Modern British Politics Research Articles

The Semantic Space of Concepts in Modern British Political Discourse

The article examines the semantic space of concepts in modern British political discourse. The basic concepts of GOVERNMENT, POLITICAL EVENTS, CITIZEN and ECOLOGY in the British press are analysed, taking into account: 1) the main, dominant, feature; 2) additional “passive” features; 3) the actualization of the internal hidden form. It was determined that these characteristics allow the concepts to be updated on different levels, as well as to be perceived by carriers of different cultures in different ways. On the basis of the content-analysis of modern British media contexts and semantic network analysis, a field model of the political discourse of the modern British press was constructed. It is proved that all the presented sub-concepts are at the final stage of formation in British political language consciousness, which is indicated by the high density of political discourse lexemes that objectify these sub-concepts.

Teaching Modern British Political History in a Politically Polarised and ‘Post-Truth’ Environment

Abstract This article assesses the challenges that university-level teachers of modern British political history currently face in what is often described as a ‘post-truth’ and polarised political environment. It argues that, whilst these challenges do not always present entirely new pedagogical considerations, the sociocultural and political terrain in Britain today requires careful navigation, particularly in an academic field which addresses recent historical topics that are routinely politicised and contested in contemporary discourse. Although there is a lack of scholarly literature on the topic of teaching modern British political history in a higher education setting, this article draws upon a wide array of educational studies to map out the contours of a successful pedagogical strategy that could facilitate ‘deep’ learning in the current contextual environment. To this end, it suggests that by utilising modern British political history's interdisciplinary foundations, applying teaching techniques that help students to explore topics from multiple viewpoints, devising new and stimulating interactive tasks, and capitalising on the opportunities afforded by the Internet age, learning can be enhanced and many of the more academically problematic features and characteristics of the current political climate can be counteracted.

Bringing the Emigration State Back In

AbstractThe decades between 1948 and 1980 are often remembered as a time of mass immigration, yet almost 2 million more people left Britain than arrived in those years. Mass emigration has been an enduring part of Britain's modern history and this article explores its effects on British politics. The two world wars, the turn to tariffs, joining the EEC and leaving the EU: at these critical junctures, Britain's overseas diaspora was mobilised to reshape domestic politics and to transform the UK's global political economy. Charting the rise, fall and afterlife of Britain's ‘emigration state’ can contribute to our understanding of these events and help researchers analyse the effects of racism and empire on modern British politics.

The War of Words: The Electoral Language of British Elections, 1880–1914, by Luke Blaxill

Preceded by a series of innovative articles, Luke Blaxill’s debut monograph is a remarkable achievement. Blaxill invites readers both to reassess the electoral politics of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and—through a corpus linguistics-based approach to the stump speeches delivered at nine general elections—to consider the utility of digital techniques to historical analysis and explanation. The book will be a must-read for those interested in modern British politics, but, beyond representing a dynamic intervention in its immediate field, it will also stimulate welcome debate about historical methods and inspire future research. Blaxill positions his work as a ‘methodological experiment’ (p. 12), posing questions about the capacity of quantification to provide and articulate evidence and seeking to answer them by reference to a field where the historiography is mature (but which also, in several cases, needs reinvigorating). Given the nature of this testing ground, the book is interested in questions which have long preoccupied political historians, yet it occupies a distinctive position within the scholarship. Blaxill contends that the emphasis on deep readings prompted by the turn to the political-cultural has led to a privileging of the recovery of narrative over the provision of causal explanations or generalisations (pp. 6–8). He suggests that these strands of historical analysis and outcome might be reintegrated and strengthened by a ‘hybrid methodology’ that blends both the qualitative and the quantitative and which, simultaneously, builds a bridge between the social sciences and the humanities (pp. 9, 238–40). Quantification, Blaxill convincingly demonstrates, can enhance our capacity to analyse vast discourses systematically, precisely and verifiably—in this case, the enormous volume of words spoken by politicians in the era of the mass electorate (p. 229). As Blaxill notes, electoral culture was, from the later nineteenth century, increasingly ‘platform-centric’, its language being deliberately partisan and delivered with the intention to persuade (pp. 2, 27–9). For Blaxill, close and distant readings could and should be carried out in tandem, the result being the empowering and augmenting, rather than the replacement, of traditional approaches. From local and national newspaper reports of election speeches, he constructed (and checked for quality and accuracy) three main corpora (collections of texts), containing over four million words. They are: the principal corpus, covering East Anglia, a region where he identified an opportunity to expand historiographical coverage of political life in the countryside, and from which he builds a period-wide case-study; a ‘constituencies’ corpus, encompassing seats outside the region and representing a variety of constituency types; and a ‘national’ corpus for front-ranking politicians. From these datasets, Blaxill generated statistics showing, for instance, the frequency with which issues were discussed, the linguistic context in which they were mentioned, and the connections between the words which made up the rhetoric by which politicians appealed to electors (see Chapter One).

The Social Scientific Turn in Modern British History.

In recent decades, scholars of modern British history have increasingly revisited the classic social science of the post-war period. Within this 'social scientific turn' in modern British history we can discern closely-related but distinct strands of work. One group of historians, influenced by intellectual history and political history methods, have examined how post-war social science and social scientists have shaped modern British politics and culture. Other historians have engaged closely with the original research materials of post-war social science as source bases for understanding lived experience, and explored the gulf between how sociologists and researchers talked about people, and how they understood themselves. Understanding the different aims and methods with which modern British historians have engaged with post-war social research is essential to understanding the methodology and value of the 'social scientific turn' in modern British history today.

Explaining the educational divide in electoral behaviour: testing direct and indirect effects from British elections and referendums 2016–2019

ABSTRACT An educational divide has become apparent in Western democratic politics. Our understanding of why this divide has emerged remains limited as existing studies have not utilized mediation methodologies, which allow detailed examination of how education’s shaping effect on electoral behaviour is transmitted. This study addresses this gap in knowledge – providing a more complete picture of why modern British politics divide along educational lines. It applies the Karlson–Holm–Breen method to British Election Study data to explore firstly, what proportion of education’s total effect on vote choices, cast in the 2016 referendum, 2017 and 2019 General Elections, was transmitted indirectly, and secondly, the relative contribution of economic orientations, cultural attitudes and political cue-taking behaviours as drivers of this divide. Findings show 67–91% of education’s total effect on vote choices was transmitted indirectly and crucially, that vote choices divided along educational lines largely because educational groups exhibited divergent economic orientations, cultural attitudes and cue-taking behaviours. Results also highlight that educational division(s) in the referendum and General Election voting were driven by different mechanisms.

The Politician’s Child: Growing Up in the Public Eye of Modern Britain, c. 1970–2000s

“The Politician’s Child” investigates childhoods lived in the public eye of modern British politics, c. 1970s–2000s. It engages with diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, and newspaper interviews in which former politicians revealed private aspects of their children’s lives in return for a publishing advance on leaving public office. The educational, social, and medical problems that political parents create for their offspring have often been neglected in histories of the family and political life. These are essential to study since they reveal a complex matrix of social and political worlds, which contrast with the public histories of the family that politicians pen.

The State of Modern British Political History?

The State of Modern British Political History?

Considering conservative women in the gendering of modern British politics

ABSTRACTThe shifting status of women and opportunities for women in politics in modern Britain has been garnering more scholarly attention recently, and the centenary of women’s partial suffrage in 2018 has done much to excite wider attention and public interest in these debates. However, the role of Conservative women has too often been seen as problematic, especially because of general assumption that feminism is only allied to leftist movements and political positions. This is the case despite the fact that there have been only two women Prime Ministers, and both Conservatives, and that the party has been highly successful at motivating and mobilising women at and outside election time. This special issue takes on the task of reconsidering, situating and nuancing the place of Conservative women in the story of women’s political emancipation.

Son of classics and comics

Introduction. C. W. Marshall and George Kovacs Postmodern Odysseys 1. Odysseus and The Infinite Horizon C. W. Marshall 2. Mythic Totality in Age of Bronze George Kovacs 3. Classical Symbolism in Asterios Polyp Abram Fox and HyoSil Suzy Hwang-Eschelbacher East's Wests 4. Mecha in Olympus: Masamune Shirow's Appleseed Gideon Nisbet 5. [un]Reading the Odyssey in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Nicholas Theisen 6. Xerxes, Lost City in the Desert: Classical Allusions in Fullmetal Alchemist Sara Raup Johnson All Gaul 7. Re-inventing the Barbarian: Classical Ethnographic Perceptions in Asterix Eran Almagor 8. Asterix and the Dream of Autochthony Stuart Barnett 9. We're not in Gaul Anymore: the Global Translation of Asterix Siobhan McElduff Modern Classics 10. Classical Allusion in Modern British Political Cartoons Ian Runacres and Michael K. Mackenzie 11. Eliot with an Epic, Rowson with a Comic: Recycling Foundational Narratives Frederick Williams and Edward Brunner 12. Ozymandias the Dreamer: Watchmen and Alexander the Great Matthew Taylor 13. And They Call That Poison Food: Desire and Traumatic Spectatorship in the Lucifer Retelling of Genesis Kate Polak Bibliography

Sensations of the Past: Identity, Empowerment, and the British Monarchy Films

Abstract Royal bio-pics have always enjoyed a high priority among cinematic representations of British history and taken a lion’s share in defining Britishness to audiences at home and abroad. These historical narratives never render national identity by capturing the past of historians, instead reconstruct the past as a mirror of contemporary reality and in a way as to satisfy their audience’s demand for both romantic qualities and antiquarian nostalgia, for sensations they regard their own. The author’s basic assumption is that such cinema does not represent history but exploits spectatorial desire for a mediated reality one inhabits through the experience of an empowered identity. The first part of the article examines how private-life films (a subgenre of royal bio-pics) mythologized and idealized Tudor monarchs in the 1930s, while in the second part, contemporary representatives of the subgenre are analysed as they portray the challenges of the Monarchy in its search for a place within modern British identity politics. Analysed films include The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda, 1933), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Michael Curtiz, 1939), Mrs Brown (John Madden, 1997), The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006), and The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010).1

'Perfectly Parliamentary'? The Labour Party and the House of Commons in the Inter-war Years

'Perfectly Parliamentary'? The Labour Party and the House of Commons in the Inter-war Years

Ideology Matters: Party Competition, Ideological Positioning and the Case of the Conservative Party under David Cameron

This article argues that ideology and ideological difference remain central features of modern British politics, and that ideological positioning is an important concern for political parties and is a phenomenon in need of some modelling. It engages in an analysis of ideological repositioning that parties sometimes undertake as part of the democratic competition and suggests a model that seeks to explicate the dynamics of this process. The model, codifying imperatives that need to be met by a party seeking to reposition, also highlights potential contextual considerations that affect the repositioning process. By way of illustration, the model will be employed to examine the dynamics of ideological positioning in the case of the Conservative party under the leadership of David Cameron.

‘With All My Oldest and Native Friends’. Joseph Parkes: Warwickshire Solicitor and Electoral Agent in the Age of Reform1

Joseph Parkes, Birmingham solicitor, electoral agent, whig party advisor and secretary to the Parliamentary Municipal Corporation Commission was a modern master of exposing corrupt and fraudulent electioneering and using it as a catalyst for the election of reform and Liberal politicians immediately following the 1832 Reform Act. Warwickshire's own political and legal history was the foundation for Parkes's understanding of how politics worked in Britain and what was wrong with it, and helped forge his vision for an effective reform in parliamentary and local government. This essay examines Joseph Parkes's understanding of national electoral politics, informed by his work in Warwickshire. As a local solicitor, Parkes gained the wisdom of controlling electoral registration, canvassing in a routine and orderly manner and establishing a network of professionals to secure that registrations turned into votes at elections. This experience would culminate in the formation of the Reform Club, a national organisation of whigs, Liberals and radicals, that would, eventually, become the base of the Liberal Party in modern British politics. In short, Joseph Parkes was a man who could not, and did not wish to, escape where he came from, at least in terms of his political education. His Warwickshire experiences and lessons learned, solidified a series of political reform goals that he pragmatically approached as a political advisor, operative and attorney, rather than an elected public servant, and marked the direction of politics for the rest of the century.

Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc (review)

Reviewed by Victor Feske Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts Natchitoches Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. By Joseph Pearce. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2002. Pp. x, 318. $24.95.) Robert Speaight's The Life of Hilaire Belloc was published in 1957, a mere four years after the death of his subject. As is customary with authorized biographies, this thick volume is awash in detail and extravagant praise. Nearly three decades later A. N. Wilson produced a more critical, less sympathetic rendering, but his 1986 treatment of Belloc's career suffers from defects of emphasis and judgment. Thus, it is past time for the appearance of a new, thoughtful, carefully-researched, definitive reappraisal of Belloc for the twenty-first century. Unfortunately for students of modern British culture, politics, and letters, Joseph Pearce has not provided such a book. Pearce relies far too much upon Speaight. Nearly a quarter of his nine-hundred-plus endnotes cite either Speaight's official biography or Speaight's edited letters of Belloc. By contrast, Pearce exhibits a clear distaste for Wilson's interpretation, referencing the latter volume a mere handful of times. Pearce's narrative resembles nothing so much as a garden maze, with plenty of promising pathways that, in the end, lead nowhere. A representative example is Chapter 26 entitled "Reformed Characters." Pearce begins this section by discussing Belloc's mounting fascination in the mid-1920's with the historiography of the English Reformation, an interest sparked by the Anglo-French controversialist's Catholic-inspired determination to combat what he decried as Whiggish bias. But Pearce gives the reader only three short paragraphs on this complicated subject. There is no examination of the interpretative framework of Belloc's depictions of the central figures of the Reformation in England or, more importantly, of the origins of the Bellocian version of the sixteenth century in his contemporary political and religious prejudices. Instead, Pearce proceeds to race through a cascade of unrelated topics. The reader is treated to a couple of sentences on the breadth of Belloc's 1925 literary output; half a page on Belloc's delight at G. K. Chesterton's clever illustrations; ten lines on Belloc's support for Chesterton's rectorial candidacy at Glasgow University; an aside on Bellocian public revulsion at the unveiling of an art deco memorial in Kensington Gardens; a paragraph on the death of Belloc's mother; mention of the consolation Belloc received from his grandchildren; seventeen lines on Belloc's admiration for the fiction of Maurice Baring; a brief description of the dinners of the Squire's cricket team; two pages on Belloc's reaction to the 1926 General Strike; and finally a short section recounting an October 1927 public debate between Chesterton and G. B. Shaw. [End Page 689] Only after this four-and-a-half-page detour (in an eight-and-one-half-page chapter) does Pearce return, almost as an afterthought, to the original subject of Belloc-as-historian in the 1920's and '30's. Yet even then, Pearce makes no attempt to summarize the general contour, much less the messy details, of Belloc's historical argument. The most that Pearce can muster is a couple of perfunctory quotes that convey Belloc's anger and despair at "that false official history which warps all English life" (p. 229). The author neglects to define the tenets of the "false official" Whig historians whom Belloc treats with such contempt. The bare extent of what an uninitiated reader learns here is that Belloc championed the "Catholic version of history" in its battle against the pro-Protestant consensus of Macaulay, Freeman, and Trevelyan. Then, having adequately analyzed nothing, Pearce asserts that "[p]erhaps . . . Belloc deserves recognition as being more than merely a much-needed counterbalance to the bias of previous 'official' historians. Perhaps he deserves to be seen as a true historian, that is, a historian who sought objectivity to his judgments to such a degree that he tried sincerely...

The republican transformation of modern British politics

The republican transformation of modern British politics

Varieties of Early Modern Political Culture - The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770. By Andy Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 354. $74.95 (cloth). - Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650–1730. By Paul D. Halliday. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 393. $74.95 (cloth). - Kingship and the

Varieties of Early Modern Political Culture - The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770. By Andy Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 354. 69.95 (cloth). - Volume 41 Issue 2

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:Anne K. Mellor, Mothers of the Nation: Women's Political Writing in England, 1780–1830Hilda Smith (ed.), Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political TraditionRachel Weil, Political Passions, Gender, the Family and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: Women of Colonial PhiladelphiaLarry E. Tise (ed.), Benjamin Franklin and WomenBarbara Kanner, Women in Context: Two Hundred Years of British Women Autobiographers, a Reference Guide and ReaderR. N. Swanson (ed.), Gender and Christian Religion, Studies in Church HistoryKathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, PeruSudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women's RightsRuth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri with the assistance of Beth McAuley (eds), Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and RaceJulia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial PowerJulia Clancy‐Smith and Frances Gouda (eds), Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender and Family Life in French and Dutch ColonialismAlan Kidd and David Nicholls (eds), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle‐Class Identity in Britain, 1800–1940Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland and Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race and Class in Visual CultureLinda Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and CinemaDeborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain 1850–1900Ludmilla Jordanova, History in PracticeBonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical PracticeJudith Halberstam, Female MasculinityStephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (eds) Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and LiteraturePaul Robinson, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul MonettePaula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914Claire A. Cullerton, Working‐Class Culture, Women and Britain, 1914–1921Claire Langhamer, Women's Leisure in England 1920–1960Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition