The Press and the Labour Movement

2020 ◽  
pp. 502-516
Author(s):  
Thomas Dowling ◽  
Adrian Bingham

This chapter explores the dynamic relationship between the labour movement and the press. It argues that recognition of the need to negotiate or counter the growing pre-eminence of the press and other forms of mass-communications media compelled some of the twentieth-century labour movement’s most original intellectual and strategic advances. Equally, at other moments, a tendency on the part of beleaguered labour leaders to overestimate the hegemonic reach of the ‘right-wing’ or ‘capitalist’ press served to mask shortcomings and lacunae in the movement’s own ideological and strategic perspectives. Rather than approaching the relationship between labour and the press as one of essential conflict and antagonism, the chapter seeks to understand them as two aspects of the same ongoing historical process.

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-439
Author(s):  
José M. Sánchez

Few subjects in recent history have lent themselves to such heated polemical writing and debate as that concerning the Spanish Church and its relationship to the abortive Spanish revolution of 1931–1939. Throughout this tragic era and especially during the Civil War, it was commonplace to find the Church labelled as reactionary, completely and unalterably opposed to progress, and out of touch with the political realities of the twentieth century.1 In the minds of many whose views were colored by the highly partisan reports of events in Spain during the nineteen thirties, the Church has been pictured as an integral member of the Unholy Triumvirate— Bishops, Landlords, and enerals—which has always conspired to impede Spanish progress. Recent historical scholarship has begun to dispel some of the notions about the right-wing groups,2 but there has been little research on the role of the clergy. Even more important, there has been little understanding of the Church's response to the radical revolutionary movements in Spain.


Author(s):  
Ashutosh Bhagwat ◽  
James Weinstein

This chapter focuses on the relationship between freedom of expression and democracy from both a historical and a theoretical perspective. The term ‘freedom of expression’ includes free speech, freedom of the press, the right to petition government, and freedom of political association. Eighteenth-century proponents of popular government had long offered democratic justifications for freedom of expression. The chapter then demonstrates that freedom of political expression is a necessary component of democracy. It describes two core functions of such expression: an informing and a legitimating one. Finally, the chapter examines the concept of ‘democracy’, noting various ways in which democracies vary among themselves, as well as the implications of those variations for freedom of expression. Even before democratic forms of government took root in the modern world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 573-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Norris

The resurgence in interest in authoritarianism has been linked to a rise in the acceptance of right-wing ideology and also restrictions on civil liberties, particularly in relation to surveillance and the right to privacy. Whilst we can observe simple correlations between these variables, the dynamics of threat are more complex to understand. The analysis reported here demonstrates how the relationship between authoritarianism and the curtailment of civil liberties is moderated by the threat of terrorism. Using 2005 British Social Attitudes survey data, collected either side of the 7/7 bombings, comparisons between the pre-post samples indicate that the threat of terrorism activates authoritarian tendencies and reduces the protection of rights to privacy from government. Interestingly and importantly, reactions to terrorism in the form of a change in opinion regarding civil liberties for those scoring higher in authoritarianism remained almost constant between the two periods. The results provide support for understanding how minority opinions (removal of rights to privacy) can become majority views during times of threat.


Author(s):  
Robert Pinker

In this chapter, Robert Pinker discusses T.H. Marshall's concern with welfare pluralism, his study of citizenship and welfare, and his contribution to the development of social policy and administration. He begins with an overview of Marshall's achievement in the field of sociology and some of his major works such as Sociology at the Crossroads and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, along with the essays entitled ‘Value Problems of Welfare-Capitalism’ and ‘Citizenship and Social Class’. Pinker continues by analysing Marshall's thoughts on the relationship between the inequalities of class and the prospective equality of citizenship and his argument that collectivist social services contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of social welfare so long as such interventions do not subvert the operation of the system of competitive markets. Pinker concludes with an assessment of Marshall's views on social and political rights, the problem of poverty, and the concept of ‘democratic-welfare-capitalism’.


1991 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Loewenberg

Karl Renner's political life encompasses the history of Austria's empire and her two twentieth-century republics, making him the foremost leader of Austrian democratic politics. Renner was also the most innovative theoretician on the nationalities question which plagued the Habsburg monarchy and the twentieth-century world. He was chancellor of Austria's first republic, leader of the right-wing Social Democrats, and president of the post-World War II Second Republic. A study of his life and politics offers a perspective on the origins of the moderate, adaptive, political personality and on the tension between ideology and accommodation to the point where it is difficult to determine what core of principle remained.


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gould

A recent trend in the historiography of north India has involved analyses of ‘Hindu nationalist’ motifs and ideologies within both mainstream nationalist discourses and subaltern politics. A dense corpus of work has attempted to provide historical explanations for the rise of Hindutva in the subcontinent, and a great deal of debate has surrounded the implications of this development for the fate of secularism in India. Some of this research has examined the wider implications of Hindutva for the Indian state, democracy and civil society and in the process has highlighted, to some degree, the relationship between Hindu nationalism and ‘mainstream’ Indian nationalism. Necessarily, this has involved discussion of the ways in which the Congress, as the predominant vehicle of ‘secular nationalism’ in India, has attempted to contest or accommodate the forces of Hindu nationalist revival and Hindutva. By far the most interesting and illuminating aspect of this research has been the suggestion that Hindu nationalism, operating as an ideology, has manifested itself not only in the institutions of the right-wing Sangh Parivar but has been accommodated, often paradoxically, within political parties and civil institutions hitherto associated with the forces of secularism. An investigation of this phenomenon opens up new possibilities for research into the nature of Hindu nationalism itself, and presents new questions about the ambivalent place of religious politics in institutions such as the Indian National Congress.


2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Łopuch ◽  
A. Tofilski

AbstractDespite the fact that symmetry is common in nature, it is rarely perfect. Because there is a wide range of phenotypes which differs from the average one, the asymmetry should increase along with deviation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the level of asymmetry in normal individuals as well as in phenodeviants categorized as minor or major based on abnormalities in forewing venation in honey bees. Shape fluctuating asymmetry (FA) was lower in normal individuals and minor phenodeviants compared with major phenodeviants, whereas the former two categories were comparable in drones. In workers and queens, there were not significant differences in FA shape between categories. FA size was significantly lower in normal individuals compared with major phenodeviant drones and higher compared with minor phenodeviant workers. In queens, there were no significant differences between categories. The correlation between FA shape and FA size was significantly positive in drones, and insignificant in workers and queens. Moreover, a considerable level of directional asymmetry was found as the right wing was constantly bigger than the left one. Surprisingly, normal individuals were significantly smaller than minor phenodeviants in queens and drones, and they were comparable with major phenodeviants in all castes. The correlation between wing size and wing asymmetry was negative, indicating that smaller individuals were more asymmetrical. The high proportion of phenodeviants in drones compared with workers and queens confirmed their large variability. Thus, the results of the present study showed that minor phenodeviants were not always intermediate as might have been expected.


Adrian Desmond & James Moore, Darwin . London: Michael Joseph, 1991. Pp. 808, £20.00. ISBN 0-3403-3 In Britain, as in much of Europe, the early and mid-19th century was a period of great social, political and intellectual turbulence. The industrial revolution was transforming the countryside, crowding the cities and disrupting the social order at all levels. The right to govern, long assumed by the duo of church and aristocracy, was being challenged. In 1848 Europe erupted in a cluster of radicalist revolutions and, though in Britain the threat of Chartism came to nothing, radical political thinking was taking root and would culminate, as the century progressed, in the ascendancy of Liberalism and the birth of the labour movement. In philosophy and religion, freedom of thought and discussion was rampant: questions once taboo as heresy were openly discussed (in 1880 Northampton was to elect an avowed atheist as its M.P.); utopian, evangelist and spiritualist groups abounded; developments in Natural Philosophy (which we now call science) were followed with enthusiasm, not only by naturalists, but by non-scientific intellectuals and (more surprising to us today) by the press and its now widely based readership.


1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Vinen

ABSTRACTIt is normally assumed that antisemitism in post-war France needs to be understood primarily in the light of the German occupation of 1940–4. This article seeks to describe the relationship between political antisemitism and events after 1945. Special attention is given to the issue that obsessed a large part of the French right: the loss of Algeria. It is argued that between 1954 and 1962 right-wingers came to took on the Jewish population of Algeria, which was often fervently opposed to French withdrawal, with new favour. Furthermore, many right-wingers began to admire Israel, which seemed so successful in combating Arab nationalism and which was widely believed to have links with the Organisation de l' Arméte Secrète. Changes in attitudes to Israel and the Jews were linked with a wider change in the French right that had been going on since 1945: most of the right now focused their loyalties around ‘l' occident’ a block of nations led by America and including Israel rather than around the France that was so important to Gaullist thinking. Finally, an attempt is made to show how the French right's new attitude to the Jews influenced its reaction to the 1965 Presidential election campaign, de Gaulle's denunciation of Israel in 1967 and the student riots of 1968.


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