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Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central pillar of the legislative agenda of the Labour government elected in 1997, yet despite the constitutional significance of this programme it was undertaken without particular enthusiasm by the then prime minister, Tony Blair. Nowhere was this blend of significant change, yet pervasive lack of passion (or interest) more apparent than devolution to Wales. Drawing upon recently released archival documents, this article will explore the New Labour government's approach to devolution in Wales. These papers provide fresh evidence of the second order nature, and treatment, of Welsh devolution compared to the attention provided to Scottish devolution, as well as of the narcissism of small details which pervaded Whitehall's discussions of Welsh devolution (with considerable energy, for example, dedicated to questions about the titles which leading figures in the Assembly would be given). These papers also bear testament to the struggles which Ron Davies, the then secretary of state for Wales, faced in securing even a minor scheme of devolution and the tensions he experienced with the centre of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the language in which history was written in ninth-century Britain and Ireland, focusing on accounts concerned with origins. It takes an entangled approach to the written vernacular and is concerned with how insular history-writing, whether in a vernacular language or Latin, was an integral part of a wider Latinate European story. Differences in language choice come more clearly into view, facilitating the exploration of the development of vernacular writing and the theory and practice of vernacularisation. The discussion is structured around three case studies, spanning Wales, Ireland and England. What emerges through comparative study is that linguistic theorisation and multilingual interactions both shaped language choice and were themes of the origin legends themselves, whether explicitly or implicitly. The need for vernacular languages, just like Latin, to have sustained institutional support in order to flourish is also underlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special Constables have an established history within British policing. The Special Constabulary has represented an under-researched aspect of policing, with motivations to join, morale, factors relating to length of service and reasons for leaving being poorly understood. This article draws upon data from a national survey of Special Constables undertaken across all police forces in England and Wales. The analysis illustrates differences in motivations, dependent on age, and length of service, with younger Special Constables viewing the role as a pathway to future paid employment as a Regular police officer. The results contradict perspectives that attribute attrition from the Special Constabulary primarily to changes in personal circumstances for Specials, demonstrating how such changes are less important than satisfaction with the experience of being a Special Constable. The article concludes by identifying the significance of the findings for future policy and practice in respect of the Special Constabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilises male occupational data recorded in the baptism registers of England and Wales, 1813–1820, to locate the geographical distribution of the textile manufacturing industry at that time. By comparison with female and male occupations abstracted from the 1851 census, it shows that the location was set at least as early as the second decade of the nineteenth century, and before the introduction of steam power or the mechanisation of weaving could have played significant roles. By 1813–1820, the once great regional textile centres of East Anglia and the West Country were no more. Approximately sixty-six per cent of fathers employed in the textile industry lived in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Moreover, textile manufacturing was further concentrated into a small number of parishes. Two-thirds of fathers lived in thirty-six parishes, and fifty per cent resided in only nineteen parishes. An association between the location of the main textile parishes and the proximity of the coal measures is evident. The registers contain a large number of entries for male spinners, reflecting the extent of uptake of Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule. The data confirm that the mule was dominant in cotton spinning within at least thirty years or so of its introduction. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, cotton spinning by hand was a redundant occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The bitter arguments within the Labour Party in Wales in 2007 preceding its agreement to enter coalition with Plaid Cymru in the National Assembly have faced little substantive analysis, and the specific behind-closed-doors debates at the special conference held to vote on the deal have remained undisclosed. This paper fulfils both tasks, revealing how actors’ arguments tapped into historically resonant traditions in Welsh Labour thought, coalescing around a central ideological conflict over the party’s identity vis-à-vis nationalism. The article thus sheds light upon Welsh Labour’s internal power struggles at an important juncture in its recent history and their continuing ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Women's Land Army (WLA), formed in 1917, has featured prominently in recent academic and popular account of First World War Britain. This interest reflects the attention the WLA drew from politicians, government reporters and contemporary commentators during and immediately after the war itself. Yet, the WLA, which at its peak had 16,000 women working on the land, was just one strand of wartime female agricultural labour, an auxiliary to the thousands of village women who worked throughout the war. Whilst the WLA received numerous plaudits for their participation, village women were 'left out in the cold', as one correspondent to The Times put it, in recognition of their wartime service. This article will place the rural woman worker back to centre stage. It will revisit the often-contradictory wartime estimates of the number of women working in agriculture in England and Wales before moving on to examine how regional farming structures and seasonal demands for labour shaped the use of women workers. It will show that even at the very local level, here utilizing records from the Bedfordshire Women's War Agricultural Committee, demand and supply issues produced a fractured pattern. It will show that concentrating exclusively on the WLA leads to a distorted picture of women's work on the land during the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logistics, the administrative systems by which military forces are supplied, played a crucial role in the conduct of medieval warfare. This was certainly true of the royal armies dispatched by King Edward I of England (r. 1272–1307) to fight campaigns in Gascony, Flanders, Wales, and Scotland. This study focuses on the administrative and bureaucratic systems developed by the English royal government to keep tens of thousands of soldiers supplied with food, wine, and other necessities during Edward I's wars of conquest within Britain, in Wales and Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]