British Delegation Research Articles

The Early “Iron Curtain”

February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd Reviews 179 THE EARLY “IRON CURTAIN” Michael D. Stevenson Schulich School of Business, York U. / Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. Toronto, on m3j 1p3 / Hamilton, on l8s 4l6, Canada stevenm@mcmaster.ca Patrick Wright. Iron Curtain: from Stage to Cold War. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. xvii, 488. isbn 978-0-19-923150-8. £18.99 (hb); £12.99 (pb). In his famous Westminster College address on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri , Winston Churchill Wred one of the opening salvos of the Cold War by proclaiming that from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain” had been lowered across Europe. Patrick Wright’s intriguing and provocative book does not examine the phrase “iron curtain” in its popular Cold War context. Instead, he maintains that many characteristics of this metaphor, “including the pronounced sense of theatricality it would bring to international politics, were inherited from the period before the Second World War” (p. 18). Wright divides Iron Curtain into two primary chronological sections, the Wrst covering the period from 1914 to 1920. An iron curtain originally referred to the steel safety screen that descended in English theatres, beginning in the lateeighteenth century, to separate the audience from the often catastrophic Wres that broke out on the stage. The phrase entered the lexicon of international relations in January 1915 when British author and paciWst Violet Page (writing under the pseudonym Vernon Lee) published an article lamenting that “War’s cruelties and recriminations, War’s monstrous iron curtain” (p. 80) had alienated European nations such as England and Germany sharing a common cultural heritage. But the barrier quickly moved east in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and “took the form not just of exaggerated political rhetoric, but of an economic blockade enforced by naval power” (p. 171), as the Allies sought to contain the infection of Bolshevism. Wright devotes most attention in this section to documenting the 1920 visit to Russia by the British delegation jointly sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which sought to penetrate the dense fog of Allied anti-Bolshevik propaganda and validate the delegation members’ own preconceived views about the nascent socialist utopia in Russia. British delegates witnessed images both of progress carefully stagemanaged by their hosts and of terrible economic dislocation and poverty caused by the Allied blockade and the civil war, which allowed the majority of them to return home to lavish praise on the Soviet experiment that would, in their minds, inevitably fulWl its potential once the Bolshevik government became stable. February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd 180 Reviews 1 “The Future of Europe”, European AVairsz 1, no. 1 (April 1949): 3. The second section of Wright’s book examines Western reports of life behind the iron curtain between 1920 and 1939. Here, the author focuses heavily on the theatrical nature of Soviet attempts to create modern-day Potemkin villages that werez—zwith a limited number of exceptionsz—zaccepted as reality by an endless parade of left-wing visitors. A second British Trades Union Congress delegation in 1924, for example, received a dramatically embellished picture of Soviet economic progress that included a train journey past a long-abandoned factory belching smoke created by burning wet straw frantically provided by Russian peasants; the resulting report of the delegation “repeatedly collapsed into the most abject conformity with the Soviet view of reality” (p. 245). The most tragic examples of Western visitors’ blindness to the truth occurred during the 1930s famine deliberately induced by Stalin, and Wright exposes a wide cast of characters who adopted a blinkered view of conditions in the ussr. Among intellectuals , Wright documents the 1931 visit of George Bernard Shaw, who cavalierly dismissed reports of widespread food shortages while dining sumptuously in Moscow’s Hotel Metropole. Among journalists, Wright develops the case of Walter Duranty, the New York Timesz correspondent who knuckled under to demands of Soviet censors to produce sanitized accounts denying or ignoring the famine in order to protect his privileged place in that...

Big city blues: health disparities within the world's largest urban centres

The enormity of the challenge — and the gulf between rhetoric and reality — was immediately evident. A well-heeled British delegate stepped up to the microphone at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany, and chided Dr. Hans Dohmann, municipal secretary of health for the city of Rio de

Amongst the palm trees: ruminations on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

Surrounded by potted palm trees, the 12 delegations including the Soviet Union invited to participate by the United States government decided, over the course of six intense weeks, the legal, political and scientific future of the Antarctic continent and surrounding seas. Thanks in part to the neatly typed entries of Brian Roberts, the Foreign Office's polar advisor for many years; we have at least one source that vividly conveys (from the perspective of a British delegate of course) the febrile atmosphere surrounding the conference (see King and Savours 1995; Dodds 2008). Notwithstanding the achievements of the recently completed 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year and its extension the International Geophysical Co-operation (1959), there was no reason to presume that an Antarctic Treaty would be recognised as legitimate and sufficiently robust to accommodate all the parties concerned. Indeed, it is not uncommon to read in the reports prepared by the delegates for their domestic political leaders, a whole series of counter-factual possibilities if the negotiations failed to secure a modus vivendi for the polar region. We may not assume, therefore, that it was in any way inevitable that a treaty (lasting now for over fifty years) would have emerged when the delegates sat down to discuss the future of Antarctica in October 1959. The treaty was nearly not ratified in Argentina for example because of the anger felt by some political leaders about Article IV and what they considered the ‘giving away’ of Argentine sovereign rights.

Review: A Shattered Peace

A SHATTERED PEACE Versailles 1919 and Price We Pay Today David A. Andelman Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. 326pp. US$25.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0-471-78898-0)No peace settlement in modern history has provoked more widespread controversy than Paris peace treaties of 1919. For much ofthe 20th century, historians and policymakers alike have debated extent to which Paris peacemakers of 191 9 should be blamed for subsequent breakdown of international order. The condemnation of Versailles began immediately after signing of treaty. John Maynard Keynes, himself a junior member of British delegation to Paris, famously argued that victors provoked German hostility by pursuing an unnecessarily vindictive settlement, while Woodr ow Wilson's friend and advisor in Paris, Edward Mandell House, admitted in his diary that the treaty is bad and should never have been made.Almost 90 years after conclusion of treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, and Trianon, matters no longer seem so stark and straightforward. Few people would dispute that treaties were a diplomatic disaster, offending vanquished and many of those smaller aspiring nations that had joined allied war effort in an attempt to gain recognition as independent states. Yet much of literature on Paris peace treaties over last 15 years has complicated picture of western ill will with a heightened recognition of highly limited scope of action that western policymakers had in face of nationalist expectations in their home countries after four years of uninterrupted bloodshed on a historically unprecedented scale. Thanks to inspiring works such as Margaret MacMillan's Peacemakers (2001), Zara Steiner 's The Lights That Failed (2005), and Manfred Boemeke's The Treaty ofVersailles (1998), we know a great deal about obstacles and constraints faced by key policymakers, Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau, as well as divergent national war aims and shifting domestic coalitions that shaped final treaty document. Confronted with tough realities of building a new world order from ruins of 19thcentury diplomacy, peace treaties constituted no more and no less than minimal consensus on which key players could agree.At same time, historians have begun to acknowledge that peacemakers' efforts to reconstruct wartorn Europe were not altogether unsuccessful. The League of Nations in particular, often charged with responsibility for failing to prevent rearmament and outbreak of Second World War, certainly made substantial contributions in fields of healthcare, drug control, economic cooperation, labour legislation, and laws to prevent illegal trafficking of women. Its work foreshadowed aspects of European and global cooperation that are usually described as emerging after Second World War, both in terms of policy content and impact that members of League's secretariat had on post- World War II institutions such as United Nations, European Community, World Health Organization, International Court of Justice, and International Labour Organization.David Andelman's new account ofVersailles and its aftermath certainly strikes a more sombre tone. …

The British delegation to the Synod of Dort (1618–19). Edited by Anthony Milton. (Church of England Record Society, 13.) Pp. lix+415. Woodbridge: Boydell (for the Church of England Record Society), 2005. £60. 1 84383 157 0; 1351 3087

The British delegation to the Synod of Dort (1618–19). Edited by Anthony Milton. (Church of England Record Society, 13.) Pp. lix+415. Woodbridge: Boydell (for the Church of England Record Society), 2005. £60. 1 84383 157 0; 1351 3087

Does Bigger Mean Better? British Perspectives on American Cancer Treatment and Research, 1948

In the summer of 1948, a delegation representing the British Empire Cancer Campaign (BECC) toured North American cancer treatment and research facilities, and reported their observations back to their organization's executive board. This historical article contextualizes the British delegation's observations of US treatment and research, and discusses what the delegation made of the United States' new, "bigger" approaches to cancer surgery and chemotherapeutic research. I argue that the BECC delegation used their observations of US practice to reinforce a positive sense of British distinctiveness, thus reassuring themselves and their colleagues that Britain could still be a leader in the increasingly international field we now call oncology.

The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618 1619)

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Cavendish's crocodile and dark horse: The lives of Rutherford and Aston in parallel

Ernest Rutherford and Francis Aston were born a world apart but both would become two of the most influential physicists of their time. Their separate training, under the direction of J.J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory, shaped their future and allowed both men to develop and apply their considerable skills in experimental physics. It also catalyzed their careers and ultimately led to each receiving a Nobel Prize. Although they had very different characters, Rutherford and Aston became close colleagues and confidants who spent considerable time together within the confines of the Cavendish Laboratory, at Trinity College, and elsewhere in Cambridge. They also traveled the world in company, usually as part of a group or British delegation of scientists attending conferences and meetings overseas. This article parallels the lives of the two men. It describes how they came to work at the Cavendish, their scientific accomplishments and accolades, and their activities and interactions away from the laboratory.

The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). Edited by Anthony Milton. Pp. lix + 411. (Church of England Record Society, 13.) Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005. isbn 1 84383 157 0. £60/$110.

In this important collection Anthony Milton has selected letters, tracts, and official documents, including speeches, pertaining to the British delegation to the Synod of Dort. The Synod was a watershed in the history of the Reformed churches, as the views of Arminius and the Remonstrants on a range of issues concerning predestination, grace, and free will were condemned, and the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy were more closely defined. Milton has carefully arranged the material into ten parts, beginning with the political and the theological background to the Synod, which are comprehensibly given equal space. The early stages of the Synod are then explored, up to the expulsion of the Remonstrants, and then the stages leading to the formulation by the delegations of their respective suffrages or resolutions on the five articles of the Remonstrants and the official canons themselves. The book ends with the concluding business of the Synod, events immediately following this, and the later defence by the British delegates of their role, in the face of hostile criticism.

Justifying God: The Calvinisms of the British Delegation to the Synod of Dort

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Jüngere Forschungen über die fünf britischen Vertreter auf der Synode von Dordrecht (1618-1619) konstatieren eine Teilung der Gruppe zwischen Samuel Ward und John Davenant einerseits und Thomas Goad, George Carleton und dem Schotten Walter Balcanquhal andererseits. Erstere werden als strenge Calvinisten im Sinne Bezas eingestuft, letztere seien dagegen zu einem Kompromiß mit den Remonstranten, u.a. in der Bußfrage, bereit gewesen. Dies wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz widerlegt. Auf der Grundlage einer Analyse von Wards Notizen während der Synode sowie seiner 1626 in Cambridge gehaltenen Predigt „Gratia discriminans“ wird gezeigt, daß die britische Delegation geschlossen eine orthodoxe calvinistische Haltung vertrat, die auch die Staatskirche James I. auszeichnete.

Peter N. Campbell (1921–2005)

Professor Peter Campbell passed away the night of February 7 after some months in the hospital following a car accident. Peter was one of the founders of Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) and his death is a great loss to his family and the scientific community at large. Peter was born in Kent, England in 1921. He started to study Chemistry at University College London in 1939, and received the PhD degree in Biochemistry in 1949 under Professor Sir Frank Young. From 1949 to 1954 Peter worked at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London under T.S. Work and thereafter moved to the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London. In 1961 he received a Doctor of Science degree from the University of London. In 1967 Peter was appointed to the Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Leeds and in 1976 he became Director of the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry and Courtauld professor of Biochemistry at the University of London. He was also appointed Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at the University of London. Peter published numerous scientific articles and was widely recognised for his work on protein synthesis. Moreover, he published several books, including Biochemistry Illustrated, a much acclaimed student text in biochemistry. The fifth edition of this book, which is co-authored together with Anthony Smith and Timothy Peters, is due in May this year. Peter was founding editor of Biochemical Education and Essays in Biochemistry, and edited for many years Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry for the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). Besides his love for research and teaching, Peter dedicated a great deal of his time to serve the scientific community at large. He was instrumental in establishing FEBS together with P.S. Datta and W.J. Whelan and acted as Secretary of the Biochemical Society from 1958 to 1964. He was the British delegate at the first Council meeting of FEBS in London in 1964 and was later elected Chairman of the Summer Schools Committee – afterwards renamed Advanced Courses Committee. One of Peter's outstanding ideas was to start in 1989 the Scientific Apparatus Recycling Scheme (SARS), a programme that since then has supplied numerous pieces of equipment and literature to Central and Eastern Europe and Africa. Peter was a strong believer in the capacity and potential of scientists in these countries and did his utmost to support them both in educational and scientific matters. Peter was very fond of the people and the countries he travelled to and was passionate about his work with SARS. In Horst Feldmann's book Forty Years of FEBS – A Memoir, Peter tells himself in chapter 6, page 146 about the SARS programme and how it developed under his guidance. In 1999 FEBS started the Working Group on Central and Eastern European Countries, and Peter was a dedicated member of this working group providing much expertise and enthusiasm as well as numerous contacts. In many ways Peter was a true FEBS ambassador. Peter's involvement in science went beyond Europe. He was a founder of the African Societies for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and served as chairman of the IUBMB Committee on Symposia. Later he founded the Education Committee of IUBMB. In 1981 Peter was awarded the FEBS Diplôme d'Honneur for his invaluable contributions to FEBS and the scientific community. This honour is conferred only to those who have given so much of their time to the benefit of others. Peter received the IUBMB Distinguished Service Award in 2000 in recognition of his services to the Union. We shall miss Peter terribly, and extend our condolences to his wife Molly, his children Alistair and Julia as well as to his many friends around the world.

Where did electrical engineering begin?

The term "electrical engineering" was not in use in 1871 when the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was founded under its original name of "the Society of Telegraph Engineers". The electric telegraph was the major application of electricity then, and those engaged in electric lighting were called "electricians". At the opening meeting a leading telegraph engineer made the prophecy that "this Society will develop more into an electrical society than into a society of telegraphy proper." He was soon proved right. Within a few years, the Society was hearing papers on electric lighting, and in 1880 the words "and Electricians" were added to the title. The present name was adopted in 1888. According to Alexander Pelham Trotter (1857-1947), who joined the Institution in 1885, the existence of a new branch of engineering, "electrical engineering", became apparent in 1881 when the first International Electrical Exhibition was held in Paris. Trotter had been in Paris three years earlier for the 1878 Exhibition which, he said, had shown that electric lighting was developing. At that stage Trotter was an undergraduate at Cambridge, reading Natural Sciences. He graduated in 1879 and became an engineering apprentice with Easton and Anderson. It is not clear how he came to be actively involved with the 1881 exhibition, but he was there with the British delegation and took the opportunity of studying all the equipment on show.

Sir John Bradbury and the Reparations Commission, 1920-25

This article looks at a neglected episode during the work of the Reparations Commission of 1920-25 leading up to the Dawes Plan of 1924, when the British delegate to the Commission, Sir John Bradbury, drew up a plan to reschedule German reparation payments in an attempt to take the venom out of the debate over these payments. It takes as its documentary basis the previously unpublished papers of Sir John in his role as Britain's representative on the Reparations Commission from 1920 to 1925. The article concludes that Bradbury's plan had the potential to defuse at least some of the problems encountered in the political and economic results of the reparations policy and that it made a significant contribution to the thinking that emerged in the Dawes Plan.

‘The disenchantment conference’: Frustration and humour at the world disarmament conference, 1932

A parody of the work of the Air Commission of the World Disarmament Conference of 1932–34 reveals the cynicism and boredom, as well as the personality, of the officials in the British delegation. In doing so, it demonstrates something of the futility of trying resolve the question of disarmament when bureaucrats and military experts are given free reign.

Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 by Anthony Milton

104BOOK REVIEWS For those interested in CarmeUte history the reward to be gained from reading this book is a sensible conclusion to a long debate about the early days of the reformed order in France. The debate has centered around the extent to which French Carmelite nuns have honored the legacy of St. Teresa of Avila as expressed in her constitution of the reformed CarmeUtes. For the larger audience of historians interested in the CathoUc Reformation the reward is fourfold. The first reward is a series ofmulti-dimensional portraits, the smaUer ofwhich are presented without much editorial comment, which reveal both the halos and the warts of many French and Spanish participants in the CathoUc Reformation during the period 1583-1629. These portraits occupy a significant portion of the book. EspeciaUy important among the portraits are those of Pierre de Bérulle, the titular head of the group that brought the Discalced CarmeUte nuns to France, the first two superiors of the Paris convent, Mères Anne de Jésus and Anne de Saint Barthélémy, and Père Denys de la Mère de Dieu, the fiercest CarmeUte opponent of BéruUe's methods ofgoverning the French CarmeUte nuns independently of the order. Woven around the portraits is a finely nuanced account of the intricacies of Franco-Spanish-Papal relations, especiaUy for the period 1590-1610. A third part of the reward is a set of concrete examples of the ways in which the decrees ofthe CouncU ofTrent concerning the reform of convents and monasteries by bishops chaUenged previously accepted modes of reUgious governance and the methods used to resolve the resulting conflicts—usuaUy either trial and error or compromise. FinaUy, and perhaps unintentionaUy, Morgain's account makes it painfully clear how rigidly early modern clerics regulated the Uves of women reUgious and tried to control their thoughts. The clerics did not question their own motives or actions, or realize how unsuccessful their efforts of thought control often were. One wonders ifthe clerics reaUzed how strongly their thoughts and actions were influenced by other women, many of whom were not reUgious. Particularly striking is the influence of the christology of the CarmeUte nun Anne de Saint-Barthélémy on the spirituaUty of Pierre de BéruUe. J. Michael Hayden University ofSaskatchewan Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640. By Anthony MUton. [Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xvi, 599. $79.95.) Some thirty volumes have appeared as part of this series to 1995. About onefourth concern topics on Tudor England. This chronological imbalance may reflect the influence of John Morrill, one of three series' editors and a Stuart BOOK REVIEWS105 speciaUst, who has been instrumental in identifying outstanding dissertations and overseeing them into print. Anthony MUton, since 1995 lecturer in history in the University of Sheffield, completed his dissertation under MorriU's supervision m 1989 and reformulated it for this book. MUton is a gifted young historian with other -works to his credit and a work in progress about the British delegation at the Synod of Dort (1619), which wUl be pubUshed under the auspices of the Church of England Record Society, founded in 1991· MUton's is on aU accounts a triumphal achievement. He has written a convincing study characterized by clarity of thought, Uterary grace, exhaustive archival research, and a close reading of contemporary printed sources. He describes and assesses how divines strove to identify the nature of the EngUsh Church in relation to alternative churches existing abroad. He examines the divisions within the Church of England, whose doctrinal and ideological identity was StUl far from certain even by 1640. Different groups within the church debated just how the English Church should be understood as being both "CathoUc and Reformed." In their quest for answers, they considered what the church's precise relationship was with the Reformed Churches on the continent , and to what degree the church had truly separated hersetf from the Roman CathoUc Church. MUton's method is to analyze the ways in which the Roman CathoUc and the Reformed Churches were understood by EngUsh Protestant divines m...

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (2d ed.). By Ian Sinclair. Manchester and Dover, N.H.: Manchester University Press, 1984. Pp. x, 270. Index. £29.50; $40.

Mr Sinclair's book, which analyses the more important elements of the Vienna Treaties Convention, reflects his high degree of scholarship in this important area of international law and the experience he gained not only as a member of the British delegation to the conference which drew up the convention but especially as a member of the conference's drafting committee. Two aspects of the convention are singled out for special attention, the relationship of the convention to customary international law, and the concept of jus cogens. Although the convention is not likely to enter into force for some time, it already exercises considerable influence on the treaty-making practices of states and is commonly referred to in the preparation of bilateral and multilateral treaties. Because the convention is already serving, to a limited degree, as a code of treaty law, the treaty practitioner will find the discussion distinguishing between those provisions of the convention which are a codification of existing treaty law and those which constitute attempts at progressive development of that law of considerable practical value. Mr Sinclair approaches the concept of jus cogens in international law with the same prudence which has marked the attitude of the British judiciary to the analogous domestic law concept of public policy. He concludes that 'there is a place for the concept of jus cogens in international law. Its growth and development will parallel the growth and development of an international legal order expressive of the consensus of the international community as a whole. Such an international legal order is, at present, inchoate, unformed and only just discernible/ The question whether economic coercion constitutes a use of force

Blackett and the Origins of Nuclear Strategy

I feel not only honoured but grateful to have been given opportunity to deliver this lecture. Patrick Blackett was a man to whom I owe a deep personal and professional debt of gratitude. Thirty years ago I was given task of creating what is now Department of War Studies at Kings's College London first of its kind in this country and indeed in world. With much trepidation I approached Blackett, then an apparently remote and awe-inspiring figure at Imperial College, and invited him to deliver a lecture in an inaugural series which was intended to define and publicize activities of new department. Not only did he agree and give a scintillating lecture which attracted much attention, but he took a deep interest in everything we were doing in Department and remained for rest of his active academic career unremittingly supportive and helpful. Four years later in 1958, when with a group of journalists, politicians and churchmen I was helping to establish what has now become International Institute for Strategic Studies, I again approached him, this time asking him to serve on our Council. Again he readily agreed and became one of our most valuable councillors, in particular finding premises in Adam Street, leased from Royal Society of Arts, in which Institute functioned for 20 years. Finally he enlisted me into British delegation to early Pugwash Conferences, where I found myself in company of such luminaries as John Cockcroft, William Penney, Solly Zuckerman, Hans Bethe, Leo Szilard and Henry Kissinger, trying to establish contact across cultural and ideological barriers with our colleagues in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union. During those 10 years, therefore, between 1954 and 1964, which was when Blackett transferred his energies to Whitehall to become a close adviser to Harold Wilson's first administration, I was able to watch at first hand his development as one of leading thinkers in this country on problem of nuclear weapons and preservation of peace. The subsequent 20 years since 1964 have seen developments in weapon technology amounting almost to a further revolution, but problems with which Blackett then wrestled have remained as contentious in 1980s as they were for 1960s. Indeed much that he wrote has now become commonplace in British strategic thinking, and insofar as a consensus can be established in this country, excluding extreme unilateralists, it would be very much along lines that Blackett laid out a quarter of a century ago. Patrick Blackett's distinctive contribution to strategic thinking came less from his brilliance as a scientist then from his personal experience of war, and healthy scepticism which that experience had given him of all theories based upon either unstated or unverifiable hypotheses. Blackett claimed with some reason to have been the only atomic scientist brought up as a professional fighting man,' and eight adolescent years which he spent in Royal Navy between 1913 and 1919 equipped him not just with a stern sense of what was practically possible and necessary in warfare but with first-hand knowledge of what war was like; with an understanding of that Clausewitzian element of 'friction' without which all theories of war are meaningless. In his writings Blackett referred repeatedly to Battle of Jutland, when vessel on which he was serving, Barham, steamed past a great oily patch littered with flotsam and bobbing heads of survivors where battle-cruiser Queen Mary had been destroyed by a single German salvo a few moments before. There's something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield, Admiral Beatty had calmly remarked about disaster. In fact there was something wrong with Royal Navy as a whole: way it designed its ships, way in which it thought about war, way in which it waged war. It worked too much on hiunches and unverified assumptions. It did not take enough trouble to find out about its enemy. It did not sufficiently base its tactics on hard reasoning from observable phenomena. When Blackett returned

Anglo-French Relations a Decade Ago: a New Assessment (2)

T HE first phase of the negotiations for British entry to the EEC, which lasted from June 30, 1970 till the spring of 1971, was an agonisingly slow exploration of all the issues. The boring procedures, the colourless setting of the meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg, the extreme caution of the attitude of the Six on all questions, all contributed to a certain sense of frustration in the British delegation. Although Soames at the end of 1970 was reporting from Paris with moderate optimism so far as Anglo-French relations were concemed, the British negotiators in Brussels found it hard to discem much sign of improvement in the French attitude. The same French officials who had so competently carried out the former French policy of keeping Britain out of the EEC were still in place in Brussels and in Paris. The first three or four months of negotiations in 1971 were particularly frustrating since it seemed to the British that on all the major questions-contribution to the budget, New Zealand butter, and Commonwealth sugar-they had put forward proposals which had got nowhere. This was particularly the case for community finance which everybody recognised as the most important of all. The meetings in March were especially barren. However, this period of depression was shortly to be followed by some interesting and encouraging movement in direct Anglo-French contacts.

Forecasting the British Election to the European Parliament

The first elections to the European Parliament were held on 10 June 1979 with each EEC country following its own electoral system. As in all recent elections, on-the-night forecasting was an integral part of the television coverage in Britain. This paper describes the method used by the BBC to predict the composition of the British delegation to the European Parliament. The performance of the method is discussed and some tentative conclusions are drawn about the behaviour of the British electorate.