This thesis is a study of British attitudes towards Greece, during the period 1943-1949 through the eyes and voices of the British daily and weekly press. This study seeks to examine these attitudes within a period which started, in Europe and in Greece, with the best of hopes and expectations for world peace, democracy and social justice and ended finding Greece exhausted by a four-year civil war and the world separated into two opposed ideological and political blocks. It, therefore, observes the fluctuation of attitudes and opinions as they correspond to the changing world situation. It is also a study of Labour and Liberal opinion in Britain. The decisive four years (1944-1947) for the fate of the Greek crisis found Britain deeply involved in Greece. The conduct of British policy towards that country, since July 1945, as pursued by a Labour government, represented a real challenge for Labour and Liberal opinion concerning its ideological principles and morals. The nature of the Greek crisis and the strategic location of the country made it an important episode during the height of the Cold War, further complicating the country's already acute internal differences. Thus, this thesis is also a study of the press reactions to the hardening Cold War attitudes. The aim has been to discover whether the Greek developments themselves were faced on their merits or whether they were related to the Cold War climate; whether the attitudes towards Greece were kept with the general political and philosophical outlooks. Misconceptions, misinterpretations, deceptions and illusions will be also considered and, in particular how, if at all, these features are related to Cold War propaganda. A significant part of this study will be given on the issue of the relationship between government and press. Freedom of information and governmental pressure on the press, either direct or indirect, are issues under consideration. Papers will also examined as much for their attitudes and opinions they espoused as for how they went about their business, e.g. ownership, staff, finance, circulation figures, readership. Finally this thesis, it is hoped, will contribute some valuable first-hand evidence to the overall study of the Greek civil war as it will attempt to portray the prevailing psychological and political atmosphere at the time.

The thesis aims to examine the political consequences of applying J.S. Mill's "very simple principle" of liberty in practice: whether the result would be free-market liberalism or socialism, and to what extent a society governed in accordance with the principle would be free. 2 Contrary to Mill's claims for the principle, it fails to provide a clear or coherent answer to this "practical question". This is largely because of three essential ambiguities in Mill's formulation of the principle, examined in turn in the three chapters of the thesis. 3 First, Mill is ambivalent about whether liberty is to be promoted for its intrinsic value, or because it is instrumental to the achievement of other objectives, principally the utilitarian objective of "general welfare". The possibility that he might mean the latter implies that, because liberty and utilitarian objectives are at least potentially incompatible, application of the principle does not preclude the sacrifice of individual liberty in the pursuit of general welfare, and therefore does not preclude paternalistic (and illiberal) state socialism. 4 Arguments advanced by commentators, notably Gray, to suggest that there is no inconsistency between the liberal and utilitarian objectives in Mill's writing, are not sustainable. 5 Secondly, the principle's criterion for sanctioning interference in liberty - the prevention of "harm to others" - is so vague and elastic as to be compatible with almost any degree of interventionism and indeed totalitarianism. Because of the interdependence of men in society, there is virtually no limit to the classes of activity which can be said to cause harm to others, and hence no limits to the interference sanctioned by Mill's principle. Thus the principle does not preclude the suppression of legitimate economic activity by a socialist state committed to preventing economic "harm". 6 Attempts by commentators such as Rees and Ten to show that Mill's use of "harm" is narrower and more specific, are not supported by either textual or logical analysis. 7 Thirdly, Mill's principle fails to make clear whether "liberty" should be understood to mean classical ("negative") liberty or some form of "positive liberty" such as ability/power. It therefore does not preclude the adoption of socialist measures to promote "ability". On examination, "ability" can be seen to be an entirely different phenomenon from liberty. The promotion of "ability" (attainable through central allocation of material resources) can only be undertaken at the expense of liberty, particularly economic liberty. The justification for safeguarding economic liberty lies in respect for private property rights, the absence of which entails enslavement and inhumanity. 8 If a principle were to be framed avoiding these three ambiguities, it could serve as a firmer foundation for the protection and promotion of liberty.

Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation is mostly adopted on the presumption that good records management exists. However, it is pertinent that the functionality of records management in the creation, management and making records available for access internally within government and externally to citizens be established as the legislation is being planned for. Through the planning process, the capacities of records management in providing access to information will be known. This study employs a Grounded Theory based methodology on data collected from Botswana, Ireland, Malawi, South Africa and the UK to discern Botswana's preparedness for FOI legislation in line with the country's national aspiration, Vision 2016. It also uses the same data to unearth relationships that exist between records management and FOI legislation. The study has established that constitutional guarantees on access to information are an inadequate measure to enable citizens to gain direct access to official information. As a result, countries which regulate access to information through the guarantees have to adopt FOI legislation so as to effectuate them. The adoption of the legislation should be founded on the democratic ideal of enhancing the capacity of citizens in developing and offering informed consent including improving their participation in their governance. The law should also be predicated on the obligation of government in accounting to citizens as well as empowering them to hold it to account. In addition, the law should be based on an environment which would enable citizens to formulate, develop and demonstrate trust in the governance process. Lastly FOI legislation should be built on a good records management system which will provide an assurance that the governance process is well documented, and its records can be availed for access. Through the diverse case study countries, the study has established that Botswana is prepared for the adoption of FOI legislation. However, as the country works towards adoption of the legislation, it should strive to evaluate the efficacy of public sector records management.

Guerrilla commanders Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi seized power in 1986 and 1991. Both made press freedom a prominent and credible policy to differentiate themselves from their predecessors in seeking domestic and international support in their efforts to consolidate power. Nevertheless, each still presides over a highly centralized autocratic regime, with limited opportunities for political contenders to contest free and fair national elections. There are, however, important differences. In Uganda the press has remained vibrant and open despite 2006 election tensions, while in Ethiopia much of the private press was dramatically closed after the 2005 electoral contests. Why the press has evolved differently in Ethiopia than in Uganda and what the role of the press has been under the current systems are core questions to be addressed in this research. In neither country can the media be studied separately from politics. The analytic framework of the thesis therefore highlights four key political variables, as well as four key media variables. The selected media variables are: the polarisation of the press; ideologies of journalists; institutionalisation of the press; and government interventions; and the selected political variables are: the ideology of the liberation movement; the process of state construction and the consolidation of power; reconciliation, trust and confidence building; and international dimensions. Each case study also includes a brief history highlighting the differences in the earlier development of the press in Ethiopia and Uganda. Because of the dearth of existing literature, the thesis has built on comparative literature from other regions and has relied on extensive field research, including semi-structured interviews and oral histories with key political and media actors for what is one of the first substantial pieces of research examining the press in contemporary Ethiopia and Uganda. The argument that emerges from this analysis is that the press can play an important role in building peace, encouraging reconciliation and facilitating dialogue in the aftermath of civil wars. It primarily does so through providing a space for different elite factions to negotiate power, reconcile competing versions of history and build a common national vision. This process has developed differently in Ethiopia and Uganda and accounts for some current discrepancies in their political and press systems.

The works here submitted were published at various times between 1988 and 1998. All except two were published by the Libertarian Alliance, either directly or in its quarterly journal, Free Life. The Libertarian Alliance is a think tank committed to the defence of free markets and civil and political liberties. Though dating under its present name from the 1970s, the Libertarian Alliance can claim, by way of personal membership and of ideological heritage, a line of descent from the Liberty and Property Defence League, established in 1882. It publishes reports on a wide range of subjects by a wide range of authors - both Enoch Powell and Tony Benn are among other published authors, as are Antony Flew, John Gray, and Edward Pearce. One of the two other pieces (Chapter Eleven) was published by the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (FOREST). This is a movement established in 1979 to defend the rights of smokers against paternalist legislation. The other piece (Chapter Ten) was published by the Adam Smith Institute. Established in 1978, this organisation was partly responsible for devising and explaining the Thatcher reforms of the 1980s. More recently, it has been active in consultancy work in Eastern Europe and in the Third World. It has also maintained close links during the past decade with what is now known as the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, Publishing reports on welfare reform by Frank Field who is now the Minister responsible for this area of activity. All three organisations insist on the same standards of scholarship as any academic journal; and are held in high regard by academies and politicians across the political spectrum. Their reports are collected by university libraries and are included in university reading lists. My own works for these organisations deal with various issues. Sometimes, they are concerned with current issues (Chapters Two, Five, Six, Seven, etc), and sometimes with issues of more timeless importance (Chapters One and Eleven). But taken together, ail constitute an analysis of the English classical liberal tradition. All do consistently address a number of themes. These are: the meaning of classical liberalism, its emergence and its decline, and the possibility of its revival.

Intellectual freedom justifies social freedom and is justified as the pursuit of truth. I argue that intellectual freedom is the creative exercise of Polanyian tacit knowing. Polanyian tacit knowing is discovery, a way to new truth. Intellectual freedom, imagined is (1) negative or primarily critical doubt and opposition to Community, Authority and Tradition (CAT) (traditional liberalism); and (2) positive or the over-emphasis of CAT (1) and (2) are untenable and eliminates intellectual freedom by nihilism or totalitarianism; in (1) by nihilism; and (2) by totalitarianism. Nihilism starts in a wrong understanding of truth or how it is pursued while totalitarianism stems from over-emphasis on CAT. Tacit knowledge is a way to analyse (1) the early Polanyi and the tension between social order and freedom; and (2) the late Polanyi and the gap between intellectual freedom and truth. Tacit knowledge presupposes CAT on the from side of tacit knowledge’s notation and overcomes CAT’s constraints by tacit knowing going to truth. Further, by restating his Hungarian Revolution as tacit knowing, tacit knowing is a way to a more truthful CAT, close the uncompleted side of tacit knowledge and solve the original problem of liberalism: its self-destruction. By framing this query in terms of Polanyian intellectual freedom, I establish a way to bring together his early social theory and late epistemology to make an original contribution to Polanyian scholarship. A Polanyian tack ought to be given more thought as to its implications for social theory.

No description available.

This study investigates press freedom in the political context of Zambia by looking at The Post, a daily tabloid that operates in the country. It involves in-depth interviews with tabloid journalists working or having worked with the tabloid mainly in the area of reporting politics. It involves a literature review in the broader subject area and notes that, even though press freedom is the life blood of any democratic society which needs to be enhanced, there are other complexities that hinder its realisation, including ownership interests, tabloid journalists’ predilections, advertisers’ influence, political authorities’ expectations, and readers’ social and economic positions. In addition, despite the general public’s expectations and the press’s ardent quest for press freedom, the conception and understanding of press freedom in democracy is far from straight forward. The research found that The Post was incapable of contributing effectively to the maturity of democracy. Its level of credibility as a tabloid was compromised by joining ranks with ruling politicians. Its traditional watchdog role of exposing political and social elites to public accountability was also suppressed due to political partnership. In addition, citizens needed to consider seriously online journalism as it provided information at the expense of The Post which was no longer vocal in these domains. Government too needed to provide favorable mechanisms to enhance online publishing as it was beneficial to the promotion and protection of democracy. Furthermore, the Press Association of Zambia and the Media Institute of Southern Africa needed to be more critical of government operations towards the press and needed to intensify their role in providing checks and balance on journalists to uphold their professional values. Overall thesis contribution to knowledge derives from its critical examination of this under examined area of the role of tabloid journalism in emerging democracies. It adds detailed knowledge on the professional practice of tabloid journalism in Zambia as an exemplar of the political role of tabloid media in a developing democracy.

No description available.

In light of an increasing embrace of the notion of ‘emancipation’ by various theoretical and political perspectives in recent years, this thesis aims to scrutinise the philosophical connotations of the concept itself. It therefore returns to Karl Marx’s distinction between political and human emancipation, developed in his text ‘On the Jewish Question’, with the aim of excavating its theoretical stakes. The core argument of the first part is that Marx draws a line of demarcation between citizenship as the modern form of political, bourgeois emancipation realised by the American and French Revolutions, and human emancipation as necessitating a different kind of revolution that would allow for the constitution of a new type of social bond between the individual and the social. Marx’s formulation of the need for human emancipation is grounded in his critique of political emancipation, which he regards as failing to recognise the dialectical constitution of its social bond by both political and economic relations. The bourgeois social bond moreover makes ‘man’ exist as an individualised being who can only relate to his or her political existence and dependency on others in a mediated and abstract way. The second part turns to the post-Marxist critiques of ‘On the Jewish Question’, starting in the late 1970s with Claude Lefort, which coincide with a broader re-evaluation of the revolutionary legacy in France. It specifically interrogates Étienne Balibar’s alternative understanding of the form of emancipation achieved by the French Revolution under the name of ‘equaliberty’, with which he defends the struggle for citizenship as the unsurpassable horizon of a contemporary politics of emancipation. The aim is here to develop a deeper understanding of Balibar’s criticism of Marx’s dividing line, which allows the French thinker's contribution to 'thinking emancipation after Marx' to be disentangled from his decision to distance himself from the Marxian approach.