Temporal comparisons, historical semantics of interaction and ‘post-war consensus’ in British Parliament: Studying time references in a deliberative environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 0961463X2110212
Author(s):  
Kirill Postoutenko ◽  
Olga Sabelfeld
Keyword(s):  
House Of Commons ◽  
Temporal Semantics ◽  
Sociopolitical Environment ◽  
Social Time ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Historical Semantics ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. In a particularly intriguing case, the essentially deliberative venue where contestation is supported by both institutional arrangements and political reasons (British House of Commons) is put to test under circumstances commonly known as ‘the post-war consensus’ – the unspoken convention directing opposing political parties to suspend stance-taking regarding the past actions of the government during WWII, its immediate aftermath and its future prospects. As a reliable indicator of this arrangement, the contestation of temporal comparisons between relevant pasts and futures is tested in oppositions reflecting party allegiances (Conservatives vs. Labour vs. Liberals) and executive functions (government vs. opposition) between 1946 and 1952. It is shown that, notwithstanding the prevalence of non-contested statements aimed at preserving interactional coherence and pragmatic functionality of the setting, the moderately active contestation of the adversary’s temporal comparisons in the House of Commons at that time helped all parties, albeit to a different degree, to shape their own political and institutional roles as well as to delegitimize their respective adversaries.

Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Budiansky
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The paths that took men and women from their ordinary lives and deposited them on the doorstep of the odd profession of cryptanalysis were always tortuous, accidental, and unpredictable. The full story of the Colossus, the pioneering electronic device developed by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) to break German teleprinter ciphers in the Second World War, is fundamentally a story of several of these accidental paths converging at a remarkable moment in the history of electronics—and of the wartime urgency that set these men and women on these odd paths. Were it not for the wartime necessity of codebreaking, and were it not for particular statistical and logical properties of the teleprinter ciphers that were so eminently suited to electronic analysis, the history of computing might have taken a very different course. The fact that Britain’s codebreakers cracked the high-level teleprinter ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe high command during the Second World War has been public knowledge since the 1970s. But the recent declassification of new documents about Colossus and the teleprinter ciphers, and the willingness of key participants to discuss their roles more fully, has laid bare as never before the technical challenges they faced—not to mention the intense pressures, the false steps, and the extraordinary risks and leaps of faith along the way. It has also clarified the true role that the Colossus machines played in the advent of the digital age. Though they were neither general-purpose nor stored-program computers themselves, the Colossi sparked the imaginations of many scientists, among them Alan Turing and Max Newman, who would go on to help launch the post-war revolution that ushered in the age of the digital, general-purpose, stored-program electronic computer. Yet the story of Colossus really begins not with electronics at all, but with codebreaking; and to understand how and why the Colossi were developed and to properly place their capabilities in historical context, it is necessary to understand the problem they were built to solve, and the people who were given the job of solving it.

II. Irish Parliamentary Elections and the Influence of the Catholic Vote, 1801–20

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Jupp
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Politics ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
George Iii ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Fair Degree

One generalization which can be made about politics in the reign of George III with a fair degree of certainty is that the vast majority of M.P.s did not consider their conduct in the House of Commons as predetermined by the wishes of their electors; they preferred to see themselves as elected as members of Parliament rather than as delegates to Parliament. Moreover, despite the recent concentration of some historians upon the history of Parliament, the discipline of psephology rarely engaged the attention of politicians after a general election. These two attitudes of mind, which together indicated a clear division between electoral and Parliamentary politics, were nowhere more prevalent than in constituencies where landed interests were predominant. These, which comprised the majority in Scotland and Wales, were, after 1801, also thought to predominate in Ireland. This, in fact, was part of the reason why the Whigs at Westminster so firmly opposed the Union during the debates in 1799 and 1800. They argued in effect that in Ireland, as in Scotland, there was little dependence upon electors and a great dependence upon patronage; that the union with Scotland had added a substantial proportion of the forty-five M.P.s to the ranks of the government of the day; and that the union with Ireland would add near a 100 more. In fact the traditional picture of Irish electoral politics between 1801–26 is that, notwithstanding the fact that in Ireland the economic and social position and above all the religious sentiments of the majority of the electors were nowhere more clearly opposed to those of their M.P.s, the constituencies remained firmly controlled by the leading landed, and therefore Protestant, interests, the majority of whom supported every administration. The purpose of this article, however, is to argue that the Catholic vote in Irish constituencies was an integral and important factor in elections before 1820; that it not only played its part at elections but that it also affected in some degree the conduct of Irish M.P.s in the House of Commons towards the question of Catholic emancipation.

Budget woes will slow Canada's hard power build-up

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

Significance Ahead of the rollout of the Liberal government’s new defence white paper, Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland delivered a speech in the House of Commons arguing that Canada’s membership of NATO and history of peacekeeping are core elements of its internationalist foreign policy. The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wishes to finance greater Canadian involvement in multilateral security missions and institutions of liberal global governance. Impacts Defence issues are not politically salient to Canadian voters, but government backtracking on policy is. High polling support for peacekeeping would probably evaporate in the event of Canadian losses abroad. Operational setbacks could see Trudeau’s Liberals bleed support to their New Democratic and Conservative rivals.

Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England

1966 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O. Aydelotte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Other ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Oratory

It has never been established how far, in the early Victorian House of Commons, voting on issues followed party lines. It might in general seem plausible to assume — what political oratory generally contrives to suggest — that there are ideological disagreements between parties and that it makes a difference which of two major opposing parties is in control of the Government. This is, indeed, the line taken by some students of politics. A number of historians and political observers have, however, inclined to the contrary opinion and have, for various reasons, tended to play down the role of issues in party disputes. Much of what has been written on political history and, in particular, on the history of Parliament has had a distinct anti-ideological flavor.One line of argument is that issues on which disagreement exists are not always party questions. Robert Trelford McKenzie begins his study of British parties by pointing out that Parliament just before 1830 was “divided on a great issue of principle, namely Catholic emancipation,” and just after 1830, on another, parliamentary reform. He continues: “But on neither issue was there a clear division along strict party lines.” The distinguished administration of Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s was based, according to Norman Gash, on a party “deeply divided both on policy and personalities.” The other side of the House at that time is usually thought to have been even more disunited. It has even been suggested that, in the confused politics of the mid-nineteenth century, the wordsconservativeandradicaleach meant so many different things that they cannot be defined in terms of programs and objectives and that these polarities may more usefully be considered in terms of tempers and approaches.

The politics of the enabling act (1919)

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 383-392
Author(s):  
David M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Single Person ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Continuous Stream ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Success ◽  
A Current

I doubt whether any event in the constitutional history of Church and State (wrote Randall Davidson in February 1921) has ever been wrought out with so little friction, and on so smooth a current as this great change ... I think it is indisputable that if we had failed in December 1919 to get through Parliament what is popularly known as the Enabling Bill, we might have waited for it for many a long year with increasing and most harmful loss of enthusiasm, and growth of irritation among the progressive groups. Instead of this we have had a continuous stream of praise and thankful gratulation at the way in which the new system has begun to work.These words are a useful reminder that contemporaries were surprised at the easy passage of the enabling act, and that its success therefore requires explanation. The ‘rightness of the cause’ has tended to obscure the fact that right causes often fail. Moreover subsequent criticisms of the act, and particularly the disappointment of the life and liberty movement with what followed, have tended to minimise the significance of the changes it made. Nevertheless the charisma of William Temple and Dick Sheppard seems to have led even the critics to attribute the act’s success to the life and liberty movement; viscount Wolmer’s church self-government association has been relegated to the sidelines; and the verdict of bishop Bell (who in 1919 was Davidson’s chaplain) that ‘Its achievement was due to Randall Davidson more than to any other single person’ has been forgotten. In this paper I shall argue that the political success of the enabling act requires a political explanation, that parliamentary tactics in both the house of commons and the house of lords are therefore of prime importance, and that the significance of the success is enhanced by a fact which has never been discussed before - the initial opposition of the government of the day.

scholarly journals The Government and the General Strike, 1926

1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Additional Detail ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
Industrial Crisis ◽  
Post War ◽  
General Strike

The British General Strike of 1926 was one of the turning points of the inter-war years. The defeat which the trade unions suffered at the hands of the Government successfully discredited the idea of widespread industrial action as a method of obtaining the demands of labour. It did much to ensure the relatively quiescent acceptance by labour of the persistent unemployment of the thirties. It removed the threat to the established order which had existed since the turbulence of the immediate post-war years and provided the necessary preliminary to the increasing respectability of trade unions as a pressure group. The definitive history of the general strike has yet to be written, and that the subject remains open to differing emphasis and interpretation is evidenced by the most recent writing on the subject by A. J. P. Taylor and John Saville. The Public Records Act of 1967, by making available a large collection of Cabinet and Departmental papers, has opened up the possibility of a revision of our view of the strike and provided much important additional detail, notably about the Government's role in the events of 1925-26. Of the matters which still exercise the minds of historians of the General Strike, four main questions have been selected for consideration. First of all, there is the intriguing problem of the 1925 industrial crisis when the Government averted an embargo on the movement of coal by granting a subsidy to the coal industry and appointing a Royal Commission to enquire into the future of the industry.

Between historical semantics and pragmatics

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasi Ihalainen
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Historical Semantics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Term Trends

This paper discusses the methodology of conceptual history, a branch of the study of the history of political thought which focuses on the changing meanings of political concepts over the course of time. It is suggested here that methodological disputes among historians of political thought frequently arise out of differing theories of language and meaning and that historians should be more open-minded to the idea of combining various research strategies in their work. Conceptual history, for instance, can be viewed as the combination of historical versions of semantics and pragmatics. While the study of the macro-level semantic changes in the language of politics can reveal interesting long-term trends and innovative uses of language, a contextual analysis of speech acts is also needed when the rhetorical aspects of conceptual change are traced. This interaction of semantic and pragmatic analysis in conceptual history is illustrated by examples originating from eighteenth-century political preaching.

scholarly journals As Origens do Associativismo e do Sindicalismo de Professores do Estado do Maranhão: uma perspectiva histórico-social da educação maranhense (1964-1985)

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Carlos Bauer ◽  
Vanessa Amorim Dantas
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Social Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military

RESUMONesses escritos são retomadas algumas passagens da educação pública no estado do Maranhão, desde os anos em que o Brasil esteve sob a égide do regime militar, instalado pela força em 1964, até a retomada democrática no país, realizada a partir dos meados da década de 1980. Tem-se como objetivo analisar os embates que se produziram entre as forças políticas estabelecidas no aparato estatal e os trabalhadores em educação nesse controverso período histórico. Imbuídos dessa perspectiva, os autores buscam delinear o percurso educacional vivenciado pelo maranhenses, a partir da compreensão crítica do contexto sociopolítico daquele momento, da análise das disposições políticas educacionais no domínio federal e sua incidência na esfera localizam as possíveis modificações ocorridas no ensino com a ascensão de novos sujeitos políticos ao governo, como também os pontos nevrálgicos que estão presentes nas lutas deflagradas pela valorização da docência num tempo social reconhecidamente conturbado. Com o estudo dessas trajetórias e suas repercussões nos movimentos associativistas e sindicais dos trabalhadores em educação, procura-se contribuir para ampliação de pesquisas de cunho históricoeducacional e, sobretudo, da história social daqueles que fazem a educação no Maranhão em sua cotidianidade.Palavras-chave: APEMA. História da educação. Maranhão.ABSTRACTIn these writings are taken some passages of public education in the state of Maranhão, from the years when Brazil was under the aegis of the military regime, installed by force in 1964, to the democratic revival in the country, held from mid- 1980. Which objective is to analyze the conflicts that took place between the political forces established in thestate apparatus and workers in education in this controversial historical period. Imbued with this perspective, the authors seek to outline the educational journey experienced by maranhense people, from the critical understanding of the socio-political context of that time, the analysis of education policy provisions in the federal domain and its impact on the state level; thereby locate the possible changes occurredin education with the rise of new political subjects to the government, as well as the hot spots that are present in the struggles triggered by the appreciation of teaching in an admittedly troubled social time. With the study of these trajectories and their impact on associative movementsand unions of workers in education, it seeks to contribute to expand research of historical and educational character and, above all, the social history of those who make education in Maranhao in its daily life. Keywords: APEMA. History of education. Maranhão.RESUMENEn estos escritos se retoman algunos pasajes de la educación pública en el Estado de Maranhão, desde los años en que Brasil estuvo bajo la égida del régimen militar, instalado por la fuerza en 1964, hasta la recuperación democrática en el país, celebrada desde mediados de la década de 1980. Tiene como objetivo analizar los embates que tuvieron lugar entre las fuerzas políticas establecidas en el aparato del Estado y los trabajadores de la educaciónen en este período histórico controvertido. Imbuidos de esta perspectiva, los autores tratan de delinear el camino educativo experimentado por los ciudadanos de Maranhão, desde la comprensión crítica del contexto sociopolítico de la época, del análisis de las disposiciones políticas educacionales en el dominio federal y su incidencia en el ámbito estatal; con eso localizan los posibles cambios ocurridos en la educación con la ascensión de nuevos sujetos políticos al gobierno, así como los puntos críticos que están presentes en las luchas deflagradas por la valorización de la docencia en un tiempo social reconocidamente contubado. Con el estudio de esas trayectorias y sus impactos en los movimentos asociativos y sindicatos de trabajadores en educación, se busca contribuir para ampliar las investigaciones de carácter histórico y educativo y, sobre todo, de la historia social de aquellos que hacen la educación en Maranhão en su cotidianidad.Palabras clave: APEMA. Historia de la educación. Maranhão. 

Systems and methods for political communication in post-war Italy

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Post War ◽  
Media And Communication

This chapter defines the channels used to elaborate and disseminate propaganda, and reconstructs a history of the circuits and the most significant materials used to create and disseminate language. It places the press and propaganda sections of parties and mass associations in the more complex context of the media and communication agencies that participated in the making of Italian political identities, such as major political newspapers, publications and exhibitions promoted by the government and by foreign embassies, and the popular press.

scholarly journals The History of the 1947 Monetary Reform of the USSR in Moscow and Leningrad

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-84
Author(s):  
Sergey G. Bandurin ◽  
Igor B. Tsvetkov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Monetary Reform ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Problem ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

Introduction. World and domestic economic history are the history of ups and downs, the history of finding ways out of difficult, sometimes crisis and critical situations, most often manifested both during and after wars. The Great Patriotic War, which dealt a blow to all spheres of life of the belligerent countries, was no exception. Testing the viability of the country’s economic model, in particular the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, began directly during the war and continued after the end of hostilities. The relevance of the topic under study lies in the study of a positive example of the country’s recovery from the economic crisis, as well as the study of the reaction of the general population to the measures taken. The purpose of this article is to retrospectively analyze the economic situation of those years, to model the reader’s understanding of the reaction of society at that time to events and the way of solving the problem chosen by the party, as well as to demonstrate the results of the government’s activities. Materials and Methods. This study is based on the traditional methods used in the national historical science: problem-chronological, systemic and comparative-historical. Research Results. The analysis of the measures taken in the financial and economic sphere showed the consistency of the methods chosen by the government, however, the general assessment of the measures among the population turned out to be versatile. The assessments of the researchers of this problem, both Soviet and modern, are generally positive. Discussion and Conclusion. As a result of the monetary reform of 1947, the Soviet Union managed to avoid the depreciation of the ruble, the surplus of banknotes issued during the war years was eliminated, the state’s internal debt on bonds was significantly reduced, and the salaries of the population were preserved. This money was used to rebuild the post-war country. The abolition of cards ensured a decrease in market prices for many groups of goods and significantly reduced the number of speculators.

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