTSD. A change in attitudes is explored in relation to the advance of medical terminology into the territory of emotions and the attribution of pathological processes to self-recovering mental states. The reclassification of the effects of imprisonment implies that diagnoses in military psychiatry are culturally determined and can be understood only if they are placed in a context that includes changing beliefs about mental illness, the formal development of the psychiatric profession and the immediate needs of the armed forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the articulation and reflection of Britishness by leaders and members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1960s. Members of CND believed that Britain had a distinctive world role which was founded on, and informed by, their morality. This morality, like the British character it helped to define, was not static but ever changing. CND was thus not simply reflecting existing ideas and attitudes to Britishness—although it did do this particularly in relation to domestic British values—but also wanted to be at the forefront in helping to define what British morality should be. CND thus articulated a Britishness that was both domestically conservative and internationally progressive. This article explores how attitudes towards Britain’s international role and the domestic identity of Britons informed one another through CND's conception of a uniquely British morality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the 2009 Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture, delivered by Peter Hennessy, a professor of British history at Queen Mary, University of London. The speech focuses on British government documents related to the Cold War, noting that many were released by the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) to the British Public Record Office (PRO) under the "Waldegrave Initiative" campaign. The 1970 British "Government War Book" and policies for military mobilization are explored.

The article focuses on diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Great Britain during the Berlin Crisis of 1961-1962. The author argues that American foreign policy was influenced by the personal relationships between Anglo-American politicians, diplomats, and other officials that went beyond the interactions between British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Other notable people discussed include British ambassador to the U.S. David Ormsby-Gore, U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk, British foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home, and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. The American two-part policy involving diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union and the buildup of NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) conventional weaponry are considered.

British foreign policy in the 1930s is often considered utilizing the paradigm of appeasement. This, however, is an inadequate and retrospective tool, as it narrows the range of issues that can be dealt with and analyses them only as they can be considered to be pro- or anti-appeasement. Looking at the career of Sir Orme Sargent, one of the most important men in the Foreign Office during this period, it becomes clear that many of the major decisions of the period were taken in the light of whether they were consistent with the principles of the new international order established in 1919 rather than whether they contributed to the ‘appeasement’ of such countries as Germany, Italy and Japan. It also reveals that there were sharply different opinions in the Foreign Office about such matters, particular with regard to how to square France’s desire for security with Germany’s insistence on being treated as an equal, whether France’s network of alliances (particularly with Soviet Russia) damaged or enhanced Britain’s own security and whether the latter could be achieved by means of collective action within the precepts of the League of Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines unpublished private letters exchanged in 1938-1939 between British diplomat Geoffrey Thompson and U.S. ambassador to Spain Claude Bowers for their insights into the diplomatic relationship between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the months before the outbreak of World War II. Differences between the United States and Great Britain over how to confront fascism in Europe are discussed, as are the Munich pact between Great Britain and Germany, and the British policy of appeasement.

Few historians have attempted to discuss British medicine, health and welfare policies, or the biological sciences around 1900 without due reference to the concept of degeneration. Most tie public concern with degeneration to a specific set of military recruiting figures, which stated that of 11,000 would-be volunteers in Manchester, 8,000 had to be turned away due to physical defects. Further, most histories point out that these figures had a direct influence on the formation of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration in 1904. With its absolute denial of hereditary decline, the 1904 Report acts as a denouement of degenerationist fears in Britain. No historian has sought to contextualize these recruiting figures: Where did they come from? How did Manchester react? What role did that city play in the subsequent 1904 Report? Far from being the epitome of urban decay, the 1904 Report repeatedly hails Manchester as a glowing example of innovative urban reform. This article contextualizes the recruiting figures and explores how Manchester had been tackling the three key problems of Physical Deterioration-diet, exercise, and alcohol-for thirty years prior to the 1904 Report. By discussing Manchester, a new understanding of degeneration is outlined; as slogan, rhetorical tool, and urban legend, degeneration was largely feminized and domesticated. Military/masculine problems such as the recruiting figures were the exception, not the rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the diplomatic mission of United States Colonel Bonner Fellers to Cairo, Egypt in 1942 during World War II and the security breach that occurred with Fellers's communications back to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. The author highlights the relationship between the British and American governments in the security issues that involved massive amounts of intelligence concerning British troops in Africa being leaked to the Axis countries, particularly Germany. The author also draws attention to the special nature of the relationship between the U.S. and British governments.

This essay describes an art which, demonstrating a sense of moral duty and a will for social engagement, sought to contribute to the reconstruction of Britain following the 1939–45 war. Two models of theory and practice are distinguished in response to the potential of this moment: in the first, modern ideas about a synthesis of art and architecture (something approaching a ‘total work of art’) were consulted and revived in a British context; in the second, ideas were forged that established a new relationship between art works and their environment which maintained the link between art and architecture, yet did not imply an ultimate dissolution of one within the other. These two models are set within an historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the status of science in the mainstream of British culture in the interwar years. Examination of the writings of the biologists Charles Scott Sherrington and Julian S. Huxley; Language shared in common by biology and social or cultural commentary; Balancing of traditional values with scientific forms of understanding; Significance of biology and natural science in British culture.

Discusses the dissolution of the British Empire in the 1960s. Infrastructure of Malaya during the 1950s; Reason for the defeat of the Communist guerrillas by the British; Dominant and conflicting visions of Malaysia; Significance of the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia.

Examines the internal migration and growth of industrial community in Great Britain during the periods in between the two World Wars. How the internal migration raise tension between ethnic groups; City in Great Britain where most migrants flow into; Role of the state in the internal migration process.

Studies the formal attempt to establish a corporatist economy in Great Britain during the 1930s. Campaign for capitalist planning; Provisions of the proposed Self-Government for Industry Bill; Background on socio-economic conditions in the country during the 1930s; Justification of its proponents for a corporatist economy; Groups that espoused the campaign for industrial self-government; Controversy generated by the campaign; Philosophy for state intervention in business.

The article discusses the impact of the report on the Falkland Islands Review by Lord Oliver Franks in Great Britain. The parliamentary developments under the British government is evident due to this report because the committee warned against the exercise of hindsight in reaching judgments.. However, the reports implied the majority of the weaknesses of the government that need for a review of the Falkland Islands because the management of events should be monitored prior to the Argentinean capture of the islands had been agreed before the British repossession took place. To address the obstacles written in the review, the political committee struggled to make recommendations on the type of system to be used and to make changes in the legislative assembly.

The article presents information about socialist Ellen Wilkinson, Great Britain's Minister of Education between 1945 and 1947, and states that her work in this role was somewhat ineffective, including her push for equal opportunity for all children. Reasons for this include her own successful background affecting her views, the Ministry retaining control over Wilkinson's actions, and that the Labour party was not clear about its own position on educational issues.

An introduction to a section of the journal is presented in which the authors examine an article on twentieth century British voluntary organizations and an article on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in British civic life.

Britain's self-portrait as a democratic and paternalistic imperial nation was persistently undermined by the contradictory repercussions of racial divisiveness. The consequences of racism in both the metropole and in the colonies threatened the metropole-colonial relations so fundamental to British imperial sensibilities. Thus, government officials were involved throughout the war in repairing Britain's reputation with its imperial subjects. Using evidence from Colonial Office and Ministry of Information files, this article contributes to historical understanding of the empire's place in British national identity in the World War II years. It suggests the extent to which racism at "home" and in the colonies destabilized British efforts to bolster imperial loyalties that would persist into the post-war future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]