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This article examines the criminal law reform career of James Mackintosh (1765–1832). As Recorder of Bombay (1804–11), writer and Whig MP (1813–32), Mackintosh engaged with diverse aspects of criminal law. His view of the organic relationship between law, society, and public opinion, which was shaped by his Scottish intellectual background and Foxite Whig politics, was distinct from the radical and liberal political perspectives most often associated with criminal law reform. The article traces the implications of Mackintosh's approach for the practice of politics and legislation in the period and suggests cause to revise assessments of its outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The importance of the honours system as an institution in British politics and public life has frequently been underestimated. At the end of the First World War, the British government prioritized voluntary service to the state as an area which the honours system should reward more than others through the newly created Order of the British Empire. However, after the war the Order changed to focus more on civil servants, soldiers, and the broad category of ‘local service’. The latter could include volunteers, but more often did not. Various attempts to democratize honours through reforms from the 1960s focused on rewarding a wider range of service. The most successful of these was John Major's honours reform programme in 1993, which returned volunteer service to the forefront of the public image of honours. While these reforms were not as egalitarian as they seemed, they were successful because they integrated an ideology of crown honours with the other functions of the modern monarchy and opened up the honours system to a wider potential set of recipients. At the same time, they maintained a hierarchical structure that meant that elites who had traditionally enjoyed the exclusivity of high honours continued to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at central government's role, focusing on the parliamentary terms 1959–64 and 1964–6, in directing the way in which local authorities enacted the central area redevelopment schemes of the 1960s. The first two sections review the substantial but little-studied literature produced across the political spectrum about central area urban renewal in the period 1959–64. Section III uses the Joint Urban Planning Group, a group set up within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as a case-study to show how modernist approaches to redevelopment became operative within a government department. The Joint Urban Planning Group has received no attention from historians. Section IV discusses the fate of these ideas during Labour's first term after the 1964 election. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conservatives usually play down their intellectual credentials because it provides them with an effective means of distancing themselves from the ‘doctrinaire’ or the intellectualized politics of the left. But this approach was challenged by a significant group of Conservative MPs and intellectuals during the interwar period. Conservatives wrote articles for a range of periodicals, which were still important channels of communication for the sharing of political ideas between the wars. Stanley Baldwin banned government ministers from publishing independent journalism, which meant that it was mainly young, ambitious, or marginalized Conservative MPs who wrote for periodicals. When left-wing sentiment started to swell up during the Second World War, some Conservative supporters started to question the interwar leadership's neglect of the party's intellectual and publishing culture. It was now thought that the Conservative party lacked a convincing media-based popular ideology to compete with the left. But if Baldwin prioritized other aspects of the interwar party's appeal, the intellectual culture of Conservatism still acted as an important barrier to communist and fascist thought in elite political circles. This culture also had important resonances for the party in the post-war period because it contributed to its self-evaluation and policy restatements after 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Observing the increasing, yet still partial exploration of pluralism, complexity and multiplicity in recent Labour party historiography, this article pursues a pluralist approach to Labour on two central, related themes of its middle-century evolution. First, it probes the plurality of Labour's different conceptions of time, specifically how it lived with the ambiguity of simultaneously viewing social progress as both immediate and rapidly achievable, yet also long term and strewn with constraints. This co-existence of multiple time-frames highlights the party's uncertainty and ideological multi-dimensionality, especially in its focus both on relatively rapid economic or structural transformation, and on much more slow-moving cultural, ethical, and educational change. It also complicates neat characterizations of particular phases in the party's history, challenging straightforwardly declinist views of the post-1945–51 period. Secondly, time connects to Labour's view of the people. Whilst historians have debated between positive and negative perceptions of the people, here the plural, split mind of Labour about the progressive potential of the citizenry is stressed, one closely intertwined with its multiple outlook on how long socialism would take. Contrasts are also suggested between the time-frames and expectations under which Labour and the Conservatives operated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines evidence that has been used to claim that British foreign secretary Lord William Grenville supported a French royalist plot to assassinate the Directory in the 18th century. Collapse of the British secret service's counter-revolutionary plans in France; Communications difficulties associated with undercover secret service activities in the era.

Focuses on the use of the English legal system as a method of the recovering estates during the Civil War in Great Britain. Efforts of royalists and Catholic delinquents to confiscate lands; Respect given to due process by the radical MP staffing of the Indemnity Committee.

Focuses on the religious politics of England's Member of Parliament George Howard, better known as Lord Morpeth. Inference of his theological views from his comments on sermons and devotional texts; Attempt to reconcile a theory of individual personality with ideas of community and brotherhood.

Investigates the circle of writers working for pro-government newspapers during the age of Whig supremacy under Sir Robert Walpole from the 1720s to the 1740s. Misinterpretations of Walpolean political thought; Three philosophical questions addressed in defense; Objectives of pro-government response to Walpole's corruption of political system and betrayal of Whig values.