British Inquiries Research Articles

Inquiries into Fatal Child Abuse in the Netherlands: A Source of Improvement?

In some Western societies, inquiries into fatal abuse of children known to agencies are nowadays a common phenomenon. They have been carried out in the UK for many years, but have recently also emerged in the Netherlands. The main aim of these inquiries is to improve child welfare and protection practice in order to reduce the chance of further child deaths. However, there is reason to critically consider the feasibility of this aim, as British research into child death investigations suggests that they have hardly worked and even may have had counter productive consequences. This paper examines for the first time all Dutch public inquiry reports into child abuse fatalities. It is shown that the problems highlighted in the reports are highly similar to those recurring in their British counterparts. Furthermore, there are considerable similarities between Dutch and British investigations regarding the solutions they propose. Like British inquiries and reviews, Dutch inquiries largely focus on changing procedures, introducing decision-making instruments and increasing monitoring. This one-sided emphasis on bureaucratic measures, the paper argues, does not rate the human side of child protection work at its true value, and makes it questionable whether the inquiries will contribute to improving practice.

Anglo-French Defence Relations Between the Wars (review)

The theme of Anglo-French relations never ceases to fascinate English-speaking scholars. It appears to be of somewhat less interest to the French. A possible explanation of the phenomenon follows from three facts: (1) an innate security the French feel about their place in Europe; (2) the perpetual British inquiry into their relationship to Europe; and (3) the continuing strong British and North American attraction to the rich depositories of diplomatic and military papers for study of Franco-British encounters in the twentieth century. By and large, French academics do not haunt British (or American) archives in the manner of the "Anglo-Saxons" thronging French archives. Not surprisingly, studies in this field were for many years principally drawn (partly for lack of archival access in France) from British sources. Very often, they reflected a largely British angle of vision. This limitation [End Page 591] no longer stands, though elements of the Anglocentric approach persist and are illustrated, here and there, even in this excellent book.

When being right is not enough

Who has not been in the situation where one has spent months, or even years, collecting data on their favorite protein, only to find themselves still putting together their slides while sitting in a train on their way to a meeting? This inability of biologists to appreciate the value of communicating their results is becoming a serious problem now that biology has entered the realms of politics and the economy. One frightening example of what can happen when scientists communicate badly to those who need to hear them comes from the study of the crisis of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which has gripped Europe.BSE was first reported in a bovine herd in Britain in 1987. If humans eat meat from infected cattle, there is a risk of acquiring a variant of the Creutzfeldt–Jacob syndrome, which is a neurodegenerative disease that has been linked to at least 82 deaths in Britain and two in France. Public fears and misunderstanding are now crushing the cattle industry in many European countries. For example, in France, during November 2000, beef sales plummeted by 40%, and the fate of 4.5 million cattle and half a million tons of cattle feed hangs in limbo.Although many political and economic factors led to the BSE crisis in Europe, scientists have now been officially cited as being partly responsible. The British inquiry on BSE by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers states that, in 1989, British scientists had anticipated that BSE could be transmitted to humans and that the health consequences would be severe. The criticism of scientists in the BSE crisis was not about them being right or wrong but about their failure to communicate the significance of their findings to the government in 1989. The message from the government to biologists is clear: being right is not enough. Learning to communicate effectively will add to the pressures that influence biologists’ lives. It also means that we can search for new activities to fill the hours while traveling to give our well-prepared seminars. R.M.G.

Essay: Rediscovering The Social Determinants Of Health

Essay: Rediscovering The Social Determinants Of Health

How Did the Titanic Sink?

This article elucidates the reasons behind the Titanic sink. The recent engineering evidence suggests that the unsinkable ship, Titanic, experienced a hull failure at the surface and broke into pieces before it went down. Although all the officers testified that the ship sank intact, some survivors and crew testified to a hull failure at the surface. Even during the American and British inquiries into the disaster, few questions focused on the structural aspects of the ship. Despite survivors’ testimonies, it was concluded that the ship sank intact. A full-ship model was graphically constructed, employing a modern approach similar to that used for US Navy destroyers and cruisers today. Loadings for the model were developed based on one flooding scenario from the paper, “The Sinking of the Titanic,” by Chris Hackett and John C. Bedford. The demise of the mighty Titanic was swift, sure, and terrible. The engineering marvel that heralded the beginning of the age of technology also displayed, all too clearly, its vulnerability and limits—as well as the need for prudence and safety.

The Truth in the Light

Peter Fenwick, Elizabeth Fenwick Headline, pounds sterling16.99, pp 278 ISBN 0 7472 1186 8 More than one million Americans near to death have “seen the light.” Peter Fenwick, a neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, and his wife, a writer, would emphasise—having conducted a British inquiry into some 300 “near death experiences”—that this phenomenon has little to do with religious conversion (although their sample looks significantly more religious than the general population, there was no evidence that near death experiences resulted in more than reinforcing of beliefs in God or an afterlife). Rather, seeing the light is one of a group of apparently commonly linked phenomena which include travelling down a dark tunnel, an out of body experience, a profound sense of peace, a vision of “paradise” (commonly seen as a vivid pastoral scene, sometimes with musical accompaniment), meeting …

British response to the involvement of the American Jewish joint distribution committee in illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine

Following the end of the Second World War Britain conducted a comprehensive campaign against the illegal immigration of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe to displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Austria, and to Palestine. British inquiries at the time revealed that the American Jewish philanthropic agency known as the ‘Joint’ was assisting the illegal movement. The British government failed to bring this assistance to an end. British failure in this regard was primarily a consequence of the concern of the American administration for the situation of Jewish displaced persons, an attitude which was accounted for by Washington's assessment of the political power of American Jews.

Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration

Previous articleNext article No AccessWoodrow Wilson and the Balfour DeclarationRichard Ned LebowRichard Ned Lebow Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 40, Number 4Dec., 1968 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/240237 Views: 57Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1968 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: II. Zwischen Orient und Okzident – Der Zionismus in der deutschen Kolonialpublizistik, (Aug 2020): 49–144.https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666370946.49Joseph H. Bailey Remembering World War I, Media History 26, no.33 (Mar 2019): 280–300.https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2019.1582326Sonja Wentling THE UNITED STATES, TRANSNATIONALISM, AND THE JEWISH QUESTION, 1917–1948, (May 2020): 467–489.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119166139.ch22Jan Rybak ‘Universal Freedom’ and the Balfour declaration: watershed moments for radical Jewish politics, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 26, no.55 (Jul 2019): 783–806.https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2019.1632803İsmail Ediz Balfour Deklarasyonu ve İngiltere’nin Filistin Politikasının Temellerini Yeniden Düşünme: Neoklasik Realist Bir Açıklama, Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi (Jul 2019): 99–122.https://doi.org/10.18513/egetid.596069Markus Kornprobst Social Psychological Micro-foundations for International Relations, (Sep 2016): 45–53.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34150-7_5Danny Gutwein The politics of the Balfour Declaration: Nationalism, imperialism and the limits of Zionist-British cooperation, Journal of Israeli History 35, no.22 (Nov 2016): 117–152.https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2016.1244100 Jehuda Reinharz The Balfour Declaration and Its Maker: A Reassessment, The Journal of Modern History 64, no.33 (Oct 2015): 455–499.https://doi.org/10.1086/244512

Faults of Newspapers: Some Comments on the British Inquiry

Faults of Newspapers: Some Comments on the British Inquiry

Industrial Productivity in Great Britain and the United States

Sources and nature of the data used. The extent of the ground covered, 3.— Numerical comparisons for U. S. (1925) and U. K. (1924), 6. — Arrangement of data for comparison, 7. — Relative importance of chief industrial groups in the two countries, 10.— Variations in net outputs (and in aggregate wages) in relation to numbers occupied, 14.— Some explanations suggested, 15.— Contrast between the U. S. averages and the U. K. 16.—Question whether the larger U. S. figures should be interpreted in terms of higher prices or of greater volume of output, illustrated from various trades, 17.—Differences appear to reflect mainly volume of output, 25.— Movements between the years 1907 and 1924 of the British inquiries considered in relation to U. S. data for 1909 and 1925, 26.— Extension of this comparison to 1930 (U. K.) and 1929 (U. S.), 33.— Differences in time of the inquiries sufficient to account for the major part of the changes in the measure of relative magnitude of output per head, 34.— Some concluding reflections, 37.