Constraints and choices in the transformation of Britain's defence effort since 1945

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Distress ◽  
The Future ◽  
Second World

The United Kingdom's defence effort has undergone profound transformation in the thirty years since the end of the Second World War. Further change is foreshadowed in the programme for the forthcoming decade which emerged from the Labour Government's 1974 Defence Review. Indeed, as Britain's economic distress persisted through 1975 it became apparent that the budgetary projections yielded by this “most extensive and thorough review of our system of defence ever undertaken by a British Government in peacetime” would themselves come in for further scrutiny and revision. Even the future is not what it used to be.

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.

Naming of Parts; or, The Comforts of Classification: Thomas Jefferson's Construction of America as Fact and Myth

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Manning
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second World

Henry Reed's poem of the Second World War offers a studied, ironic catalogue of some parts of experience silencing others. Here are observable facts, given as imperative command; knowledge of their use is for the future, rather than a possession of the present, however: one of the many things we (or you) have not got. Here also is the beauty of nature and its utter irrelevance to the human struggle. “Naming of Parts” excludes more than it includes: what is not said constantly overbears and threatens to break through what is. But the balance of information is precariously maintained, the unspeakable, the horror which is the truth of the war being disguised, expressed, and controlled in the naming of parts.In a very different register, William Gass writes in his Habitations of the Word,Lists, then, are for those who savor, who revel and wallow, who embrace, not only the whole of things, but all of its accounts, histories, descriptions, justifications.

British Communists, the British Empire and the Second World War

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Redfern
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Second World War ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

For a few years after its foundation in 1920 the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) attempted, energetically prompted by the Comintern, to work in solidarity with anticolonial movements in the British Empire. But after the Nazi victory in Germany the Comintern's principal concern was to defend the Soviet Union and the liberal democracies against the threat of fascism. British communists criticized the British Government for failing to defend the Empire against the threat from its imperial rivals. After the entry of the Soviet Union into the war in 1941 they vigorously supported the British war effort, including the defense of Empire. This was not though simply a manifestation of chauvinism. British communists believed that imperialism was suffering a strategic defeat by “progressive” forces and that colonial freedom would follow the defeat of fascism. These chimerical notions were greatly strengthened by the allies' promises of postwar peace, prosperity and international cooperation. In the last year or so of war British communists were clearly worried that these promises would not be redeemed, but nevertheless supported British reassertion of power in such places as Greece, Burma and Malaya. For the great majority of British communists, these were secondary matters when seen in the context of Labour's election victory of 1945 and its promised program of social-imperialist reform.

2. An intellectual poison?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Critical Geopolitics ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Second World

The notion of geopolitics has not always been well received. It has been accused of being intellectually fraudulent, ideologically suspect, and tainted with associations with Nazism and fascism. ‘An intellectual poison?’ charts a brief history of geopolitics from before the Second World War to the present day looking at its origins, development, and reception. What is critical geopolitics? Geopolitics has attracted a great deal of academic and popular attention, often with little appreciation of its controversial intellectual history. Presidents and political commentators seem to love using the term: they associate it with danger, threats, space, and power. It is often used to make predictions about the future direction of politics.

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.

Museums and the Future

Antiquity ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 18 (69) ◽  
pp. 42-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. Grimes
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Small Body ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
Acts Of God ◽  
Second World

It has long been obvious that a new policy is wanted for our museums and their buildings. The need, often discussed, now takes on a new urgency. The second world war has visited our cities with insensate destruction on a scale which we have hitherto associated only with Acts of God. Some of our museums have already suffered —and as yet we cannot say when or where more will be damaged or destroyed. Replanning schemes will see old museums rebuilt, new museums established in many places; and now, while such schemes are being blocked out, is the time to see that individually and as a body the museums are planned and developed to the best advantage. The necessary driving force must come from a comparatively small body of people. For as a nation we can hardly be called museum conscious: we have no official museum policy, and the local efforts which are the substitute for it operate so unevenly that a large part of the population is quite without a service which ought to be of great educational and cultural value to all.

BRITAIN AND GLOBALISATION SINCE 1850: III. CREATING THE WORLD OF BRETTON WOODS, 1939–1958

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Daunton
Keyword(s):  
Capital Controls ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Balance Of Payments ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The World ◽  
International Monetary Policy ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTDuring the Second World War, attention turned to reconstructing the world economy by moving away from competitive devaluations, protectionism and economic nationalism that had marred the 1930s. The Americans had considerable economic and political power, and they wished to restore multilateral trade, fixed exchanges and convertibility of currencies. The British government was in a difficult position, for it faced a serious balance of payments deficit and large accumulations of sterling in the Commonwealth and other countries. Multilateralism and convertibility posed serious difficulties. This address considers whether the American government had economic and financial hegemony after the war, or whether it was constrained; and asks how the British government was able to manoeuvre between America, Europe and the sterling area. The result was a new trade-off between international monetary policy, free trade, capital controls and domestic economic policy that was somewhat different from the ambitions of the American government and from British commitments made during and at the end of the war.

Varieties of Unsuccessful Industrialization: The Balkan States Before 1914

1975 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Lampe
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
The Future ◽  
Balkan States ◽  
Second World

This paper should begin with a brief defense of its title. “Variety” and “unsuccessful” are doubtful if not dirty words to most economists and many economic historians. The “success stories” of rapid development in Western Europe, Russia and Japan have been the most frequent subject of this Journal's articles on non-American topics. And the discovery of uniformity in the past, rather than variety, is admittedly essential to the development economist's search for predictability in the future that has informed so much of the economic history written since the Second World War.

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