No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The political events of the 1960s and 1970s in 'Celtic Britain' led to the demise of the Anglocentric conventional wisdom which had asserted the fundamental homogeneity of the United Kingdom, and ushered in a new orthodoxy which stressed diversity and the territorial dimension of the state. These events were mirrored to an extent in Cornwall, with competing explanations seeking to interpret 'peripheral protest', but with a more comprehensive model of emerging to emphasise the complexity of the relationship between 'centre' and 'periphery' in modern western European states, pointing in particular to the existence of historical phases of peripherality. In an initial phase of 'Older Peripheralism', Cornwall was isolated territorially and culturally from the core of the expanding English state, conquered and annexed but with an array of constitutionally 'accommodating' devices and a multi-faceted Celtic identity. However, political and economic change eroded this isolation, creating a new era of 'second Peripheralism'. This phase was marked by a rapid industrialisation which brought Cornwall into the forefront of technological innovation but which was over-specialised and incomplete, leading initially to a new, assertive sense of identity based upon technological prowess but precipitating in the longer term industrial collapse and a consequent Cornish social, economic and political paralysis. This paralysis endured from the end of the nineteenth century until after the Second World War, an experience which was highly distinctive when compared to that of England. However, this paralysis was at length disturbed, with post-war Regional Development policies facilitating the construction of a branch factory economy in Cornwall and encouraging a process of counterurbanisation Paradoxically, this socio-economic movement led not to the erosion of Cornwall's peripheral status but was in fact evidence of a 'Third Peripheralism', with the Cornish economy acquiring features which continued to contrast with those of England's core, and with an increasingly politicised 'Cornish Revival' injecting an important strand of antimetropolitanism into Cornish political behaviour, with its critiques of regional policy and demands for renewed constitutional 'accommodation'.

The purpose of this study is to present a survey and examination of the political developments in the West Yorkshire industrial centre of Halifax between 1890 and 1914. It is produced within the context of the debate concerning the timing and reasons for the change-over of national support from Liberal and Conservative to Labour and Conservative in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the impact of the emergence of the Labour Party in the 1890s. The main objective is to determine if the local Liberal Party was already in decline before 1914. There are two major questions. First, was the party able to sustain its working-class support and predominant local position by introducing • progressive , policies? Or, secondly, did it lose support because it failed to change its traditional emphasis and was undermined by the incursions from the vigorous working-class Labour and business-directed Conservative parties? A further objective is to discover the reasons for the establishment and growth of the local Labour movement, together with its consequent political implications, and to establish the causes for the advance of Halifax Conservatism. Several local political features are studied including the changes in socio-economic and political structures, party policies, organisation and tactics - at both general and local elections. This was a vital period for Halifax politics in which the entrenched, formerly • paternalistic , and employer-run Liberal Party received challenges from both the left and the right. Possibly the most important local event was the emer.qence of a trade-union dominated Labour movement in 1892, which arose as a response to the divisive strike situation of the late nineteenth century and was underpinned by a rising working-class consciousness. Thereafter, the new party began to erode the Liberals' working-class Radical support and, as a side-effect, benefited the Tories through· the split-vote system. At the same time, Conservatism began to advance slowly, though fitfully, drawing in the middle-class business vote by its patriotic, protectionist and municipal retrenchment policies. On the 'other hand, Liberalism proved to be increasingly unattractive to both the working classes and the middle classes. The former voters were disillusioned by the continued traditionalistic emphasis of the party which widened its policies but did not fully embrace 'progressive' principles. The latter, conversely, viewed Municipal Liberal 'advanced' initiatives to be too extreme and expensive, particularly on the rates. Therefore, although the Liberals applied political tactics, they could not prevent the party's gradual political decline before 1914.

No description available.