scholarly journals The formation of the Ulster Home Guard

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (158) ◽  
pp. 230-246
Author(s):  
William Butler
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Police Force ◽  
British Government ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
World War ◽  
British Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Second World

AbstractThis article explores the problems encountered in the formation of the Ulster Home Guard, supposedly a direct equivalent to its well-known British counterpart, as part of the paramilitary Ulster Special Constabulary in Northern Ireland, during the Second World War. Predictably, the Ulster Home Guard became an almost exclusively Protestant organisation which led to many accusations of sectarianism from a variety of different national and international voices. This became a real concern for the British government, as well as the army, which understandably wished to avoid any such controversy. Though assumptions had previously been made about the numbers of Catholics in the force, this article explores just how few joined the organisation throughout the war. Additionally, the article investigates the rather awkward constitutional position in which the Ulster Home Guard was placed. Under the Government of Ireland Act, the Stormont administration had no authority on matters of home defence. It did, however, have the power to raise a police force as a way to maintain law and order. Still, the Ulster Home Guard, although formed as part of the Ulster Special Constabulary, was entrusted solely with home defence and this had wider implications for British policy towards Northern Ireland throughout the Second World War.

Solving the appeasement puzzle: contending historical interpretations of British diplomacy during the 1930s

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Walker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Second World War ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Second World

The historical interpretations of British diplomacy during the 1930s are difficult to separate from those interpretations that explain the occurrence of the Second World War. Historians often link them by relating the British policy of appeasement to the outbreak of the war. British policy becomes a “permissive” cause of World War II by allowing Hitler to rearm Germany, consolidate western German frontiers, and expand towards the east. First, the British failed to prevent Hitler from occupying the Rhineland in March, 1936, and then merely protested the German annexation of Austria two years later. Within six months after the Anschluss Prime Minister Chamberlain accepted the cessation of the Sudetenland to Germany at Munich. Finally, after Hitler conquered the remainder of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, the British guaranteed the territorial integrity of Poland. When Hitler attacked Poland in September, 1939, the British government, with the French as allies, came to Poland's defence. The British decision to honour this commitment belatedly but irrevocably reversed their earlier appeasement policy, which was to concede Hitler's territorial demands in an attempt to reach a peaceful European settlement with Germany.

‘It was the done thing’: Southern Irish Protestants and the Second World War

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-198
Author(s):  
Joseph Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Family Tradition ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World ◽  
Lobby Group

During the Second World War, members of the southern Protestant community occupied a curious position in neutral Ireland. The majority, including former unionists, were openly sympathetic to the Allied cause and many actively supported Britain's war effort, but there was also a broad consensus that the policy of neutrality had been the correct course for the Irish state. This duality, incomprehensible to British contemporaries bitterly critical towards Irish neutrality, was also, until quite recently, not fully appreciated by the wider Irish public. This chapter assesses the attitudes of the southern Irish Protestant community during the war by exploring mail censorship reports and excerpts from well-known Irish Protestant publications. It examines attempts by a lobby group, composed of Irish ex-British officers living in Britain, many of them former unionists, to defend the integrity of the neutral Irish state to the British government, while simultaneously denouncing the Northern Ireland government for their antagonism towards Dublin. Lastly, it explores the contribution that was rendered to the British war effort by members of the younger generation through service in Britain’s armed forces. It does so by analysing the motives of young Irish Protestants who enlisted in the British forces, a study which, although verifying a very defined affiliation with Britain and a strong family tradition of military service in British uniform, highlights the approval of many Irish Protestant ex-service personnel for the policy of Irish neutrality.

Salvage and Destruction: The Recycling of Books and Manuscripts in Great Britain during the Second World War

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER THORSHEIM
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Irreparable Harm ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

AbstractAn analysis of Great Britain's campaigns to recycle books and paper reveals the paradoxes of wartime waste policies: destroying history and culture for the sake of reusing materials, and the impact of recycling on the war machinery's own wastefulness. Conscious of systematic recycling in Nazi Germany and its own dependence on imports, the British government established a salvage department only weeks after the outbreak of war. Beginning in 1940, this department required all large towns to collect recyclable materials. Salvage, beyond lessening shortages, served ideological and psychological aims, because reused materials were turned into weapons. This led to a critical redefinition of recycling as the war progressed. People who previously characterised the Third Reich's recycling programmes as typical fascist control now considered compulsory recycling in Great Britain wholly positive. However, protesters claimed the government was causing irreparable harm by salvaging items whose value far exceeded their worth as scrap. The harvesting of books, periodicals and manuscripts as ‘waste’ paper proved particularly contentious, with some arguing that their own government was adding to the destruction that bombs were causing to Great Britain's cultural inheritance.

To the Empire and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Barton
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Chemical Fertilizers ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Food And Agriculture Organization ◽  
Organic Farmers ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
The Government ◽  
Second World

This chapter traces the expansion of industrial agricultural methods after the Second World War. Western governments and the Food and Agriculture Organization pushed for increased use of chemical fertilizers to aid development and resist Soviet encroachment. Meanwhile small groups of organic farmers and gardeners adopted Howard’s methods in the Anglo-sphere and elsewhere in the world. European movements paralleled these efforts and absorbed the basic principles of the Indore Method. British parliament debated the merits of organic farming, but Howard failed to persuade the government to adopt his policies. Southern Rhodesia, however, did implement his ideas in law. Desiccation theory aided his attempts in South Africa and elsewhere, and Louise Howard, after Albert’s death, kept alive a wide network of activists with her publications.

“The Dusky Doughboys”: Interaction between African American Soldiers and the Population of Northern Ireland during the Second World War

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1131-1154 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON TOPPING
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
American Military ◽  
The People ◽  
Second World

This article will examine the ways in which the people of Northern Ireland and African American troops stationed there during the Second World War reacted to each other. It will also consider the effect of institutional racism in the American military on this relationship, concluding that, for the most part, the population welcomed black soldiers and refused to endorse American racial attitudes or enforce Jim Crow segregation. This piece argues that, bearing in mind the latent racism of the time, the response of the Northern Irish to African Americans was essentially colour-blind, and this was true in both the Protestant and Catholic communities.

The ‘Northern Dominator’ and the Mare Nostrum: Fascist Italy's ‘Cultural War’ in Malta

Modern Italy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Baldoli
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Conflict ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Italian Government ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Military Activity ◽  
Second World

Within the wider attempt to transform Italian communities abroad into Fascist colonies, the Italian Fasci Abroad sought to build nationalist propaganda in the Mediterranean. The irredentist activities and the propaganda of the Fasci in Malta alarmed the British governors on the island, the British government and MI5. This article analyses the cultural conflict organised in Maltese schools, bookshops and universities by the Italian nationalists against the British protectorate–a conflict the British suspected could be followed by military activity, in particular when Italy began building its empire in Ethiopia. The nationalist offensive was supported in the 1920s and, more vigorously, in the 1930s by the Fasci, the Italian consulate on the island and, ultimately, the Italian government. Not even the Second World War and the bombing of Malta by the Italian air force concluded the conflict between Italian and British imperialism on the island.

scholarly journals The national camp and the concept of a federation during the Second World War

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 256-276
Author(s):  
Dariusz Miszewski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Global Level ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War, the national camp preached the idea of imperialism in Central Europe. Built peacefully, the Polish empire was supposed to protect the independence and security of countries in Central Europe against Germany and the Soviet Union, and thus went by the name of “the Great Poland”. As part of the empire, nation-states were retained. The national camp was opposed to the idea of the federation as promoted by the government-in-exile. The “national camp” saw the idea of federation on the regional, European and global level as obsolete. Post-war international cooperation was based on nation states and their alliances.

British Policy towards Greece during the Second World War, 1941-1944.

1985 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
R.H. ◽  
Procopis Papastratis ◽  
Nicholas Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Second World

Falling Back In

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Maurer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Government ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores how the United States' return to the empire trap played out, starting with Franklin Roosevelt in Mexico through Eisenhower in Guatemala and faraway Iran. Under Franklin Roosevelt, the United States began to provide foreign aid (in the form of grants and loans) and rolled out perhaps the first case of modern covert action against the government of Cuba. Both tools were perfected during the Second World War, which saw the creation of entire agencies of government dedicated to providing official transfers and covertly manipulating the affairs of foreign states. In addition, the development of sophisticated trade controls allowed targeted action against the exports of other nations. For example, after 1948 the United States could attempt to influence certain Latin American governments by granting or withholding quotas for sugar.

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