Politics In Britain Research Articles

Angus Hawkins. Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics in Britain, 1855–59. Stanford University Press. 1987. Pp. xiii, 415. $38.50.

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Immigration and the Judiciary – Law and Politics in Britain and America. By Stephen H. Legomsky [Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987, 345 pp.

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General election forecasting in Britain: A comparison of three simple models

The advent of three-party politics in Britain with the February 1974 general election has introduced an uncertainty into electoral and parliamentary politics unprecedented in the post-war period. In these circumstances, election forecasting has assumed a special interest and significance for academics, politicians, political commentators, and the like. This article presents and assesses the performance of three forecasting instruments, the ‘incremental’, ‘opinion polling’ and ‘economic’ models. They are estimated over the period 1951–1983 and are then used to predict the share of the vote won by the governing, opposition and Alliance parties in the 1987 general election. All are successful in the sense that they forecast the continuation of the Conservative party's electoral dominance. with Labour and the Alliance a poor second and third. Only the economic model, however, generates a reasonable forecast of the gap separating the major parties and it is used to predict the distribution of parliamentary seats between them. It is seen to be substantially more accurate for the government than for the opposition, which is itself a reflection of the uncertainty introduced into British politics by the emergence of a significant third party in recent elections.

The black Diaspora in Britain: Afro‐Caribbean students and the struggle for a political identity, 1900–1950

This essay examines the growth of black student politics in Britain during the first half of this century. It looks at the conflict between early black nationalist movements that emerged after the First World War and the attempts at social control through white welfare organizations and the Colonial Office. The last part examines the West African Students Union and its struggle for an independent hostel before and during the Second World War. The article concludes that these political conflicts played an important role in the early formation of black politics in Britain and that black students were not the alienated rootless personages divested of a history that they have sometimes been made out to be.

Class, Attitudes, and Electoral Politics in Britain, 1974-1983

There is now general agreement that social class has declined in electoral importance in Britain in recent years. There is disagreement, however, about the role political attitudes have come to play in structuring the vote. This article builds on our previous research on political attitudes and voting in Britain by applying multivariate analysis to survey data collected for the 1983 general election. The analysis uses a sophisticated conceptualization of social class and political attitudes, and examines both their interrelationship and their conjoint influence on the vote. The results show, first, that the most salient political attitudes in the 1983 election, socialism and nuclearism, were significantly rooted in social class. Second, considered comparatively, attitudes were about three times as important an influence in the election as social class. Finally, a longitudinal analysis spanning the October 1974, 1979, and 1983 elections, confirms other research and indicates that there has been little fundamental change in the electorate's overall attitudinal structure but that the change there has been contributed to the Labour Party's falling vote over the three elections.

Politics in Britain and the United States: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Richard Hodder-Williams and James Ceaser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. xvi, 232p. $35.00).

Politics in Britain and the United States: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Richard Hodder-Williams and James Ceaser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. xvi, 232p. $35.00).

Sir Alfred Zimmern revisited: fifty years on

The publication in 1936 of Sir Alfred Zimmern's The League of Nations and the Rule of Law is now, fifty years on, little mentioned. It was ‘perhaps…the most polished work of the “idealist” writers’ who dominated the academic study of international politics in Britain and America for most of the inter-war years;1 and Zimmern (then Montague Burton Professor of International Relations in Oxford) was ‘the most influential representative of our field’ in that period.

Capital Markets and Central–Local Politics in Britain

Local government borrowing is often referred to as a highly technical, not to say arcane, activity of local government. It should not be dismissed so easily. In reality, such borrowing illuminates broader relations between government and market by highlighting interdependencies which exist between central government, local government and financial markets.

The Dignity of Defiance: Some Recent Writing on British Labor History

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesThe Dignity of Defiance: Some Recent Writing on British Labor HistoryJ. M. WinterJ. M. Winter Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 58, Number 2Jun., 1986 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/243017 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1986 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Withered ‘Greening’ of British Politics: A Study of the Ecology Party

Britain appears to be largely removed from the new political tide of ‘green’ parties that is currently sweeping other West European countries. This article will put forward some explanations for this ‘stillborn’ character of ‘green’ party politics in Britain. A detailed scrutiny of the history of the Ecology Party will be provided. It will be argued that the relative weakness of the Party is mainly due to its'failure to attract the support of ‘new social movements’. Particular attention will be paid to the British political system's ability to deal with middle-class protest movements by a mixture of issue suppression and group integration.

The racialization of politics in Britain: Why Scotland is different

Why do some societies appear to experience little or no racial conflict? Scotland, for example, is perceived as having no race relations problem but, argue Miles and Dunlop, this does not mean an absence of racism. What distinguishes Scotland, they believe, is the absence of a ‘racialization of the political process’.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:1975 CRISIS — An Historical Review. By H.O. Browning.THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY: A VIEW FROM THE NORTH. Edited by Richard Caves and Lawrence Krause.AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. By Graham MaddoxREVOLUTIONARIES AND REFORMISTS: Communism and the Australian Labor Movement 1920–1955. By Robin GollanASCENT TO POWER: WRAN AND THE MEDIA. By Brian Dale.A FEDERAL LEGISLATURE: The Australian Commonwealth Parliament 1901–1980. By Joan Rydon.WHO OWNS THE PAST? PAPERS FROM THE ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES. Edited by Isabel McBryde.DIVORCE IN 19TH CENTURY NEW SOUTH WALES. By Hilary Golder.ESSAYS ON VICTORIAN POLITICS. Edited by P.R. Hay, J. Halligan, J. Warhurst and B. Costar.PROGRAM FOR CHANGE. Edited by Marian Sawyer.TO LIVE IN PEACE: AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE POLICY. By Michael O'Connor. CarltonTHE JEWS IN VICTORIA, 1835–1985. By Hilary L. Rubinstein. Appendix by W.D. Rubinstein.RUPERT MURDOCH. A PAPER PRINCE. By George Munster.DANIEL MANNIX. THE QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP. By B.A. Santamaria.WHY CHINA? RECOLLECTIONS OF CHINA 1923–1950. By C.P. Fitzgerald.TRADE UNIONS IN CHINA 1949 TO THE PRESENT. The Organisation and Leadership of the All‐China Federation of Trade Unions. By Lee Lai To.JAPAN TODAY. By Roger Buckley.SUPER POWERS IN COLLISION. THE NEW COLD WAR OF THE 1980s. By Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Steele and John Gittings.NUCLEAR WINTER. By Owen GreeneALL THINGS TO ALL MEN: The False Promise of the Modern American Presidency. By Godfrey Hodgson.THE CANADIAN HOUSE OF COMMONS: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF NORMAN WARD. Edited by John C. Courtney.TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE FOR CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN. By George Irvin and Xabier Gorostiaga.MONKS, HERMITS AND THE ASCETIC TRADITION. Ed. by W.V. Sheils.THE BARBARIAN WEST 400–1000. By J.M. Wallace‐Hadrill.POWERS AND LIBERTIES: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West. By John A. Hall.A FINANCIAL HISTORY OF WESTERN EUROPE. By Charles P. Kindleberger.EAST‐CENTRAL EUROPE IN TRANSITION: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century. Ed. by A. Maczak, H. Samsonowicz, and P. Burke.THE SCAREMONGERS. The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896–1914. By A.J.A. Morris.THE DECISION TO DISARM GERMANY: BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS POSTWAR GERMAN DISARMAMENT, 1914–1919. By Lorna S. Jaffe.HISTORY AND HERITAGE: The Social Origins of the British Industrial Relations System. By Alan Fox.FACTION AND PARLIAMENT. Essays on Early Stuart History. Edited by Kevin Sharpe.POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY IN ENGLAND 1603–1640. By J.P. Sommerville.THE ECONOMY AND THE 1984 BUDGET. Edited by Michael Keen.FROM MUNICH TO THE LIBERATION, 1938–1944. By Jean‐Pierre Azema.THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES OF INTERPRETATION. By Ian Kershaw.ÖSTERREICH‐LAND DER BEGRENZTEN UNMÖGLICHKEITEN. (Austria‐the Land of Limited Impossibilities). By Karl Pisa.ZION BEFORE ZIONISM, 1838–1880. By Arnold Blumberg.COUNTER—INSURGENCY IN RHODESIA. By J.K. Cilliers.DARWINISM AND DIVINITY: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief. Edited by John Durant.SEX, IDEOLOGY AND RELIGION: THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE BIBLE. By Kevin Harris.THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC POLICYMAKING. By Wyn Grant and Shiv Nath.THE ECONOMICS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. Edited by Joel Mokyr.THE PHOSPHATEERS: A History of the British Phosphate Commissioners and the Christmas Island Phosphate Commission. By Maslyn Williams and Barrie Macdonald.THE FOODMAKERS. By Sarah Sargent.BEYOND DEPENDENCE. By Kosmas Tsokhas.PAYING AND CHOOSING: The Intelligent Person's Guide to the Mixed Economy. By Leo Pliatzky.MARX'S LOST AESTHETIC. Karl Marx and the visual arts. By Margaret A. Rose.THE RISE AND DECLINE OF WESTERN LIBERALISM. By Anthony Arblaster.LIBERALISM AND ITS CRITICS. Edited by Michael J. Sandel.BURKE'S REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. By F.P. Lock.THE DIVIDING DISCIPLINE: HEGEMONY AND DIVERSITY IN INTERNATIONAL THEORY. By K.J. Holsti.THE STATE. By Anthony de Jasay.A COMMON SENSE GUIDE TO WORLD PEACE. By Benjamin B. Ferencz.

Survey 6: Urban History, Housing, and Politics in Britain

Survey 6: Urban History, Housing, and Politics in Britain

Factory Politics in Britain and the United States: Engineers and Machinists, 1914–1919

The priorities of British and American trade unions center predominantly on the economic rewards received by union members. Collective bargaining and strikes typically focus on how much employers must pay for labor (in wages, pensions, and other benefits) rather than on how the labor, once purchased, may be used. Basic decisions regarding the organization of production are not considered by most unionists as legitimate issues for negotiation. Disputes over working conditions do arise, of course, but rarely concern securing for labor the rights of management. They involve instead efforts to protect jobs and work practices from encroachment by employers or poaching by other unions. In short, labor's goals are largely economistic, defensive, and sectional.

The Danish Connection: A Note on the Making of British Old Age Pensions

In the continuous discussion of how and how much Lloyd George was influenced by Germany in formulating Old Age Pensions and National Insurance, attention seems to have been almost wholly diverted from the degree to which the Danish example was discussed, recommended and clearly present in the consciousness of those who made the British Old Age Pension Act of 1908. There is no discussion of the issue in the standard work on the subject, Bentley B. Gilbert's The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain, (London, 1966) nor even any mention of “Denmark” in the index. The subject is likewise missing from Francis H. Stead's How Old Age Pensions Came to Be, (London [? 1910]), which Gilbert calls “indispensible.” Patricia Mary Williams barely mentions the subject in her detailed dissertation, “The Development of Old Age Pension Policy in Great Britain, 1878-1925” (University of London, 1970), and does not even do that much in the book she wrote under the name Pat Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State (Essex, 1982) nor in the chapter on old age pensions in the book she edited, Origins of British Social Policy (London, 1978). Hugh Heclo in Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden (New Haven, 1974) mentions (p. 167) that the proposals of the commission in 1899 “resembled” the Danish system, but Heclo does not say how or why, and then never mentions the subject again. John Grigg, in his biography of Lloyd George is concerned with the man more than the issue, and does not analyze the source of the ideas behind the old age pension bill of 1908 in his Lloyd George, The People's Champion (Berkeley, 1978).

The Allied War Effort and the Jews, 1942-1943

The publication of Bernard Wasserstein's Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 in 1979 implicitly raised questions about existing studies of American response to the Holocaust. Wasserstein's approach and interpretation of British policies toward European Jews differed appreciably from those of scholars who had studied the Roosevelt administration's corresponding activities. Not content with highlighting the Foreign Office's role in the formulation of refugee policy, Wasserstein probed the views of the Home Office and Colonial Office as well. What he found was a virtually solid bureaucratic bloc that opposed most proposals for aid to Jewish victims of nazi persecution. The single most important consideration behind this opposition was concern that Britain might have to introduce Jewish refugees into Palestine, which would have damaged Britain's political and military position. A pro-Zionist Winston Churchill could make only limited headway against the consensus of the professional civil service and, on occasion, the military. Although Wasserstein found a number of cases of official dislike for Jews, most notably in the case of Foreign Minister Anthony Eden,' British policy did not rest primarily on prejudice. It was, rather, a question of priorities. Studies of the United States have concentrated to varying degrees on the activities of the State Department and the pervasiveness of anti-semitic prejudice there. Although surprisingly well-researched, journalist Arthur Morse's While Six Million Died (1967)2 bore the tone and episodic structure of an expose. Morse's main villain, apart from the nazis themselves, was Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, whose political and social views were said to have kept Jews from reaching the shores of the United States. Historian Henry Feingold (The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945) goes even further in

Imperialism in Transition: British Business and the Chinese Authorities, 1931–37

According to current Chinese views, in 1949 China was liberated from three major evils: feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism. The present article takes a closer look at the relationship between the two last mentioned. The period chosen is the early and mid 1930s, which was marked by growing tensions between the powers in East Asia, by acute economic depression and subsequent recovery, and by the gradual extension of the Nanjing Government's control over the country. On the foreigner's side, the focus will be on the British experience at a time when Great Britain's political position in the Far East was being overshadowed by Japan's thrust towards hegemony. It will be argued, the widening gap between Britain's political and economic presence in China was partly bridged by increasingly close co-operation between British business and the Chinese ruling elite.

Politics, Banks and Markets: An Anglo-American Comparison

A comparison of banking politics in Britain and the United States is offered as a contribution to the debate about business power under market capitalism, particularly in the light of Lindblom's picture of business as a privileged interest. Important differences are noted between British and American banking. Contrasts in industrial structure, forms of interest representation and methods of regulation are stressed particularly. Convergence between the two systems in recent decades is described, and is attributed to the way innovation in markets destroys public controls and creates common problems for regulators. The experience of banking markets thus confirms much of Lindblom's argument. But regulation, and thus public control, is also shown to play a decisive part in shaping business behaviour.

The comparative teaching of communist politics in Britain

The comparative teaching of communist politics in Britain

War and Politics in Britain

War and Politics in Britain