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The 1980s saw the ongoing transformation of the US economy toward a post-industrial economy that focused on finance, ICT (information & communication technologies), and intellectual property. In addition, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 set into place a dramatic restructuring of international relations, including the opportunity for a more unified global economy. The stage was set for the first post-Cold War presidential election. This paper argues that the new business leaders emerging out the economic restructuring represent a new “global investment class” that shares a set of strategic priorities which lead them to support the young and ambitious “New Democrat,” Bill Clinton over the established liberal Republican, George H. W. Bush. After (1) a short introduction, the paper (2) describes the global investment class and its strategies for expansion; (3) reviews the problem that the US victory in the Cold War left for the foreign policy establishment; (4) analyzes how differences between Bush and Clinton lead the GIC to prefer the latter; (5) discusses how the fusion of Clinton and the GIC represents, in C. Wright Mills term, a new “ruling epoch;” and (6) ends with a conclusion.

When servants would sign a contract, they knew it was for a determined span of time. However, what was on the paper was not an automatic reflection of the 17th century reality, especially in a foreign land where everything had to be done, and where the mortality rate and dangers were high. Therefore, contracting an indenture often meant not recovering one’s freedom. In the case where a servant would survive his time of servitude, he had the right to claim freedom dues on the part of his master. Those were meant to help him settle as a free colonist, buying land, raising cattle and planting tobacco. This article focuses on the reality of the freedom dues, landownership and opportunities after the end of an indenture by contrasting what was on the paper with the real experiences of this class of often-forgotten commoners, however essential they were to feed the hungry stomach of the tobacco market.

American state Constitutions provide for direct democracy in which citizens are given the tools to impact their government. The most common way is via the proposition which can change the state law. This paper focuses on two controversial sets of propositions from California in the recent past: medical and recreational marijuana, and same-sex marriage. It questions the different powers at play such as money, special interests, and the potential institutional checks. Are propositions the expression of public opinion? How effective are these examples of direct democracy?

This study is an attempt to probe into the value of paintings as historical evidence by locating the investigation in the realm of history from below. The article suggests a new reading of Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton’s immediate post-war paintings and their significance in mirroring her take on the war by exploring details of her life based on her biography. I transcend the literal iconographical interpretation of her images and attempt to delve into the ambivalent angle of the painter’s psychological impact on her works of art which was largely under-acknowledged in the recent historiography. The paper tackles the main problematic of how the conscious and unconscious in Hamilton’s paintings are yoked to create a visual historical text. It is argued that War Material’s, Sanctuary Wood, Flanders’ and Albert (Somme) Route d’Amiens’ connotations are more complex than solely representing the historical aftermath of the global conflict or the inter-war sentiments of sacrifice, victimhood, patriotism and commemoration. This investigation goes beyond these dimensions. It is anchored around one key theme of aesthesiology by tapping into the paintings through the prism of emotion. I examine the sub-themes of fear, anxiety and trauma which are the common denominator in the three paintings.

This article addresses one very specific aspect of the Enoch Powell moment of 1968: how, in the letters of support that the radical right leader received in the wake of the so-called ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Britons vituperated against the Elites as embodied by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC was in the eyes of Powell’s supporters hell-bent on promoting a multiracial Britain that they were averse to, as well as striving to silence the voice of disgruntled ordinary Britons, who construed their collective identity as that of a ‘silenced majority’. The BBC was also blamed for being a key player in the British ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s. Eventually, this paper ventures a few reflections on the afterlives of Powell’s moment as covered by the BBC, be it in 2008 (‘The White Season’) or in 2018, when BBC4 broadcast Powell’s infamous speech amidst fresh controversy.

This article’s rationale is that the Arabic Service of the BBC holds a special position in the development of British public diplomacy and that such a position has its roots in the 1937 negotiations between the BBC and the Foreign Office that led to its creation in 1938. These discussions resulted in the BBC’s willingness to handle the task of British projection responsibly, that is to say resorting to the omission of news which in the view of the Foreign Office would be inadvisable in times of crisis. The article seeks to show that this non-written agreement prevailed in the following six decades and is still valid up to the present day. The paper investigates the coverage of three moments of crisis in the history of British foreign policies in the Middle East. The first moment concerns the controversial news bulletin of 4 January 1938, the very first BBC broadcast in a foreign language. The other two moments relate to the Suez crisis and the first Gulf war. The article’s main line of inquiry therefore is to offer specific insights into the notion of soft power mediated by diasporic Arab broadcasters in circumstances when the stakes were high for Britain in the Middle East. The aim is to assess both the resilience and the ambiguities of John Reith’s vision of British projection through a model of broadcasting of his own making in a sensitive and complex region for the country’s formal diplomacy.

In the field of mixed couples, the very formation of the couple implies intercultural borders. The birth of children, which activates the “mixing” process, may have a possible effect on these borders which are often represented as walls. Therefore the wall paradigm has a very heuristic function insofar as it allows the modelization of psychical phenomenon through representations using vision and touch. This paper considers various functions of the Berlin wall in order to understand processes such as cleaving and its resolution.

Historically white male dominated, the police service was criticised for having a sexist and racist culture and lacking black, Asian and female officers. The low numbers of ethnic minorities in the police service and other public institutions was highlighted in 1999 with the publication of the Macpherson Report into the Inquiry following Stephen Lawrence’s murder. The Race Relations Act of 2000 reinforced public authorities' duties to prevent racial discrimination, promote racial equality and promote good relations between members of different racial groups. All forty-three police forces in England and Wales were required to meet targets set by the government to increase the number of recruits from minority ethnic communities. These targets vary from region to region set according to the make-up of the ethnic population in each region. However, the National Target set by the government in 1999 of 7% of ethnic minority officers by 2009 to reflect the national average 7% ethnic minority population in England and Wales. By 2012, the proportion of police officers that consider themselves to be from a minority ethnic background had risen from under 2% in 1997 to 5%. This paper examines the nature and extent of the changes in recruitment and training of police made between 1995 and 2005 and examines the reasons for its relative success drawing on interviews with Thames Valley Police officers and staff in 2007.

For the Irish who chose to emigrate during the Great Famine (1845-1851), Canada was a refuge that welcomed as much as 45% of the total Irish emigration in 1847. The following paper intends to study the Canadian press in order to show how Canadians reacted to the first significant potato crop losses in Ireland after the autumn of 1846 and how they responded to the mass arrivals of famine-stricken Irish poor in 1847. This study of the Canadian press will be used to assess the level of solidarity that existed at the time within the British Empire.

The Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór) was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately one-quarter of her population through a combination of death and emigration. Yet this tragedy occurred at the heart of the vast, and resource-rich, British Empire. The imperial government, however, chose not to use its resources to come to the aid of the Irish poor. Historians continue to debate the extent to which the British government was culpable for this tragedy. This article examines a lesser-known aspect of the Great Hunger, that is, the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish. Helped by developments in transport and communications, newspapers throughout the world reported on the suffering in Ireland. This prompted fund-raising on an unprecedented scale, which cut across religious, ethnic, social and gender distinctions, with donations coming from as far away as Australia, China, India and South America. Many who gave so generously had no direct connection with Ireland. This paper will explore the private relief given to Ireland during these tragic years, which one volunteer described as ‘a labour of love’. The ideological context in which both charity and poor relief existed will also be briefly examined

This paper looks at how the politically orthodox Journal des Débats politiques et littéraires, close to governmental circles in France, perceived and reported on issues concerning Ireland in the critical years 1846 and 1847. Its sources of information were the English and Irish press, and the columns of its pages reveal sympathy both for the British government – with the emphasis placed heavily on lessons to be learnt on how to avoid social unrest in times of dearth - but also for the (Catholic) Irish people suffering at the hands of fate in a situation engendered by English colonialism: wrought by God, abetted by the English.

Neoliberalism, which has become the dominant current in political economy in western liberal democracies, presents itself in opposition to the reformist liberalism of the post-war consensus. The two streams of liberalism are both founded in methodological individualism, but neoliberalism breaks away from its counterpart through its commitment to limited government and through its belief in the inherent value of self-regulating markets. This does not represent an innovation, but instead should be seen as a return to an older liberal tradition. This paper will argue that the concept of governance as defined and put into practice by contemporary western governments meshes perfectly with the key tenets of neoliberalism. By advocating a method of management based on placing a variety of actors in competition, not only does it produce a model reminiscent of the free market, but it also contributes to the neoliberal objective of placing power squarely in the hands of those with capital.

Over the past decade and a half in Britain, citizens have been consulted by referenda on questions of devolution, the office of Mayor of London (1997), directly elected mayors (2002-2012) and, more recently, the voting system (2012). The office of Mayor has a long-standing history in Britain. What is new is the manner in which some are now elected and the significance this office has taken on with the changes in their electoral legitimacy. This paper examines the debates about the advantages and disadvantages of directly electing mayors and on the nature of democracy and the reliability of democratic institutions in Britain. It also analyses reasons for the relative successes and failures of the changes introduced, looking in particular at the scale at which direct democracy can operate.

The British National Party is currently the biggest far right party in Great Britain. Since the late 1990’s, it has been trying to enter the political mainstream through a recalibration of its style and discourse, with electoral breakthroughs as its focal point. The tactical shift has not yielded large scale success so far, but the party has undeniably managed to gain ground at local elections. However, the normalization strategy engineered by its leader, Nick Griffin, has left its core neo nazi ideological tenets unimpaired. The paper examines the way racism remains its quintessential characteristic and naturally leads to the utter rejection of multiculturalism in the name of “white ethno-nationalism”. It demonstrates the mixture of essentialist and differentialist discourse strategies the BNP resorts to as well as the rhetorical and thematic figures it develops in support of its racism. It eventually stresses the deeply segregationist nature of the ideal British society the party contemplates. The analysis relies on a synchronic study of the party’s cyber propaganda (year 2006).