Parties In Britain Research Articles

Braided motivations for Iceland’s first wave of mass emigration to North America after the 1875 Askja eruption

More than 14,000 Icelanders emigrated to North America between 1870 and 1914 CE. Mass movement from Iceland accelerated the year after the explosive eruption of Askja in 1875, and both contemporary and recent commentators have linked the two circumstances. Despite an abundant scholarship on Icelandic emigration in this period, the direct and indirect roles of the eruption as a possible stimulus remain unclear. Here, we engage critically with a range of contemporary source materials as well as meteorological and climatological information to re-assess where Askja fits into the picture of Iceland’s first wave of mass migration. We find that emigration was undoubtedly fuelled by the hardships of Icelanders and their growing contacts with countrymen already in the Americas, and that the highest proportions of emigrants came from counties most directly impacted by the Askja eruption. However, it also emerges that the eruption served as a lever for interested parties in Britain and Canada to persuade large numbers of desirable migrants to settle in North America. Our study highlights the opportunities that discrete episodes of volcanic activity present to probe the complex interrelationships of nature and society.

Affective polarization within parties

AbstractPolitics is increasingly a major source of social division, and party identities are theorized to be major drives of political hostility. However, parties often contain factions who are deeply hostile towards one another. Currently, we do not know whether hostility between factions within parties can be as intense as hostility between parties. In this article we compare, for the major parties in Britain (Ns = 522; 568) and the United States (N = 443), the affect that partisans feel towards factions within their own party and factions in rival parties. We find that within‐party affective polarization effects are large on average (d = 0.8) and sometimes very large (d > 1.2), that they are usually smaller than between‐party effects but can equal or exceed them, and, in several cases, factions prefer an out‐party faction over their in‐party rivals. These findings demonstrate that strong affective polarization can emerge between groups who share party identities, highlighting the importance of factions in political psychology and raising questions about the effect of party identities on affective polarization.

“Churchill's Party”: A necessary experiment in personalization

AbstractAimThis article aims to determine the extent of “personalization” and “de‐institutionalization” within the Conservative Party in Britain during the period 1940–1945 when the Party was under the leadership of Winston Churchill.Materials and methodsThe article examines the different dimensions of “personalization” and “de‐institutionalization” as defined by Harmel, Svåsand, and Mjelde in this special edition. To do so, it uses a variety of sources including: internal party records, memoirs and biographies, contemporaneous diaries, letters to party leaders, and survey research undertaken by the organization Mass Observation.ResultsThe article identified that a limited degree of personalization took place during the period. This was largely in relation to the movement away from existing internal policy and procedures, especially those to do with electioneering. Evidence regarding other dimensions was mixed with a notable lack of change in the perceptions other parties and their leaders held about the Conservative Party.ConclusionThe article suggests that the personalization that occurred within the Party was largely a product of necessity, notably the unpopularity of the Conservative “brand” during World War II, compared to Churchill's own personal popularity, as well as the disruptions caused by the war itself. The article argues that this was enabled, to an extent, by the already high degree of latitude that the Conservative Party afforded its leaders. At the same time, the article notes the way in which defeat at the 1945 general election led to the Conservative Party “snapping back” to its pre‐war highly institutionalized form. Both findings highlight the extent to which electoral calculations were central to the process of personalization and its subsequent reverse.

The activation of nationalist attitudes: how voters respond to far-right parties’ campaigns

ABSTRACT The rise of far-right parties represents one of the main challenges for European democracies. Previous research has shed light both on their electoral strategies, and on the nationalist attitudes of their electorates. Yet, the causal mechanism by which far-right party discourse activates voters’ preferences is still unclear. This paper revisits the literature on campaign effects in the context of challenger party entry, and argues that the activation of attitudes on ‘wedge issues’, such as immigration and European integration, is the outcome of a process of learning and partisan updating. The empirical analyses focus on the electoral breakthrough of far-right parties in Britain and Germany, and rely on three-wave panel surveys to address reverse causation. Results show that voters update their vote intentions in light of their Eurosceptic and xenophobic attitudes only when they learn the policy positions of the far-right party vis-à-vis the other parties. These findings shed light on the nature of far-right party support, set a scope condition for research on priming and persuasion in election campaigns, and contribute to normative debates about the functioning of electoral democracy.

Integration and Disintegration in Europe: A Study on Brexit

Regionalism is the creation of political, economic, or social structures loyal to a detailed analysis of a Geographic area with a similar population in terms of ideology and culture. Capitalism and state-to-state diplomacy are fundamentally based on regional integration. The ideas emphasize how interdependent and geographically significant states are. These nations are widely acknowledged as a single commercial bloc and are pursuing more ambitious political and economic goals. To accomplish this, member states' capitalism and intergovernmental systems come together. The European Union (EU) is Europe's attempt to become a regional organization, the most significant effort to establish regionalism in markets in the 20th century. The United Kingdom (UK) will leave the European Union on March 29 2019, leading to a new course in the world. When on June 23 2016, a majority voted in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (EU), it generated a host of unknowns. Over to the referendum, all are focused on anticipating the impact and implications of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. This paper will add another piece to Brexit and its emergence. This paper tries to explain regionalism in Europe and European integration, the UK's Withdrawal referendum, and its Exit and also traces the importance of the political parties in Britain. Afterwards, it briefly introduces Britain's historically fractious relationship with the EU. In light of Britain's historical role, the remaining part of this paper goes on to estimate the background and impact of Brexit on the regional organization like European Union, which members and institutions within the organization emerges (the EU 27) will be best able to benefit from the strategic vacuum created the Brexit in the Globalized era.

Court Forms as Part of Online Courts: Elicitation and Communication in the Early Stages of Legal Proceedings

The article explores court forms as an interactive genre essential for legal-lay communication in civil and family proceedings: court forms elicit key information from predominantly lay users for the purposes of court administration and the judiciary. The information presented in court forms defines the agenda and communicative focus of the subsequent hearings and settlement negotiations, and in some instances even the path the proceedings would take. It is thus important to consider court forms in terms of their comprehensibility as well as functionality for eliciting legally coherent narratives and facilitating efficient engagement of lay participants with the proceedings. The case study presented in the article draws on the combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to explore two versions of the court form most frequently used by self-represented parties in England and Wales, ‘Form C100: Apply for a court order to make arrangements for a child or resolve a dispute about their upbringing’. The comparison of the paper form and its redesigned online version identifies the improvements made as part of the digitisation process but also indicates communicative challenges which can prevent the lay person from presenting the relevant information. The discussion provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of language in online courts.

“Send a Soldier to Parliament”: Ex-servicemen, Masculinity, and the Legacies of the Great War in Liberal Electoral and Parliamentary Politics

AbstractThe spectacular collapse of the Liberal Party in Britain has often been regarded as the result of a crisis in Liberal values, supposedly provoked by the unprecedented militarization of British society during the Great War. However, this interpretation typically fails to recognize the extent to which the most important and visible legacies of that process of militarization were accommodated within the Liberal Party itself. Between 1918 and 1929, more than a hundred ex-servicemen were elected to Parliament as Liberal MPs, and scores more stood as Liberal candidates. This article examines how these men negotiated, presented, and performed their military identities within the framework of postwar electoral politics; analyzes how they operated in Parliament; and traces the longer-term trajectories of their political careers. It challenges the assumption that Liberals were temperamentally or ideologically incapable of engaging with the war's legacies, demonstrating the ability of Liberal candidates to exploit the iconography and rhetorical tropes of military service when appealing to an electorate that had been profoundly shaped by the experience of war and military mobilization. Liberals sought to contest Conservative Party attempts to monopolize the politics of patriotism after 1918 by constructing gendered electoral appeals that acknowledged the unstable meanings of the Great War and the ambiguous status of the men who had fought in it. However, the inability of Liberal politicians to unite around a shared understanding of what the war had meant ultimately prevented them from exploiting the memory of the conflict as effectively as their Conservative and Labour rivals.

Intertwined fates? Members switching between niche and mainstream parties

Little attention has been paid to the process of members leaving parties in order to support other parties. Party developments in the UK in the 2010s provide an opportunity to analyse the determinants of members giving up their current party and joining a rival. We examine this issue using an original panel survey of 2,679 members of the Green Party of England and Wales. Our results show that members who joined the Greens motivated by concern about social justice are more likely to leave and support Labour after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as party leader. Members who joined to protect the environment are less likely to leave. Niche parties can attract members predominantly motivated by issues traditionally represented by a mainstream party but these members are more likely to leave the party again following a position change by the mainstream party.

Subverting Hamlet through Re-writing: Sexual and Gender Politics of the Mother in Howard Barker’s Gertrude-The Cry

In Howard Barker’s Gertrude-The Cry (2002), all the things most popularly known about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet are subverted and transformed to a great extent. In this adaptation, the title character of the source text is changed from Hamlet to Gertrude, who is presented as a villainous woman in Hamlet with her potential involvement in her husband’s murder and subsequent marriage to Claudius. Barker alters the status of Hamlet as the tragic hero and makes his mother the new heroine of the play who does not conform to any of the norms set for her in Shakespeare’s text. Instead, Gertrude behaves as a woman extremely driven by erotic desire towards several male characters in the play. This paper analyses Barker’s rewriting as an attempt to challenge the norms of womanhood represented in conventional literary works. The transformations in Barker’s version are also related to women’s role and status in society at the time the play was written. Regarding the dominant ideas of the play such as personal will and sexual liberation in light of the relevant legislations of the New Labour as the ruling party in Britain in the early years of the twenty-first century, Barker’s play is also discussed as a politically driven adaptation.

Inclusivity and Decentralisation of Candidate Selectorates: Factional Consequences for Centre-Left Parties in England, Germany, and the United States

In recent elections, ‘progressives’ in centre-left parties have advocated for more democratised processes of candidate selection. We test whether more inclusive and decentralised selectorates align with higher numbers of progressive candidates nominated in national legislative elections by centre-left parties across three advanced western democracies between 2017 and 2021. In the Labour Party, more centralised selectorates aligned with higher numbers of progressives selected. For the SPD, we report null findings, likely due to additional incentives for factional co-operation in a multi-party system. In our most decentralised case, the Democratic Party, selection of progressives was congruent with district partisanship rather than selectorate inclusivity, with progressives more commonly selected in safe rather than competitive or unfavoured districts. This relationship was not present in our other cases. These findings highlight the importance of the decentralisation dimension for the factional allegiance of legislative candidates nominated.

When Does It Make Sense to Call Hostility Towards Jews Antisemitism and When Does It Not? A Historical Perspective on Contemporary Debates

When Does It Make Sense to Call Hostility Towards Jews Antisemitism and When Does It Not?A Historical Perspective on Contemporary Debates Steven Beller (bio) Wherever one turns these days, it looks as though the scourge of antisemitism is on the rise. What concerns many people is that, while nationalist antisemitism on the political Right was always something to monitor, the recent jump in antisemitism appears to be coming from the political Left. The Labour Party in Britain seems to be riddled with it, even though for years it was seen as a bastion defending British Jews from antisemitism. Here in the United States the farleft of the Democratic Party, represented by people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are also accused regularly of being antisemitic. Furthermore, there is deep concern among many American Jews and their friends and allies about the support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement on college campuses, whose leaders are frequently assailed as being antisemitic because of their opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and for their criticism of Jewish supporters of the Israeli government, as well as for their support of a secular democratic state replacing what is currently Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Appearances can, [End Page 115] however, be deceptive. It is debatable whether most, if any, of this behavior and rhetoric is really something that deserves to be called antisemitism. The IHRA "working definition," which is the most well-known definition of antisemitism today that has been adopted by many organizations in Europe, America, and elsewhere, would say that much of the Israel-related rhetoric and behavior on the Left could be antisemitism, depending on the context and the interpretations of the various examples given as a gloss on the IHRA definition. The rather short core IHRA definition is fairly anodyne, but the devil is in the details of the examples, which many of its advocates now assert are part of the definition, even though the phrasing of the IHRA document does not indicate so. It is in these examples that so many interpreters of the IHRA definition have transformed possibility into certainty. By a "hermeneutics of suspicion," what the IHRA definition states could be antisemitic has been turned into something that is definitely antisemitic, or at least merits watching, and exhorting against: hence the condemnation of the Left as hopelessly riddled with antisemitism. Yet this says more about problems with the IHRA working definition and its abuse by so many organizations, including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) itself, than it does about how prevalent antisemitism is on the Left today. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), while better in some respects, also has major flaws, and in both cases the reason is the confused, often self-contradictory ways in which antisemitism is defined, especially when it comes to attitudes toward Israel and Zionism. A word like "antisemitism" should not be bandied about carelessly and without thorough consideration. It is far too emotive, and even explosive, a term to be as irresponsibly handled as it has been of late in politics and the press, on both sides of the Atlantic. What follows are some observations based on the history of the term and of, indeed, the phenomenon, political movement, and ideology that attempt to explain why it should be handled with much more care. [End Page 116] At the beginning of my book Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction, I discuss the vagaries involved in talking about antisemitism, even when trying to define it. Part of the argument in this book was that using the term "antisemitism" to simply mean hostility to, or hatred of, Jews did not get us very far in understanding the phenomenon. This is because antisemitism was not just some psychological state of mind, but a modern ideology and political movement based on modern cultural, economic, and social resentments, with its own modern logic and worldview, which had major consequences in the Holocaust. As such, modern antisemitism—the antisemitism that we should all condemn without reserve—differs in crucial respects from what so many call antisemitism when they want to describe something somewhat different that would be more accurately termed Jew...

The Second World War, Inequality and the Social Contract in Britain

What is the impact of warfare on inequality and the social contract? Using local data on bombing, the evolution of wealth inequality and vote shares for the Labour Party in Britain around the Second World War, we establish two results. First, on average, we find no impact of bombing on inequality. However, there is considerable heterogeneity, and this result is driven by southern Britain. In northern Britain, bombing led to significant falls in inequality. Second, heavier bombing led to a significant increase in the vote share for Labour after the war everywhere, but this effect is transitory in the south while it is permanent in the north. Our results obtain both in a simple difference‐in‐differences framework as well as in a panel‐regression discontinuity framework in which we exploit the limited range of German fighter escort planes. Our results provide novel causal evidence for the inequality‐reducing impact of warfare, and we interpret them as consistent with the notion that the impact of the war also led to a reconfiguration of the social contract in Britain.

Constructing the Ideology of the Right-Wing Radical Party in Modern United Kingdom: The Case of the United Kingdom Independence Party

This article examines the update of ideological foundations of the largest right-wing radical party in Britain (and in the whole of Europe) - the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The subject of the research is the partys programmatic text, Manifesto for Brexit and Beyond, a document that is not limited to the discussion of Brexit alone. This document appeared at the end of 2019 and, despite the frequent change of leadership in the party during 2020, remained the ideological foundation of the organization after Brexit. The aim of the article is to analyze how the ideological base of the right-wing British radical party was formed in the socio-political realities of the initial period after the states exit from the European Union. The paper presents a discursive analysis of the main ideological document of one of UKIP, as well as identifies the ideological positions of British right-wing radicals at the present stage. Since the research is mainly practice-oriented, the main results are presented the data obtained through discourse analysis using to the method of R. Wodak. The data testify the changes that have been taking place in the discourse of the extreme right in Britain in recent years, as well as the prospects for its evolution in the coming years after Brexit. Studying UKIPs discourse, the author concludes that it forms depending on the political, social and cultural conditions that prevail in modern British society, as well as on the general European context. The article also shows how a modern right-wing radical party constructs its discourse using the most painful issues for the society within the framework of political struggle.

Imperfect information and party responsiveness: Evidence from the Green Party in England

Imperfect information and party responsiveness: Evidence from the Green Party in England

Green parties and environmental activism

For this edition on environmental activism and the law, we examined how contemporary green political parties construe their role and relevance when many environmentalists including the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement are bypassing parliamentary processes by taking to the streets as well as by proposing alternate forms of political engagement such as convening national citizens’ assemblies. This report features interviews conducted in early 2020 with Paul Manly (MP, House of Commons, Green Party of Canada); Chlöe Swarbrick (MP, New Zealand Parliament, Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand); and Jonathan Bartley (Co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and councillor on Lambeth Council, London). Each interviewee responded to the same questions, which are detailed below. The interviews were conducted by Emma Thomas, XR Vancouver (interviewed Paul Manly); Trevor Daya-Winterbottom, FRGS, Associate Professor in Law, University of Waikato, and Deputy Chair of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law (interviewed Chlöe Swarbrick); and Benjamin J Richardson, Professor of Environmental Law, University of Tasmania (interviewed Jonathan Bartley).

Back to the future: On the British liberal left’s return to its origins

Why has the Labour Party in Britain been unable to take advantage of the historic opportunity presented by the global financial crisis to press its case for radical socio-economic reform? Why, despite more than a decade of Tory austerity and genuine signs of social crisis, does it find itself behind in the polls to a Conservative Party openly committed to shrinking the state and providing further tax cuts to the rich? In this short article, we reflect upon the history of the political left in Britain, and suggest that the liberalization of the left – and the long-running marginalization of the working classes, their concerns and their real-world experiences – reveals an underlying antagonism that is driving many voters supportive of interventionist economic policies but suspicious of the left’s cultural agenda into the hands of the political right.

Ireland's Foreign Relations in 2019

Author’s e-mail: donnacha.obeachain@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 255–294 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.16 INTRODUCTION This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year. ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT On 24 May 2019 Ireland, along with twenty other EU member states, voted in elections to the European Parliament, the ninth such occasion since a direct vote Ireland’s Foreign Relations in 2019 Donnacha Ó Beacháin School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 256 Irish Studies in International Affairs to the assembly was introduced in 1979.1 Different visions of Europe competed in this election. After the Second World War, catch-all parties had helped move Europe from the extremes to the centre and created strong welfare states. Globalisation had eroded the guarantees and expectations of what the state could provide and produced a large cohort of economically vulnerable citizens susceptible to those offering easy solutions. In recent years populists had taken votes from the left and the right. UKIP and the Brexit Party in Britain were examples of this phenomenon, as they succeeded in attracting supporters from both the Conservatives and Labour. To accommodate the Brexit vote, the European Parliament voted in February 2018 to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 on the basis that the UK would withdraw from the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, two years after triggering Article 50. However, as the British government had sought an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019 the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of MEPs remained as it had been in 2014. Ireland’s allocated number of seats in the European Parliament would increase from 11 to 13 but two of these MEPs would be able to take their seats only after Britain had left the EU. Despite being an election to one parliament, there remained major differences in how each member state conducted its affairs. In ten member states, including Ireland, candidates had to be at least twenty-one but for the majority (fifteen) the minimum age was eighteen. In Romania the requirement was 23, while in Greece and Italy one needed to have reached the relatively elderly age of twenty-five before being eligible to run. Ireland was one of four members (Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic being the others) that did not allow citizens to vote outside the state while in Estonia one could e-vote from­ anywhere in the world. Most member states voted for the EU parliament as single entities but five mapped out regional constituencies. Belgium had three constituencies, defined along language lines. The others were all geographical: thirteen in Poland, twelve in Britain, five in Italy and three in Ireland. Given that...

Ireland's Foreign Relations in 2019

Author’s e-mail: donnacha.obeachain@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 255–294 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.16 INTRODUCTION This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year. ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT On 24 May 2019 Ireland, along with twenty other EU member states, voted in elections to the European Parliament, the ninth such occasion since a direct vote Ireland’s Foreign Relations in 2019 Donnacha Ó Beacháin School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 256 Irish Studies in International Affairs to the assembly was introduced in 1979.1 Different visions of Europe competed in this election. After the Second World War, catch-all parties had helped move Europe from the extremes to the centre and created strong welfare states. Globalisation had eroded the guarantees and expectations of what the state could provide and produced a large cohort of economically vulnerable citizens susceptible to those offering easy solutions. In recent years populists had taken votes from the left and the right. UKIP and the Brexit Party in Britain were examples of this phenomenon, as they succeeded in attracting supporters from both the Conservatives and Labour. To accommodate the Brexit vote, the European Parliament voted in February 2018 to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 on the basis that the UK would withdraw from the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, two years after triggering Article 50. However, as the British government had sought an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019 the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of MEPs remained as it had been in 2014. Ireland’s allocated number of seats in the European Parliament would increase from 11 to 13 but two of these MEPs would be able to take their seats only after Britain had left the EU. Despite being an election to one parliament, there remained major differences in how each member state conducted its affairs. In ten member states, including Ireland, candidates had to be at least twenty-one but for the majority (fifteen) the minimum age was eighteen. In Romania the requirement was 23, while in Greece and Italy one needed to have reached the relatively elderly age of twenty-five before being eligible to run. Ireland was one of four members (Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic being the others) that did not allow citizens to vote outside the state while in Estonia one could e-vote from­ anywhere in the world. Most member states voted for the EU parliament as single entities but five mapped out regional constituencies. Belgium had three constituencies, defined along language lines. The others were all geographical: thirteen in Poland, twelve in Britain, five in Italy and three in Ireland. Given that...

Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism: The Transformation of Extremism by Ryan Shaffer

Reviewed by: Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism: The Transformation of Extremism by Ryan Shaffer Roland Clark Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism: The Transformation of Extremism. By Ryan Shaffer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. x + 354 pp. Cloth $119.99, e-book $89. Fascism is not what it used to be. Ryan Shaffer’s study of the history of the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP) tells the story of how extremist right-wing parties in Britain evolved beyond their association with Oswald Mosley and Adolf Hitler, embraced skinhead music and culture, and then sought “respectability” and seats in the European Parliament. Shaffer is not the first historian to examine these movements. His basic narrative will be familiar to readers of historians of the NF, such as Stan Taylor and Nigel Fielding, and the BNP, like Nigel Copsey, Alan Sykes, Matthew J. Goodwin, and Nick Lowles. What is new in Shaffer’s book is his emphasis on how music and youth culture shaped both movements. Shaffer argues that skinhead music rejuvenated a flagging British extremism in the late 1970s, influencing and connecting with right-wing movements throughout the world. He shows how movement leaders were consistently wary of the reputations young people were gaining for them and that they worked hard to distance themselves from the skinhead label while simultaneously cultivating the international connections music and youth culture had facilitated. The chapter on NF youth and music lies at the heart of the book and is where Shaffer carries out his most original analysis. Shaffer argues that NF youth adopted the strategies and sounds of anti-fascist groups such as the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, which used punk rock to mobilize people against right-wing extremism. Eddy Morrison and other extremists in Leeds began Rock Against Communism in 1978, out of which emerged a number of fanzines and resulted in the radicalization of internationally successful Oi! bands such as Skrewdriver. Given the centrality of music to the book, Shaffer pays remarkably little attention to the music or lyrics of these bands, focusing [End Page 317] instead on how NF and BNP leaders instrumentalized the music for political purposes. Skinhead music brought the NF international attention, and in turn NF leaders began collaborating with extremists in Italy during the 1980s as well as the Nation of Islam and Muammar Gaddafi. More “traditional” British voters were not comfortable with this shift toward internationalism, which Shaffer argues eventually destroyed the NF. Disillusioned by factionalism within the NF, many leading activists followed John Tyndall into the BNP during the 1980s, where they continued hooliganism and youth activism through related groups such as Blood & Honour and Combat 18. Both Tyndall and his successor, Nick Griffin, nonetheless tried to minimize youth influence on the movement because they felt that it limited the BNP’s ability to contest elections. One strength of Shaffer’s book is the extensive interviews he carried out with NF and BNP leaders, including Phil Andrews, Richard Edmonds, Nick Griffin, Martin Webster, and others. Shaffer also draws heavily on rare sources—illegal magazines, albums, and videos that activists have shared with him, allowing him to document factionalism and nuanced changes in policy with detailed footnotes. Throughout the book, Shaffer gives considerable space to the opinions and strategies of NF and BNP leaders without seeking to explain their oscillating popularity with British voters. He tells us why the leaders thought that their movements were winning or losing, not why he thinks it happened. The result is a study of movements and their strategic choices rather than an explanation for the success or failure of the extreme right in Britain, which would have involved discussing mainstream politics and would have required quite a different research agenda. Despite describing their spread into youth culture and internationally, Shaffer is careful not to give the impression that the NF and the BNP were large-scale or influential movements. On the contrary, he highlights the amateurism and posturing that have characterized their leadership and policies over the past fifty years. He presents the BNP’s brief period of popularity between 2005 and 2009 as...

Dignity and the Psychology of Nationalism: A Review of Francis Fukuyama's Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

Dignity and the Psychology of NationalismA Review of Francis Fukuyama's Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment Grace Rademacher (bio) Francis Fukuyama. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018. 240 pages. $26.00 hardcover, $26.00 ebook. Francis Fukuyama's book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, unpacks the escalating complications of identity politics and its implications both as a negative and positive tool on the domestic and international stages. In the context of national identity, Fukuyama insists that insecurities surrounding individual and group identity play an inherent role. Fukuyama's book points out an increasingly crucial moment with respect to the development of a group identity, best summed up by Barbara Kruger in "Reimagining of the American Flag": look for the moment where pride becomes contempt. Throughout this book, Fukuyama asserts that the modern liberal democratic order depends on the reconstruction of national identities across the globe in order to account for the current day diversity of democracies and assimilate new members. This type of national identity, according to Fukuyama, must be creedal, instead of based off ascriptive traits such as race or ethnicity. Though this assessment is a unique addition to the field of study, the book could make itself more useful if it gave a fuller policy prescription or a portfolio of practical solutions. What is unique about Fukuyama's book is the amount of time he spends grounded in the philosophy and psychology of the issue, eventually proving the inherently political nature of identity. He begins by establishing that the inner self is based on dignity, and that dignity seeks and desires recognition. Self-esteem comes from outside recognition, and as such, identity is inseparable from identity politics because in order for one to feel as though his or her identity is dignified and valid, others have to value and acknowledge it. Fukuyama cites philosopher Hegel, arguing that the struggle for recognition drives all of human history. In order to accurately unpack historical events and phenomena such as revolutions, nationalism, and Islamism, we need a better theory on the human soul. Here, Fukuyama looks to Plato's Republic and engages the concept of the "third part of the soul" to explain identity politics and allegedly irrational or unpredicted behavior. Isothymia, the desire for one's identity to be recognized by those around oneself as equal to everyone else, drives democracy. Megalothymia, however, is the need for one's identity to be recognized as better or more deserving than others. Modern democracy reflects the replacement of megalothymia with isothymia. During massive changes in history in which social caste and social structure became less pressing definitions of one's idea, people had to answer the question of their own identity outside social structure, and this ignited the [End Page 160] need for recognition and dignity, leading to democracy and the overthrow of aristocracy. The Varied Effects of Identity Politics Fukuyama defines identity politics as a neutral tool whose effect depends on the interpretation and application. He asserts that specifically after economic modernization or in response to injustice, identity politics have shaped the dynamics of world politics, including causing revolutions, the rise of democracy, the civil rights era, and social justice movements. In these ways, identity politics can be an extremely positive force within international politics. Recently, however, Fukuyama identifies the rise of populist and nationalist forces across liberal democracies and asserts that global politics in the second decade of the 21st century is defined by nationalist or religious parties and politicians, listing Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Kaczynski, Trump, Duterte; populist parties and nationalist parties in England, France, the Netherlands; and the prime ministers of India, Japan, and China. Fukuyama largely attributes the recent rise of identity politics to poverty and global inequality and argues that populist and nationalist parties come to power owing to the prevalence of identity politics. Therefore, if liberal democracies do not begin to deal with identity politics, they will not be able to destabilize nationalist or populist forces, which are a serious threat to the democracy itself. In identifying the problematic applications of identity politics, Fukuyama...