British Campaign Research Articles

The Charge of the Knights

By 2008, the initially promising security situation in Basra had deteriorated to the extent that the British Army had withdrawn to the airport, kilometres from the city. Domestic pressure was also hastening the UK's handover to local security forces. The British became onlookers in Basra's insurgency; Operation Charge of the Knights was the result. In this article, Richard Iron identifies the lessons of the British campaign in Basra and the strategic nature of the mistaken conduct of the counter-insurgency campaign.

Taking Minorities for Granted? Ethnic Density, Party Campaigning and Targeting Minority Voters in 2010 British General Elections

There are many reasons why political parties can take the racial and ethnic minority voters for granted in Britain. They vote overwhelmingly and loyally for the left-wing parties, have fewer resources than white voters and they mostly live in geographical clusters giving them electoral leverage in a limited number of seats. Yet, minorities participate as much as the white population and seem to do more so in areas of ethnic concentration. Using the British Election Study, Ethnic Minorities British Election Study, British campaign spending data and the electoral agent's survey from 2010 election, we explore the relationship between party campaigning, individual mobilisation and ethnic population density. We find that although minorities perceive less contact, parties campaign just as hard (or harder) in areas of minority concentration and they target minority voters in these areas, However, minority voters living outside of local concentrations of population may experience less contact from parties.

The women pro-Boers: gender, peace and the critique of empire in the South African war

Despite a substantial historiography on the ‘pro-Boers’, the role of women in the British campaigns against the South African war has never been systematically examined. This article discusses women's activism through the two main pro-Boer organizations, the Stop the War Committee and the South Africa Conciliation Committee, and through Liberal women's organizations. It examines women pro-Boers' arguments and attitudes to both pacifism and imperialism. Finally it considers the gender aspects of the pro-Boer campaigns, the development of distinctively feminist arguments against war, and the effects of the war on the British women's suffrage movement.

British counter-insurgency: a historiographical reflection

The article aims to offer a survey of the historiographical analysis of British counter-insurgency practices and campaigns since the publication of Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency, edited by the author and the late John Pimlott in 1985. It is argued that the volume in question was influential at a time when there was little academic interest in counter-insurgency in Britain. Moreover, the subject generally had been little studied in Britain in the past beyond work by a handful of military writers and theorists. Arguably, the analytical framework followed in Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency holds its value even after over a quarter of a century. Since the 1980s, however, it has become apparent that the subject is of increasing academic interest, not least in terms of the ongoing debate on the nature and application of the concept of ‘minimum force’ in British campaigns.

La construction sociale de médias dangereux pour la jeunesse. Des paniques morales aux quasi-théories

Much of the research done on the incrimination of medias as danger sources have used the conceptual framework of moral panic. In this article, we will show that the concept was misused to indicate what amounted to moral crusading and that the confusion between “panic” and “crusade” contributes to misunderstanding the problem. Based on two empirical examples (the French campaign against graphic novels from the 1930’s to the 1950’s and the British campaign against comic books shortly after world war II) we will see how pressure groups militated for years for laws prohibiting, censuring, controlling or regulating those objects. Subsequently, despite the confusion between “panic” and “crusade”, we will consider these invaluable research works for three reasons : they contribute nuances in studying the effects of medias, they establish the recurrence of accusations against various medias and they focus on the stakes latent in those accusations. Finally, we will insist on the importance of studying the recurrence of discourses for sociology.

Finding Milton’s Meaning -- Campaign Finance and Free Expression in Comparative Perspective: The United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada

This Article compares the campaign finance systems of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada as they relate to each country's protection of the Freedom of Expression. This Article argues that, despite coming from common ground, the different forms of campaign finance regulation derive from the various philosophic frameworks adopted by thethree countries. In Part I, we clarify the structural framework by examining the forms the right can take and the right’s philosophical underpinnings. Further, we examine how the differing justifications create different scopes of protection. In Part II, we look at the system adopted by the United States, and then how that framework has greatly shaped the American system of campaign finance regulation. In Part III, we move to the United Kingdom and look at the legal framework of freedom of expression in the home of the English tradition. Then, we look at how that framework has been applied to British campaign finance, and note its divergence from the American model. In Part IV, we look at how Canada’s approach to expression mirrors the United Kingdom and the implications of Canada’s unique model for its own campaign finance regulatory structures. Finally, this Article reweaves the rainbow to evaluate the systems and see what, if any, lessons could cross-pollinate.

The pedagogy of regret: Facebook, binge drinking and young women

This article introduces the idea of a ‘pedagogy of regret’ to illustrate some of the inadequacies in recent government policy initiatives which target young women's drinking practices. In the Australian context, the National Binge Drinking Campaign warned young women: ‘Don't turn a night out into a nightmare’. A similar British campaign advised individualized drinkers to ‘know their limits’. The rhetorical appeal of these campaigns hinges on the notion of regret: young women will lament the excesses of hedonistic indulgence the morning after given the inevitable consequences of risky behaviour. This paper shows the limitations of such an appeal through a ‘sympathetic online cultural studies’ approach, which we use to explore the nexus between contemporary drinking cultures and the social networking site Facebook. Ordinary and mundane uses of Facebook – status updates anticipating the weekend, mobile posts in the midst of intoxication, photo uploading and album dissemination the morning after – reveal the anticipatory pleasures, everyday preparations and retrospective bonding involved in hedonistic and risky alcohol consumption. This demonstrates the fundamentally social dimensions accompanying young women's drinking. The enjoyment derived from sharing the ‘risky’ and ‘regrettable’ experience on Facebook is part of ongoing narratives between girls. Such pleasures, which are increasingly mediated by social networking sites, confound the notion that young women are haunted by inevitable regret and remorse.

“Justice to India – Prosperity to England – Freedom to the Slave!” Humanitarian and Moral Reform Campaigns on India, Aborigines and American Slavery

AbstractThis article considers British agitation against East India Company rule in India via an examination of the Aborigines Protection Society and the British India Society. Founded by humanitarians and moral reformers in the 1830s, these organisations placed India within a wide transnational context, which stretched from Britain's settler and plantation colonies to Liberia and the United States. However, in the wake of slave emancipation, British campaigners struggled to reconcile their universal understanding of humanity with their equally strong confidence in the benefits of ‘British civilisation’. Their nebulous and changeable programmes for reform failed to convince Britain's politicians and public that the challenges of free trade could be met by the exclusive use of free labour, or that all imperial subjects possessed equal rights. A fuller appreciation of these campaigns reveals the contradictions and occlusions inherent in mid-nineteenth century humanitarianism, and underscores the importance of a more geographically integrated approach to the history of opposition to Britain's empire.

The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History (review)

Reviewed by: The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History Gene Allen Smith The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History. By William C. Davis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. xv, 400 pp. $28.00. ISBN 978-0-15-100925-1. During the morning of September 23, 1810, storekeeper Philemon Thomas led armed Americans against the dilapidated Spanish fort in Baton Rouge, West Florida. Within minutes the Americans had captured the Spanish bastion along with Commandant Carlos De Hault DeLassus. A convention of delegates representing the area soon issued a Declaration of Independence, raised a single-star blue flag, and requested annexation into the United States. By mid-October, the independent Republic of West Florida (comprising parts of present-day Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida) had drafted a constitution based on the American model. President James Madison instructed officials and troops to occupy the "Rogue Republic" as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. After seventy-eight days, the country's original lone star republic was consolidated into the constellation of the Stars and Stripes without war and without financial costs. William C. Davis's account of the West Florida Rebellion uses the life of the three Kemper brothers—Nathan, Reuben, and Samuel—to describe how bold and decisive Americans swept across the Gulf region, incorporating these lands into the United States. Arriving in the lower Mississippi Valley during the late 1790s, Reuben and Nathan Kemper tried their hands at the mercantile business, as flatboat operators, and earning a living from the land. Before 1804 Spanish policy had won the loyalties of the region's multinational inhabitants by granting access to cheap and abundant lands, providing political stability, and protecting private property. In return settlers—Spanish and foreign inhabitants alike—had displayed a willingness to abide by Spanish law, supported the local government, tacitly accepted the Roman Catholic faith, and even swore fidelity to the Spanish Crown. The Kempers found it difficult to obtain financial success in these Spanish-controlled lands. After the Kempers lost their property through legal proceedings, Spanish authorities expelled them from the province. Reuben and his brothers gathered supporters from the Mississippi Territory, and in 1804 they raided West Florida and moved against Baton Rouge, trying to foment [End Page 137] a rebellion that could become a revolution. Instead, Americans in the area generally refused to join the Kemper filibuster because they were happy with the liberal Spanish land policy and with the government's protection of slavery; the Kemper raids ultimately degenerated into a crime spree rather than a revolution. Between 1804 and 1810, however, attitudes in West Florida changed radically, revealing considerable discontent and providing the foundation for revolution. Legitimate Spanish imperial authority disintegrated when Napoleon appointed his brother Joseph as emperor. The appointment of DeLassus, who enforced strict policies prohibiting the amassing of land, eroded local Spanish control. The American embargo of 1807 further undermined the region's economic stability, effectively curtailing trade between American New Orleans and Spanish Baton Rouge. This chaos almost immediately altered the loyalty of the region's inhabitants. The strength of Davis's account of the West Florida Revolution is that he weaves a colorful and dramatic story, centering on the actors who stood in the vanguard of American Manifest Destiny. The Kemper brothers, especially Reuben, were in the middle of almost every disruption in the Gulf region during the period 1800-1821. Once West Florida had been incorporated into Louisiana, however, the Kempers fell from favor. Samuel appears again during the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition into Texas (1812-1813), and Reuben and Nathan participated in the American defense of New Orleans during the British campaign of 1814-1815. By1821 the Spanish had lost control over most of the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico, retrenching farther west in Texas; by the end of 1821 Mexican independence had wrested Texas from Spanish hands. Historians such as Andrew McMichael, Frank L. Owsley Jr., James Cusick, Peter Kastor, James E. Lewis Jr., and this reviewer have all offered interpretations that address the Americanization of the Gulf Coast. These authors generally contend that on the local level inhabitants...

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914–22. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. x+262. $80.00 (cloth).

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914–22. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. x+262. $80.00 (cloth).

A Liberal Democratic State and COIN: The Case of Britain, or Why Atrocities Can Still Happen

The British experience of insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) probably is the most prolific in all modern history. What General Sir Rupert Smith has called ‘wars among the people’ have been endemic for several centuries and it is wrong to describe them as a ‘new’ form of warfare for the 21st century. The accepted wisdom is that the British developed a doctrine and techniques based upon ‘hearts and minds’ and ‘minimum force’ so as to bring about a positive conclusion to insurgency – in short, a better political and economic peace. The British record is, overall, one to be proud of, and the principle of ‘courageous restraint’ rarely emulated in other COINs such as at the hands of the French in Algiers, the Americans in Vietnam or the Russians in Afghanistan. Yet, there were occasions when these high standards of discipline and leadership were found wanting and in all 14 or so British campaigns, from time to time either politicians, soldiers or police disregarded the common law basis for action, with terrible human consequences. This article attempts to analyse these circumstances from a historical vantage, so as to infer the reason why such incidents took place: a matter of policy, flawed leadership or simply indiscipline? The political consequences of atrocity usually were out of all proportion to the actual incident, whether after Amritsar in 1919 (the loss of India) or Bloody Sunday in 1972 (a sustained terrorist campaign over 30 and more years). The article concludes that ethical leadership is at the very heart of COIN, yet this too often is overlooked.

MINIMUM FORCE MEETS BRUTALITY: DETENTION, INTERROGATION AND TORTURE IN BRITISH COUNTER-INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS

This paper explores brutality and torture in the history of British counter-insurgency campaigns. Taking as a pretext the British government's announcement in January 2012 to scrap a judicial review into the rendition and torture of UK citizens at Guantanamo Bay by American intelligence operatives with the complicity of British intelligence agencies, the paper posits that the actions this review was supposed to evaluate are not restricted to counter-terrorism. By examining the historical usage of interrogation methods by the British in counter-insurgency campaigns against suspected IRA members in the first decade of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, this article builds a wider frame of reference for the recent controversies surrounding the treatment of detainees during the British occupation of southern Iraq. Although the detention and interrogation of suspects in counter-insurgency campaigns is a necessary security measure, the oft-heralded British adherence to ‘minimum force’ is heavily mythologised given the prevalence of the brutal treatment of detainees. Considering the detrimental impact (in an ethical, legal and security context) that the existence of torture during detention and interrogation had in these cases, the article upholds an absolutist position on the prohibition of torture.

Myths and Lessons of Liberal Intervention: the British Campaign for the Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade to Brazil

This article takes issue with recent references to the British nineteenth century campaign for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil that serve to bolster interventionist or imperialist agendas. In particular, such accounts reproduce two and a half myths about the campaign: that it can serve as a model for the present age; that the success of the campaign can be explained through the actions of the intervening party alone (with a corresponding neglect of those of the ‘target’ state); and the half-myth that the campaign’s success was due to military action (at the expense of institutional (legal) and normative factors and the capacity of the target state). I argue instead that this case – and interventions more generally – would benefit from an analysis that considers the role of force in relation to a series of residual institutional and cultural constraints within the liberal state and to political conditions in the target state. In light of the complexities and contingencies that these factors present the underlying lesson is that military force should be used sparingly, if at all.

"Spin Zones" in American Presidential Elections

"Spin Zones" in American Presidential Elections

Party Leaders as Movers and Shakers in British Campaigns? Results from the 2010 Election

There is an increasing recognition of the importance of party leaders in British elections. The 2010 election only served to reinforce their perceived importance with the introduction of three leaders’ debates. Thus, more than ever, an understanding of contemporary elections necessitates an understanding of the dimensions of leadership that matter most to voters. This contribution examines the influence of perceptions of the three major party leaders as responsive, trustworthy, and knowledgeable. It also examines how the debates and other events unfolding during the campaign served to structure these perceptions. There is evidence that voters’ evaluations of party leaders can vary substantially over the course of the campaign and traits such as responsiveness weigh heavily in voters’ assessments. There is also convincing evidence of media effects, suggesting that voters are receptive to events unfolding during the campaign.

‘Khaki crusaders’: crusading rhetoric and the British Imperial soldier during the Egypt and Palestine campaigns, 1916–18

Much of the historiography of the First World War in the Middle East suggests that the soldiers of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force motivated themselves by seeing the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire as a crusade against Islam. The construction of the campaign as a crusade was a product of the need for politicians to portray the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's operations to the British public as relevant to the wider course of the First World War. Inter-war memoirists and novelists also chose this topos in order to boost the sales of their works. By examining the letters and diaries of soldiers from across the British Empire, it is clear that this assumption is erroneous. A religious fringe within the British Imperial Army in Palestine did perceive the campaign in such terms, but they were only a minority. Instead most soldiers focused on the Islamic culture that they encountered in the Middle East, demonstrating that a strong vernacular orientalism was present in early twentieth-century British culture.

The Development of Bacteriology, Sanitation Science and Allied Research in the British Army 1850-1918: Equipping the RAMC for War

The recent 90 year anniversary of the end of the First World War is an opportune time to reconsider the important role of the Royal Army Medical Corps in this...

Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’? A Critical Analysis of Counter-Insurgency Operations in Afghanistan

This article conducts a critical analysis of the historical lessons, the assumptions and the conduct of ‘hearts and minds’ approaches to counter-insurgency. This results in challenges. Theoretically the ‘hearts and minds’ approach is rooted in modernisation theory and a normative Western approach to legitimacy that fails to live up to the expectations of the local population. The approach is also based on lessons from past successes such as the British 1950s campaign in Malaya. However, a great contextual shift has taken place since then and the relevance of past experiences is therefore questionable in a context of complex state-building in the wake of intervention. This also has practical consequences as we seek to rectify the often misapplied approaches of today.

Women on the Political Battleground: Does Gender Condition the Use of Negative Campaigning?

This comparative study examines to what extent and under which conditions gender influences the use of negative campaigning in Western Europe. It advances existing research as this study is one of the few empirical examinations of party leaders’ use of negative campaigning in election campaigns and the conditioning effect of gender outside the US context. The analysis covers the British, Dutch and German parliamentary election campaigns between 1980-2006. These three Western European democracies represent least likely cases to test the relationship between a party leader’s gender and the extent and content of negative campaigning for two reasons. First of all, we expect lower levels of negative campaigning in these multiparty systems compared to the US two party context. Second, we expect smaller candidate effects in these parliamentary systems compared to the US presidential system. The findings highlight that gender indeed affects negative campaigning in Western Europe. This being said, female party leaders do not differ from their male counterparts in the degree to which they utilize negative messages, but the content of these messages does vary on the basis of gender. When female party leaders go negative, they are more likely to attack their opponents on the basis of their existing policy records or future policy proposals than male party leaders. Overall, this study allows for an advancement of theoretical and empirical work on the relationship between gender and negative campaigning which originated in the US context.

Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nda Irak Cephesinde Osmanlı Devleti ile İngiltere Arasındaki Çarpışmalar (1915)

Soon after the outbreak of the World War I, 12th and 13th Army Corps as a power were settled in the Iraq front because a British campaign was not expected in this front. By the beginning of the war, British powers captured Basra in Iraq. However, these powers easily had a rapid advance from South to North because of the weakness of Ottoman Powers. Britain captured this region after defeating Ottoman Powers at the battles of Kurna, Shaibe, Amara, Nasiriyeh and Kut Al Amara. The main reason of this rapid advance by British Powers was the insufficiency and the weakness of Ottoman army. Collisions between Britain and Ottoman Empire in Iraq Front showed that Ottoman Army had the need of arms and military supplies.The powers settled in this region sent secret coded telegraphs to 4th Army and the Minister of Supreme Command through their needs for arms and military supplies. Supreme Command provided necessary arms and military supplies from the different parts of the Empire for Iraq Front. He decided to send ammunition from Erzurum, Van, Antalya, Aleppo and Syria to Mosul but all of these efforts could not be sufficient.