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This analysis explores British perceptions and roles regarding the negotiation of the West German-Soviet Moscow treaty of 1970. Whilst supportive of West German Ostpolitik, Britain has received a very marginal role in the historiography of the treaty. By exploring the consultation process in the so-called Bonn Group of the United States, Britain, France, and West Germany, this exegesis explains that Britain played a leading role in building consensus and forming schemes to resolve the issue of the treatment of Quadripartite Rights and Responsibilities concerning Berlin in the Moscow treaty package. As background, this essay also explains the policies of the Harold Wilson's Labour government and Edward Heath's Conservative government regarding European détente in Europe, including West German Ostpolitik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only David Lloyd George of the Big Four survived to play a major role in early post-war diplomacy, remaining as British premier until October 1922. This analysis assesses the development of his ideas and policies with particular reference to his war aims speech of 5 January 1918, his Peace Conference Fontainebleau Memorandum of 25 March 1919, and the paper handed to the French premier, Aristide Briand, at Cannes on 4 January 1922. John Maynard Keynes accused Lloyd George of being "rooted in nothing," but Edward House's grudging acknowledgement that "With all his faults, he is by birth, instinct and upbringing, a liberal" seems a fairer assessment. He attempted to put his ideas, based on self-determination, trade, disarmament, and a broad sense of what was just, into practice in his ambitious attempt to re-engage Germany and the Soviet Union into the mainstream of international politics at the 1922 Genoa Conference. By then his credibility with his French counterparts and Tories at home was much depleted. Furthermore, he neglected laying the tedious but necessary foundations on which to build his vision and the constraints of international and domestic politics thwarted his proposed panacea to post-war problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis charts the changes in British aid policy under the Margaret Thatcher government (1979-1990). In particular, it examines the impact of so-called neo-liberal ideology in overseas development strategy in an era where "structural adjustment"—aid in return for market-based reforms—became World Bank and International Monetary Fund orthodoxy. There is some evidence to show British increases in multilateral aid during the 1980s supported a neo-liberal aid policy. Bilateral aid policy, however, demonstrated a subordination of aid to foreign policy and a pro-business—not ideologically pro-market or neo-liberal—alignment. One of the results of these structural changes was the Pergau Dam scandal at the end of the Thatcher years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical pageants were important sites of popular engagement with the past in twentieth-century Britain. They took place in many places and sometimes on a large scale, in settings ranging from small villages to industrial cities. They were staged by schools, churches, professional organisations, women's groups and political parties, among others. This article draws on contemporary studies of heritage and performance to explore the blend of history, myth and fiction that characterised pageants, and the ways in which they both shaped and reflected the self-image of local communities. Pageants were important channels of popular education as well as entertainment and, although they are sometimes seen as backward-looking and conservative spectacles, this article argues that pageants could be an effective means of enlisting the past in the service of the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues and topics concerning the agreement between the U.S., Great Britain and the Soviet Union on the monitoring of nuclear weapons tests during a conference held on November 24, 1959 in Geneva, Switzerland. The negotiations among scientific experts has called for considerations on technical evidence concerning the discovery of underground explosions. In contrast to the success achieved by the international scientific community two years ago, renewed negotiations among scientific experts concerning the discovery of underground explosions have ended in deadlock and mutual recriminations. This paper highlights some of the factors that have led to the failure in Geneva.

BBC Radio feature programmes written by established literary figures in the mid-twentieth century enjoyed richly creative afterlives across many decades and in a variety of media--for example, in print, as commercial recordings, in theatre performance and on television--as well as in a succession of new productions on radio. This activity kept works alive in the public imagination beyond the ephemeral moment of first broadcast and, it is argued, contributed to the sense (for audiences past and scholars present) of an informal canon of literary radio features. This essay explores the intermedial afterlives of three such literary features--Sackville-West's The Rescue (1943), Mac- Neice's The Dark Tower (1946) and Thomas' Under Milk Wood (1954)--in order to demonstrate the significance of the form as a site for exploration of social issues, politics and cultural life. The essay concludes with a call for more wide-ranging attention to the protean feature form, including work that may not have persisted in the schedules, or had rich, intermedial afterlives, but that may still offer significant insights into the history of social, political and cultural life in mid-twentiethcentury Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on the Robert Menzies Lecture delivered by the author in London on 31 October 2017, provides a survey of Britain and Australia’s bilateral relationship from the 1930s to the present. In the earlier period particular attention is given to the role of Sir Robert Menzies. The relationship is examined in the light of Britain’s accession to the EEC/EU with reference to bilateral trade, security and global politics, and migration, with emphasis on strong people-to-people links. The author expresses hopes for renewed co-operation over free trade, a rules-based world outlook and links between universities in a post-Brexit world. He argues that although the bilateral relationship went through some troubled times in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it is now getting back to the natural strength that it deserves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses the work of Bernard Stiegler to understand how widespread digitisation has influenced the transmission of ephemeral and marginalised feminist histories and archives, using as a case study my experience of creating a low-budget feminist digital archive in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Women's Liberation Music Archive (WLMA). I explore how the WLMA benefitted from unique transmission conditions enabled by digitisation, namely widened access to recorded matter that had become inoperable within feminist communities, technically, socially and culturally. I then go on to examine two areas that pose both threats and possibilities for the sustainability of digital archives in the long term. The first issue relates to the position of low-financed digital archives within the volatile dynamics of change that propel the innovation-driven market economy. The second relates to metadata and how digital technologies present an opportunity to re-think the terms of categorisation used to describe information within networks of association and reference. Finally, I argue that acquiring the technical skills to take care of digital information will perform a key role ensuring digital archives can survive in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1946–1963, MI5 operated a South-East Asian regional headquarters in Singapore: Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE). This article responds to growing interest in theatre-level intelligence organisation and the importance of intelligence to Britain’s Cold War and decolonisation by examining the performance of SIFE. On the organisational level, SIFE was strongest when it remained wedded to its charter functions and closely adhered to the priorities of its principal consumer: the Commissioner-General for South-East Asia. Its assessments were influential in shaping decision-makers’ understandings of key regional developments, although this did not always translate into public policy. Lastly, SIFE enjoyed success in developing lasting liaison relationships to cement British influence, but failed to utilise these to improve its intake of raw intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines John Newsom’s contributions to non-fiction BBC radio and television coverage of education, poverty, and social disadvantage from 1934 to 1971. The correspondence and scripts concerning his BBC broadcasts for a domestic UK-based audience and an overseas audience are used as source material. Newsom is well known among educational historians as Chief Education Officer for Hertfordshire (1940−1957) and the chair of the Central Advisory Council for Education, which compiled the Newsom Report in 1963. He is associated with the aesthetic and cultural experience of pupils in the physical environment of their schools, rather than with the use of words and sound broadcast to encourage reflection amongst adult listeners on the experience of an educated nation. Newsom’s role in shaping the discussion of education on the airwaves and on screen has been excluded as a significant sphere for researchers. Broadcasting was the space in which Newsom and many other education officers and head teachers spoke most directly to the public and beyond their local realms of responsibility. This article argues that in some of his forays into broadcasting, Newsom was introduced as a stabilising influence on programmes with a subject matter, which it was feared, may have the potential to become too radical. From World War II onwards he acted as an advisor, an editor, and author of scripts and sometimes a chair or a participant in broadcast discussion on the subjects of education, democracy, and the unfolding of the 1944 Education Act. The article explores how despite many colleagues at the BBC being unimpressed with Newsom as a broadcaster, he maintained a sustained involvement in programmes for more than 30 years. The article identifies sensitive issues where Newsom’s choices were occasionally curtailed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Persia (Iran), the Tehran-based Defence Security Office was responsible for protecting from Nazi subversion and sabotage three potential strategic targets: the vital oilfields, pipelines, and refineries of Khuzistan; the Lend-Lease supply route between the Persian Gulf and the Soviet Union; and the security of the Persian polity itself. Against all odds, under the command of Lt Col E.L. ‘Joe’ Spencer, this small but effective British/Indian security-intelligence unit succeeded in neutralising the Nazi threat, in capturing all German operatives on Persian soil, and in maintaining the security of a territory five times the size of Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1920 and 1922, an Indian Christian called Sadhu Sundar Singh toured Britain. Widely renowned in the global Christian community in the interwar period, Singh was notorious for certain stories of miracles, for his appearance and for the ways in which he epitomised Eastern Christianity. Using Singh’s correspondence and a range of newspapers, this article argues that British audiences were attracted to Singh because of his appearance and ethnicity and because he conformed to stereotypes of essentialised Indian spirituality despite his Christian faith. It argues that the reception to Singh in Britain must be understood in relation to the perpetuation of Orientalist understandings of Indians and Indian religions in the interwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The modern kitchen was emblematic of a cold war obsession with household consumer durables as a measure of national progress. Its roots lay in a largely American idea of the ‘new household’ and the modern housewife. The article explores how television advertising in Britain played its part in helping to promote these co-joined aspects of the cross-Atlantic domestic ideal. In pursuing this argument, the article emphasises the way American domestic ideals took distinctive directions in Britain. Contributing to this adaptation of American ideals was a range of home-grown influences that shaped the remaking of the post-war home and women’s social role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government had played an important role during the 1950s and 1960s as a mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict, most notably through the development of Project Alpha between 1954 and 1956, and through the negotiation of United Nations Security Council resolution 242 in 1967. Between 1977 and 1979, British Prime Minister James Callaghan played a supporting role to US President Jimmy Carter as he negotiated the Camp David Accords of 1978. Callaghan adopted a pro-Israeli stance, cultivating close relations with the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and defending Begin’s position over key issues, particularly his reluctance to remove settlements from the occupied territories. In this respect Callaghan’s government departed from established British policy, even abstaining over United Nations Security Council resolution 446 in March 1979 which condemned continuing Israeli settlement activity. This resulted in damage to Britain’s relations with moderate Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour Government's decision to withdraw from Britain's overseas bases east of Suez in the 1960s had profound repercussions for British grand strategy. One of the last colonies to be evacuated was the port town of Aden, located on the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula. First seized by the East India Company on behalf of the British Empire in 1839, it became a Crown Colony almost a century later in 1937. By 1963, the British government had presided over Aden's entry into the fledgling Federation of South Arabia, a transitional body that was envisaged as a vehicle for independence. Drawing on the Labour's Party's archives, amongst a range of other sources, this article examines the shift in policy within the Labour government on the issue of Aden. It makes the case that, in contrast to the Conservative government's wholehearted support for Britain's tribal allies in South Arabia, Labour hedged its bets by balancing its policy off between the tribal rulers and the new radical nationalist opposition. By refusing to back the fledgling Federation government, Labour, instead, adopted a non-committal stance that would lead to greater strategic inertia in its policy towards the Middle East during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most complex issues facing British rule on the local municipal level towards the end of the Mandate period was the problem of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods. This question, which emerged with the outbreak of the 1936 disturbances, engaged the government thereafter until the end of the Mandate. The demand by the residents of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods for annexation to Tel Aviv – actually for municipal detachment from Jaffa – constituted the root of the problem. In this setting of the sharpening of relations between the authorities and the Jews and Arabs in 1945–1947, all three involved parties found themselves deeply immersed in it in the attempt to bring about its resolution. The annexation problem ceaselessly preoccupied the institutions of the Jewish Yishuv as a Zionist–Yishuv struggle of the highest order. This period gave rise to a series of unprecedented moves by the Jewish side, which were intended to influence the British government toward solving the problem. The article examines its development of the problem from the viewpoint of the three sides concerned in the years 1945–1947, with the focus on the policy line adopted by the Jewish side, its implications and its results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article approaches debates about how the history of the post-1945 English welfare state might be written. It argues that professionals' interventions on immigrant children can serve as a prism for understanding the crafting of the modern English welfare state. In this sense the article engages with the narrative concerning the resilience of a post-war British history that sees 1945 as a moment of profound rupture symbolised by the demise of Empire, the development of a universal welfare state, and the coming of mass immigration that brought with it social problems whose management presaged a distinctive British multiculturalism. Due to its influential impact on the development of immigrant education policies in England and because of its extensive education archive the article uses the Birmingham Local Education Authority (LEA) as an empirical and historical case. The significant British Nationality Act of 1948 and the Immigration Act of 1971 serve as demarcations of the period treated. The article concludes that the immigrant child and the child's background were consistently presented as educational problems and as the cause of both poor academic attainment and a more intangible unwillingness to assimilate. In this lens the crafting of the post-war English welfare state was a continuation of an imperial project shoring up imperial boundaries within as the former colonised appeared on English soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses female activism spanning the Empire and creating interconnected networks linking the local and global dimensions of Britain's imperial mission in an era of increasing uncertainty. The transition from empire to commonwealth and, ultimately, independence was marked by anti-colonial challenges from within Britain and in the colonies and threats to empire from international developments post-1918. This era also witnessed a more proactive role for women as both defenders and critics of empire who had an influence on shaping a new discourse of welfare and development, purportedly a ‘feminisation’ of empire. Continuities existed between female activism pre- and post-1918 but also significant differences as the late imperial era witnessed more nuanced and diverse interventions into empire affairs than the ‘maternalist imperial feminism’ of the era before the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the early years of Federal Union (FU), the leading British federalist association created in 1938. It sets out to demonstrate that FU members heavily disagreed about the economic powers of the future Federation and that these divisions weakened the appeal of the federalist cause. Archival evidence suggests the organisation shifted from economic neutrality, favoured by allegiance to nineteenth-century liberalism, which emphasized the benefits of free trade while keeping a minimum of centralized force in order to prevent interstate rivalries from boiling over into war, to a radical advocacy of supranational planning, aimed at enforcing social rights and welfare entitlements granted to all the citizens of the member-states. This swing to the Left had several implications, including abandoning the prospect of an Anglo-American union, developing a more sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet system, and breaking ties with influential members of the British establishment who had initially lent support to FU, such as Lionel Curtis and William Beveridge. By pointing at the tension between the models of ‘Federation Pure and Simple’ and ‘Federation Plus’, this article also highlights the supple and muddled nature of federalism as an ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article describes the work of the British Parliamentary Group for World Government. Since the end of the Second World War, one of the hopeful features in the political scene has been the development of an all-party group of legislators within the British Parliament. The British Group launched in 1951 a World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government which is successfully building up similar groups in the legislatures of many countries. Each year delegations are sent to an International Conference of these Parliamentarians. Indications showed that the movement is developing on a worldwide scale with great rapidity.

The article discusses the reasons why Great Britain is affected by the American loyalty-security policy. The author states that the loyalty-security program of the U.S. resulted in action within Great Britain. He uses as an example the use of British police officers to seek evidence to support the indictment of Owen Lattimore. He asserts that the loyalty-security program has limited British access to Americans and to the U.S. He also argues that the loyalty-security program affects the climate of the Atlantic alliance and the quality of American foreign policy.

The article reports on the cooperative exchange between the U.S. and Great Britain to develop nuclear energy during the Second World War. The discoveries in Britain by Ernest Rutherford and others have realized that the possibility of nuclear energy is due to a great extent. It is less widely known how close was the cooperation between the two countries in the early stages of the wartime development, however, the collaboration certainly led to the atomic bomb and opened the way for other and more peaceful applications of nuclear energy.

The economic and political crisis of 1931 provoked the reappearance of rank and file movements in Britain. This article examines the unofficial organisations that developed in building, engineering, passenger transport and the railways – as well as more ephemeral bodies. It critically synthesises the existing historiography and replenishes it with new material from the Russian archives. The progress of rank and filism to 1939 is surveyed and the largely forgotten project of a new Communist-led rank and file organisation, a Trade Union Militant League, which would supersede the National Minority Movement, is recuperated. The article stresses the role of Comintern policy in harnessing and moulding grass-roots rebellion. It validates that strand in the literature which argues that Moscow’s subsequent turn to the popular front and aspirations to alliances with labour movement leaders predominated over, and legitimated, indigenous influences, enhanced existing adaptation to trade unionism, and encouraged subordination of oppositional movements to activity in official structures. By 1939, the Communists had abandoned the idea of a national rank and file movement they had pursued since 1923. Little survived of the revolutionary enterprise launched in 1931. Rank and filism endured only as a handful of sectional, party-sponsored, trade union ginger groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reflects on methodological and ethical issues that have shaped a collaborative project which aims to chart social, legal and political responses to child sexual abuse in England and Wales across the twentieth century. The etymological problem of searching for child sexual abuse in the historical archive is discussed, given that the term itself is a relatively recent one. Acknowledging that research tools will always be partial, it then focuses on the gaps and silences in the archive, most problematically in relation to the voices and experiences of victims and survivors themselves. Finally it discusses ethical issues relating to the naming or anonymising of those accused and convicted (as well as victims and survivors) in the writing up of research findings. The discussion focuses on two key periods – the 1920s and 1950s – and on education policy, including regulatory procedures for teachers in state and fee-paying schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines a technocratic vision of empire arising in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its implications for the theorization of empires, the legitimation of large-scale political orders, and their spatial imagination. The role of the Roman model for the British in the decades after 1870 as a resource of policy advice, legitimation, and identity-building serves as a case study for analyzing the role of historical precedence for imperial elites. This analysis opens the perspective onto a notion of empire that significantly differs from the one discussed in recent debates on liberalism and empire: British political actors and observers delineate a concept of empire that is not universalist, but heterogeneous, hierarchical, and technocratic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

R.H. Tawney (1880–1962), a leading English economic historian and prominent socialist, was vigorously involved in educational reconstruction during the Second World War. For Tawney, the war was a war for social democracy. His ideals of social democracy formed a basis for his case for Public (independent) School reform and free secondary education for all. Despite this, the connection between Tawney’s ideals and his perspectives on educational issues has not been addressed fully by historians and thus there has been a lack of a proper explanation for his often criticised sympathy for the public schools and his indifference towards the multilateral school. Hence, this paper aims to re-examine the link between them in greater depth. It concludes that, according to Tawney’s ideals of social democracy, the abolition of the public schools was not necessary for the establishment of a democratic educational system. Moreover, Tawney did not launch an attack on the tripartite system proposed by the Norwood Report of 1943 since it was not against his ideal of equality as long as different secondary schools were equal in quality and status. Equality, he believed, must be advanced through the raising of the school leaving age to 16 and the abolition of fees in all secondary schools. Thus, he laid more emphasis on the school leaving age and tuition fees than on the multilateral school. In brief, on various issues pertaining to secondary education, Tawney’s opinions and actions were deeply grounded in his distinctive ideals of social democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article concerns British official policy and political propaganda disseminated in the first year of World War II towards Hungary and Romania. The story is told in the broad framework of the relationship between foreign propaganda, foreign policy implementation, and war strategy. As these embody short-term strategic aims and long-term political objectives, the analysis throws light upon the often differing requirements of British diplomacy, war strategy, and post-war plans. This context is discussed through the prism of the British evaluation of the minority and territorial dispute in Transylvania between Budapest and Bucharest. Such a perspective has been of little concern in the historiography, although it provides a means for putting into question certain basic assumptions underpinning existing models in the history of British policy towards the region. Although these countries lay on the periphery of British war strategy, London aimed at expanding its political influence there during and after the war. For one, the analysis of this dichotomy tells us about the paradoxes, dynamics, and interplays of short- and long-term political, economic, and strategic interests; for another, it answers the question, whether any broad patterns could be reached about British Central and South-East European policy, or did actions distinctively differ towards individual countries? Regarding this last question, it is offered here that, precisely because these countries lay outside of primary imperial interest, standard diplomatic and strategic procedures were subverted, criteria were less carefully calculated, and historical reflexes and prejudices governed British viewpoints and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis re-instates the importance of the 1958 British intervention in Jordan within the study of Anglo–American relations and the revisionist literature on Suez. It does so by challenging the idea of British subservience to American foreign policy after the 1956 crisis, and it reveals two key lessons learnt by London: that Britain’s economy, power, and influence were in decline and that Britain could no longer intervene in the Middle East without American support. Having learnt these lessons, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan proved to be a shrewd political actor who used the opportunity of the Jordan intervention to turn the policy of the Dwight Eisenhower Administration to British ends, regaining Britain’s maximum power and prestige for the minimum loss of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The articles in this special issue present research carried out in diverse linguistic contexts in the United Kingdom. The focus is primarily on Scotland and England, two educational jurisdictions where there is increasing divergence in language-in-education policy and practice. The articles discuss research into different forms of language-in-education provision, so our introduction traces the historical context for the emergence of these forms of provision. We then turn to the authors' reflections on the role of research in garnering knowledge about teaching/learning practices in specific settings, identifying the strengths and/or limits of particular practices and contributing to educational debates. We also compare the research lenses adopted in each study, showing that most studies focus in on the detail of classroom practices and learning processes, while one article takes a wide angle, historical approach and builds an account of shifts in policy discourses. In our concluding section, we argue that, if we are to build a fuller understanding of language-in-education policy and practice in contemporary contexts of diversity, we need research of both types. Language policies need to be seen – not as prescriptions that are ‘fixed’ in texts – but as fluid discursive processes that unfold in different ways, on different scales. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses a television broadcast in England in 1957 in response to the Wolfenden Report (Wolfenden, 1957) into homosexuality and prostitution. Here I argue that those participants in the broadcast who are sympathetic with liberal reforms of the legislation on homosexuality utilize discourses related to normality and the public/private domains to discursively construct the Wolfenden homonormative male. In addition, I also show how, particularly through the trope of homonormativity, both the heterosexual and homosexual audiences are interpellated by the discourses exploited within the broadcast as publics whose subjectivities are reconfigured toward Wolfenden homonormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1985 Sheila Jeffreys alleged that the rise of sexological discourse concerning female inversion in the early twentieth century obliged women of the interwar period in the UK to reject female affection for fear of being labelled lesbian. Several historians have demonstrated that sexological ideas gained very little general currency before Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). Research on specific women suggests that such fears were less prevalent than surmised. An influential discourse invoking tropes of emotional femininity, rather than inversion, was embodied in Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women (1917), presenting female same-sex relationships as mired in morbid emotions and parasitic manipulation. It had significant cultural resonance for well over a decade. A counter-discourse argued that emotionally healthy, reciprocal female friendship might form a sustaining element for women unable to marry. Stress, however, was laid on the need for self-knowledge and psychological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses early years education policy in England from 1918 to 1972, applying the theoretical ideas of John Kingdon. Throughout this period, the educational needs of young children were a low political priority, but they did occasionally rise on the agenda. When the issue gained prominence, politicians considered two key policy alternatives for potential investment: the expensive, self-governing nursery school, orientated towards promoting children’s physical health, and the cheaper nursery class, attached to an infant school, perhaps better at easing transition to formal education. After an initial period of damaging indecisiveness, the choice fell first on nursery schools and then on nursery classes. The reason that such fundamental changes in approach were possible was that an underlying lack of political commitment meant policies were only ever partially implemented. This chaotic pattern of development has had a damaging effect on the coherence of early years services offered today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the ways in which exercise and movement became an increasingly important aspect of the antenatal experience in mid-twentieth-century Britain. This theme is explored through the experiences of women who attended fitness classes in the mid twentieth century, and the impact which these all-female spaces had upon their physicality and embodiment during pregnancy. It uses oral history testimony to argue that these exercise classes had a hand in the gradual spread of the idea that gentle exercise during pregnancy was safe for mother and baby, and this played a part in encouraging pregnant women to reject the discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which suggested that the middle-class pregnancy should be primarily sedentary. These all-female fitness classes played a role in developing ideas about the pregnant female body; educating women about their physiology; and encouraging women to safely maintain sporting identities throughout every stage of their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The various policies developed by the Ottomans and British for governing the indigenous Bedouin tribes of the Negev/Naqab and Beersheba (southern Palestine) region between 1900 and 1948 are examined using primary sources. Whereas Ottoman attempts to pacify the tribes in southern Palestine and Transjordan were somewhat ineffective, the British Mandate achieved a degree of control and stability by incorporating tribesmen into the Palestine Police, strengthening the frontier areas and enhancing inter-territorial tribunal arrangements between Beersheba, Sinai and Transjordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A former major base of British colonialism, East Africa, has served as one of the testing grounds for what has been referred to as neo-colonialism. According to Kwame Nkrumah, neo-colonialism indicates that although ‘in theory’, a colony attains independence, ‘[i]n reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’ (Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Panaf Books, 2004 [1965]). This article challenges this image of neo-colonialism. Based on British documents of the late 1960s and early 1970s, most of which have become available to the public only in the last decade, and sources in East African libraries, it casts new light on British external relations with East Africa in the heady days of independence. These documents demonstrate that the new states of East Africa enjoyed a substantial degree of autonomy, that Britain's development aid was inconsistent and that Britain's involvement in the affairs of its former colonies was reluctant. These accounts reveal that the impact of British policy on newly independent states was actually limited, and thus the nature of Britain's relationship with its ex-colonies and the discourse of neo-colonialism are debatable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the first half of the twentieth century, despatches about the coldest corner of the British Empire were circulated to three, sometimes four, of its southern neighbours under the British crown: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Falklands. Of these four, South Africa seemed the least interested in Antarctica, despite the keen interest of some influential individuals and a strategy of bringing Antarctica into the imperial fold through British dominions that were proximate to Antarctica. In this context, we ask how South Africa viewed itself in relation to the Antarctic to the south and the British metropole to the north. We discuss the key activities that connected South Africa to Antarctica—whaling and weather forecasting. Moreover, we consider some of the enterprising plans for a South African National Antarctic expedition, and what these plans reveal of South Africa's perception of itself as a southern country. This article interlinks with a growing scholarship that is critical of treating Antarctic history as politically and culturally isolated, including showing how the relatively simple natural and political ecology of the Antarctic can throw into relief multiple national and international concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the authority of store managers for the stocking and merchandising of British supermarkets in the period between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. Using oral history and business archive data, the article assesses the case of two broadly similar retail chains. It identifies variations between the firms in relation to the extent of centralised versus decentralised control at the start of the study period. It then shows how the firms came to operate an essentially similar approach by its conclusion. Explanations for the changes identified are drawn from an assessment of the retail environment, and differences between the firms in terms of corporate culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Families at the bottom end of the Edwardian white-collar income spectrum demonstrated middle-class status through observable consumption, at the cost of squeezing other expenditures, including ‘necessities’. This had negative economic impacts, lowering living standards due to inefficiently high budget shares for positional goods. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we examine how railway clerks sought to demonstrate ‘distinction’ from manual workers through certain conspicuous expenditures and how this strategy was progressively undermined by falling real incomes over the Edwardian period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The decolonization process in the 1940s and 1950s in Middle Eastern states under Great Britain's informal influence did not aim at recognizing the same type of independence of these states as that enjoyed by Britain and the United States. In the 1940s Washington laid the groundwork for its leading role in Iran during and following the Iranian oil crisis, whilst London with the assistance of the Americans in part reasserted British influence after the crisis. The United States achieved a paramount position in Iran with the assistance of its oil companies and through cooperation with Great Britain, and at the expense of the latter and the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Royal Malayan Navy (RMN) was created after the Second World War as Britain sought to secure its regional strategic and economic interests through naval and political federation. By guiding the transition towards independence through political concessions to maintain Malaya's integrity, it was hoped imperial influence could be preserved through transferring pro-British colonial institutions such as the RMN. Thus, while Malaya was declared independent on 31 August 1957, the country's navy depended upon British officers, equipment and ships for more than a decade, with UK firms continuing to profit from procurement. A culture of corruption, which developed during the war, flourished from the new opportunities post-colonial political patronage offered individuals involved in the supply and maintenance of the RMN. The ruling party also furthered their nationalist interests by imposing Malay quotas, language and religion upon the service, side-lining British-trained, non-Malay personnel whose allegiance might lie elsewhere. Decolonisation therefore created a vacuum within Malaysia's post-colonial navy which competing imperial, corporate, personal, and nationalist opportunists looked to fill. Adopting a transnational analysis combining original and existing oral histories and archival sources from Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and the UK, with conceptual writing on imperial transition, corruption and patronage, this article presents new insights into the issues created by Malaysia's decolonisation and post-colonial naval development. It widens debates on neo-colonialism and its consequences for British hegemony; how decolonisation created new opportunities for individual, political and economic advancement through the navy; and the impact of Malaysian affirmative action and ‘Islamisation’ policies upon non-Malay naval personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Seed Testing Station (STS) is a key and clear example of agricultural modernization in twentieth-century Britain, one which was produced by the pressures of the First World War. Part of the agricultural industry that had for generations been managed by non-governmental means (the production and sale of seed) was now intruded upon, in the name of efficiency, purity, and national productivity. Founded in 1917, the STS initially operated out of offices within the Food Production Department (FPD), itself established that same year and tasked with increasing domestic agricultural output. Soon after the war, a vast purpose-built headquarters was erected for the Station in Cambridge, funded through subscriptions from various agricultural trades and through grants from the Development Commission (DC). In making this move, the STS also thereby became the Official STS (OSTS), an institution which continues to operate from the same Cambridge site to this day. In this article, the STS's multiple layers of social meaning are uncovered, an effort that requires an interdisciplinary approach. Drawing together existing work on the history of science within the Great War, and the most recent interpretations of the meaning of that war from historians working on gender, design, and disability, this paper uncovers the deep connections between national efficiency, eugenics, architecture, women's employment, and disabled ex-servicemen, that together constituted the OSTS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the First World War the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) served as the coordinating body for voluntary medical aid giving in Britain. Among the many units which came within its purview was the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU), formed by a group of young men whose desire to serve their nation in wartime conflicted with their pacifist principles. Both the BRCS and the FAU were wracked by ideological conflicts in the years which preceded and throughout the war. These struggles over voluntarist identity highlight the contested meanings of service and conscience in wartime. Through a critical examination of the language of official histories and biographies, this article will argue that the war formed a key moment in the relationship between the British state and voluntary medical aid, with the state's increasing role in the work of such organizations raising questions about the voluntarist principles to which aid organizations laid claim. The struggles that both organizations and individuals within them faced in reconciling the competing pressures that this new relationship created form a legacy of the war which continues to have important implications for the place of medical voluntarism in wartime today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many assessments of the trajectory of positive neutralism in Egypt have presented it as a foreign policy implemented in response to the Cold War context, and ineffective in the shadow of superpower rivalries. This contribution contends instead that positive neutralism developed out of the pursuit of a particular combination of foreign policy and nation building in Egypt, by elites whose political formation was dominated by an anti-colonial rather than Cold War consciousness. This is demonstrated through the analysis of three foreign policy episodes and parallel nation building programmes unfolding between 1952 and 1955. Together they illustrate the origins of positive neutralism in the positions taken by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers on the British presence in Egypt, on regional alliances and the Baghdad Pact, and on development and pan-Arabism in nation building, all before Egypt's participation in the 1955 Bandung Conference after which the policy of positive neutralism was formally adopted. The use of Egyptian documents throughout foregrounds Egyptian agency and motivations in drawing up policy, and enables an evaluation of the contributions of positive neutralism identified in Egypt at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses aspects of the book "Unfinished Empire. The Global Expansion of Britain" by John Darwin. Particular focus is given to Darwin's overall attitude towards British history with special attention to the process of decolonization. Other topics addressed include 20th century historiography, the history of Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century, and British imperialism, as well as its colonies.

The queen's role as the head of the commonwealth has evolved over the last 60 years. In this article, we explore the ways in which this position was constructed and negotiated through the queen's presence (and absence) at commonwealth conferences. Utilising the example of the Lusaka Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1979—a highly fraught meeting, the queen's attendance at which was hotly contested—we examine narratives present in newspaper and oral history accounts surrounding the queen's role. Placing this event in the context of the broader constitutional and political issues that have surrounded the headship since the creation of this ambiguous office in 1949, we explore the competing interpretations of the meaning of head of the commonwealth and the vexed question of who was responsible for advising the queen in this role. We argue that the example of the Lusaka summit shows that, far from being a crowned non-entity, the queen was an active agent, both shaping a constitutional role for herself that was separate from that as British monarch and becoming enrolled in broader geopolitical scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

British politics immediately following the Boer War featured a group of politicians and intellectuals known as the Liberal Imperialists and this account explores the political thought of their Australian counterparts. Australian liberal intellectuals of particular relevance for this study were located in Melbourne, which was at that time the federal capital, and they were loosely clustered around the key political figure of the period, Alfred Deakin. The extended circle of Alfred Deakin provides scholars with a useful group of active intellectuals from whom it is possible to derive an idea of the Australian inflection given to Liberal Imperialist thought, concentrating on the intersection of notions of imperial unity and progressive social reform agendas which flourished in both Australia and Britain during the Edwardian era. The group of politicians and public intellectuals, comprising an overlapping membership including the Imperial Federation League, friends and associates of Alfred Deakin and the Boobooks Club, would subsequently evolve into the main Australian branch of the Round Table organisation. This article is concerned with discovering the outlines of the Australian version of Liberal Imperialist thought and especially the nature of the Australian inflection superimposed on this British set of ideas, as found in a variety of contemporary pamphlets, printed books and Boobooks minutes. The Australians were less pessimistic than Richard Jebb about the possibilities of a supranational imperial organisation but also insisted that such an organisation must respect the sovereignty of dominions. They differed from most of their British counterparts in supporting the widespread use of tariffs to nurture industry and they also supported the restrictive immigration position enshrined in the infamous White Australia policy, yet they were much in favour of the notion of a strong British navy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East in Cairo, Lord Moyne, was assassinated by two members of a Jewish group called Lehi. The assassins confessed, citing Lord Moyne's anti-Semitism and his policy towards the Zionists as their motives. However, Lord Moyne was not anti-Semitic, and he did not support Zionism. While he supported the 1939 White Paper that limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, he changed his position in 1944 to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The British were heavily involved in the assassination investigation and trial. They assisted the Egyptian police investigation, lobbied for a trial in a military court, and promoted death sentences for both defendants. They also tried to prevent the accused from speaking in the court, fearing the effect that would have on Egyptian and international public opinion. Many Egyptians viewed the assassins as heroes who fought against British imperialism. They wanted the assassins to be released from the central prison in Cairo. During the Second World War, Churchill's involvement in Palestine diminished. Ultimately, the assassination had little effect on British policy in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1930 and 1945 professional wrestling could lay claim to being one of the most transnational sports moving across the Anglo-world. Participants originated from western and eastern Europe, North America, the Antipodes, Britain and India. Significantly, wrestling was one of the few sports in which participants from the British Empire and the USA competed in these decades of comparative sporting isolationism. It is argued here that the ‘All-In’ American style which came to dominate the sport as an extreme and theatrical form of ‘catch-as-catch-can’ wrestling was not uniformly accepted across the Anglo-world. Cultural differences between the USA and the British Empire meant wrestling styles had to be adapted as they crossed national boundaries. The notion of ‘cultural hybridity’ is a valuable concept here as ‘All-In’ met three different responses within the Empire: complete acceptance, modification and rejection. The reasons for the varied responses are considered and the argument made that while American culture was at one level admired in the British Empire, there was also concern about perceived professionalization and corruption in North America, which wrestling seemed to epitomize. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Frederick Porter Wensley was one of Scotland Yard's ‘Big Four’ detectives, head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and responsible for establishing the Flying Squad. On his retirement in 1929, he used the two bound scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs he had collated to document his personal life and career to inform his 1931 autobiographyDetective Daysand serialized press articles. Through examining the interaction of material between scrapbooks and autobiographical writings, this article explores how Wensley constructed his post-retirement persona as ‘celebrity detective’ from a canny understanding of what had made him a commercial subject for the press. It argues that Wensley recast his life to promote his own successes at the expense of a narrative of police unity, providing a vehicle for him to suggest further changes to the structure of the police force without official sanction. By juxtaposing this against tightening legislation on police communication with journalists during the inter-war period under the Official Secrets Acts, this article demonstrates how the ‘celebrity’ that Wensley sought to occupy was increasingly regarded as irreconcilable with police ability to effect ‘impartial’ regulation, anticipating the concerns raised by the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press. The article thus charts a turning point in defining the relationship between police and press. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Radical political activism in the 1970s and 1980s had a huge impact on documentary photography in Britain. Community organisations and photography collectives emerged and endeavoured to democratise the arts for those who would not otherwise have come into contact with them. Community photography used the technology to break down the barriers between artist and audience. It involved participation in the production of ideas and meanings, the active transference of skills and the acquisition of technical and aesthetic skills within communities in the hope that arts techniques/activity would become an integral part of everyday lives. For many of the projects the central objective was about learning – enabling an understanding of how events, ideas, and social relations are made meaningful through the promotion of visual literacy. This paper will document the emergence of the community photography movement in 1970s and ’80s Britain, the learning strategies developed and the arguments around the fragmenting of alternative photographic practice in the 1980s with the movement away from putting cameras into people’s hands towards greater engagement with cultural theory and the politics of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]