From the late-1930s until the mid-1980s, one of Britain's most prominent publishers, Penguin Books, produced a series of titles that examined the issues and events that were shaping the nation's political life. Referred to as 'Specials', these books were an important component of Britain's political climate that exerted a significant influence upon elite and popular attitudes. By interrogating the content of these works, and by tracing their reception among both political elites and their wider audience of readers, the following study explores the intellectual and electoral politics of post-war Britain.

This thesis sets out to explain the attitude of the British Labour Party towards the conflict in Northern Ireland both before and after the deployment of British troops on the streets of Northern Ireland in August 1969. The first chapter discusses themes in the Labour Party's political thought on nationalism. These themes and others are developed and explored in the second chapter on 'The British Labour Party, Empire and Northern Ireland'. The Labour Party's experience of ethnic conflict in the process of decolonisation is used to set the context for understanding the reaction of the party to `the troubles'. Chapters three to seven consist of a chronological account of the Labour Party's reaction to the Northern Ireland conflict. An attempt is made to suggest what the consequences of Labour's attitude was on the ground in Northern Ireland. This is done through an examination of the Party's relationship with the unionist Northern Ireland Labour Party and the predominantly nationalist-inclined civil rights movement. The importance of British nationalism is emphasised to explain the development of the Party's policy. It is argued that initially the conflict in Northern Ireland was viewed predominantly as a problem of `alienation' but it came increasingly to be regarded as a `colonial' issue.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study analyses the relationship between the activities of think-tanks and the development of, firstly, party-programmatic discourses of the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and, secondly, their welfare and labour market policies as parties of government. It addresses the years between 1992 and 2005 during which both parties underwent a programmatic revision resulting in the adaptation of "Third Way" Social Democracy which served as the leitmotif for comprehensive policy reform in both countries. Description and analysis of the interaction of the various policy field stakeholders establish what exactly it is that a number of specific think-tanks did, whether what they did was policy-relevant, and if and how the country-specific political system influenced the modus operandi of think-tanks. The study employs a multilevel perspective which considers the macro-level of the socio-economic structures, the meso-level of the practice of the policy process and the micro-level of individual agency. Adopting a neo-Gramscian approach to the study of think-tanks as civil society actors active in the (re)production of discursive hegemony, the policy network concept of Maarten Hajer's discourse coalition is enlisted as a further tool to understand what the role of think-tanks is in the policy process. The research does not attempt to establish causal relationships between think-tank activity and policy outcomes but seeks to establish congruence between what thinktanks did and policy outcomes. The focused comparison of two similar countries helps to discern why think-tanks were more successful in some instances while not in others. This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between (social) science, policy and politics. It addressesa number of gaps in the literature: policy advice for political parties in general and for Labour and SPD during the specified time span in particular have not been adequately explored.

This thesis attempts to answer the following question: why and how did the Labour Party change between 1983 and 1989? This question is approached from the theoretical perspective of 'complexity' which suggests that socio-political phenomena are either too complex ever to be fully understood or are too complex for the methodological tools we presently have at our disposal. These theoretical conclusions are arrived at following detailed analysis of how the dominant model of causality employed in social and political analysis has tended to obscure a large quantity of causal processes involved in the development of anyone social or political factor. As such, it is proposed that a methodology be employed which aims to subvert the prevalent tendency to simplification whilst simultaneously using the insights of complexity to develop a new approach to the Party. A variety of methodological approaches are proposed and applied in pursuit of these goals. Following the identification of simplifications and potential sources of further complexity in existing analyses of Labour's transformation between 1983 and 1989, the thesis makes a large number of empirical observations about the nature of that transformation. These empirical observations cannot be easily summarised in the form of a limited number of over-arching findings for the reason that such simplification is avoided within the thesis itself. However, it can be stated that these observations cover the full range of personal, contingent political, institutional, ideological and rational factors which were causes, aspects and effects of the transformation.

Ideas and ideological attachments are a powerful motivating force over political activity. This thesis studies how a group of British Labour parliamentarians developed an ideological link to the Soviet Union and how this attachment acted as a prism through which they viewed the world. This led to an opposition to the Cold War to develop that was sympathetic to the objectives of the Soviet Union. This led pro-Sovietism to become an established, but minority, tradition of British socialism. This is explored through a study of the ideals and activities associated with these beliefs by focussing on individual MPs. Using MPs as case studies, and studying them within the context of a period of the Cold War, we are able to understand how their activism became reactive to international relations and how their ideas filtered into developing traditions within the party's left-wing. The thesis rejects the notion that those who engaged in pro-Soviet activism were agents of the Soviet Union and crypto-Communists and develops a framework within which these figures can be understood as principled socialists who shared the objectives of preventing an escalation of the Cold War and establishing a socialist future.

No description available.