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No description available.

This thesis is an attempt to give an account of the influence of the Treasury on the decisions end actions of the Cabinet and the defence departments in the year a 1932-39. The measure of 'influence' is taken to be the extent to which the Treasury caused ministers or departments to depart from courses which they otherwise would have followed regarding rearmament. The thesis is concerned with the direct effects of the interplay of different departmental policies in Whitehall, and is not intended to be a complete account of rearmament. For reasons of time and space it waa decided to omit measures which were the responsibility of civil departments, although some of these, such as air raid precautions and food storage, were very important preparations for war. The thesis concentrates on the Treasury's relationship with the three defence departments because it is that relationship which has aroused most controversy. Most accounts of Britain's readiness for war in 1939, particularly those accounts which deal with only one service, contain a reference to 'Treaaury meanness' as one reason why preparation had been inadequate. It has also been suggested that civilians in the Treasury, notably Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1931-57, and Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and official Head of the Civil Service, exerted great influence on defence policy, and an examination of that influence, and of how it waa exercised, seemed a worthwhile contribution to historical knowledge.

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'Tenure' is defined as a distinctive sub-set of property. The movements of rent between 1870 and 1914 are then examined to see whether it was declining or increasing. Quantitative estimates of the magnitude of some tenures follow: property professionals, corporate bodies, groundowners, capitalists and mortgagees. The distribution of tenure underlay tenurial politics. Inter-tenurial relations were not unduly fractious; conflict focused on the incidence of taxation. Liberals and Conservatives held dogmatic views on the subject. Conservatives advocated State relief for local taxpayers. Liberals a tax on ground values. Rating policy between 1850 and 1906 is described: Conservative doctrine was politically attractive until a sectional restriction of State grants after 1895. Liberal doctrine originated in London in the 1860s, and was strongly marked by Henry George in the 1880s. Conservative parsimony alienated the main municipal pressure group in the 1890s at a time when towns were striving to meet the challenge of rapid expansion in competition with private capital, Property values were highly cyclical, and suffered a collapse in London between 1905 and 1910. Failing demand, higher interest rates and increased local taxation combined to produce this Edwardian property slump. Crises of local finance gave rise to ratepayer politics, exemplified in the London local elections of 1907. After their Parliamentary election victory in 1906 the Liberals strove to implement their fiscal doctrine. It reinforced an attack on groundowners which also drew upon romantic residues in English culture. A remarkable 'land campaign' was mounted by Lloyd George in 1912-14. Concurrently he embraced a scheme for the taxation of land values which was unsound in conception, mismanaged in application and effectively resisted. In the 1914 budget he attempted to bring the rating question to a head, but was forced to abandon his programme even before the outbreak of the war.

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No description available.

The Royal Humane Society was founded in 1774 as Britain’s first primary aid organisation. In addition to researching and disseminating information on the treatment of the apparently dead, it took practical steps both to prevent accidents and to reward individuals who saved others from drowning or asphyxiation. The Society and its work were widely admired and imitated both within the United Kingdom and overseas, whilst the medal which it established in 1775 to reward such deeds became the first British bravery medal to be widely distributed to both men and women of all social classes and also served as a model both for other societies and the Crown. Unlike continental countries such as France, Britain had been slow to adopt the medal as a means of rewarding and encouraging bravery. Official interest in the use of medals to encourage loyalty to the Crown and to reward valour was prompted by the army’s experiences in the Crimea, whilst the extension of such rewards to cover deeds of civil bravery was in part driven by public demand, although control of the distribution of these rewards remained firmly in the hands of middle and upper-class men, who imposed their own value systems on the deeds which they reviewed. An analysis of both official and unofficial rewards shows that working class, female and non-white rescuers were under-represented. The tales of working class medallists were however of particular interest to the writers of improving tracts, who fashioned ‘exemplary lives’ around the bones of the stories of honoured workers. This in turn led to the creation of a new breed of working-class heroes, whose stories were widely distributed with the intention of providing acceptable role models for the labouring classes. This represented a radical departure from previous models of heroism, which had been sharply focussed on leaders and warriors drawn from the echelons of the ruling elite. Until the outbreak of the Great War, the majority of bravery medals awarded each year were given by private societies in recognition of civilian bravery. This dominance ended in 1914, when conscription and wholesale slaughter altered forever the popular perception of courage.

This thesis explores the provincial life of George W. F. Howard (1802-64), 7th Earl of Carlisle, better known as the early-Victorian Whig aristocrat and politician Lord Morpeth. It challenges accounts which have presented Whiggery as metropolitan in ethos, by demonstrating that Morpeth strongly engaged with the county of Yorkshire as a politician, philanthropist and landlord. It provides the first dedicated account of how Whiggery operated, and was perceived, in a provincial setting. An introduction summarises the current historiography on the Whigs, and establishes the rationale behind the study. Chapter One details the pivotal influence of Morpeth’s Christian faith on his thought. It suggests that his religious values shaped both his non-political and political actions, ensuring a correlation between them. Chapters Two and Four are concerned with Morpeth’s career as M.P. for Yorkshire (1830-32) and the West Riding (1832-41, 1846-48). They suggest that Morpeth played a key role in building an alliance between the region’s liberals and Whiggery, based around the idea that the Whigs would offer political, economic and ecclesiastical reforms. However, they show how this alliance gradually splintered, partly owing to differences between the Whigs and some of the region’s nonconformist liberals over issues of Church and State and the Whigs’ social reform policies. Chapter Three details Morpeth’s activities as a philanthropist in the county. It suggests that this maintained his links to his supporters, shaped his views on social questions, and enhanced his political reputation. Chapter Five explores his relationship with Castle Howard, his Yorkshire estate. It demonstrates his attachment to the house and integration into local society, his involvement in promoting agricultural and infrastructural improvement in the district, and his concern to improve the moral, physical and spiritual welfare of his tenants. Both chapters show the links between Morpeth’s provincial life and his career as a statesman.

Itinerant lecturers declaiming upon free trade, Chartism, temperance, or anti-slavery could be heard in market places and halls across the country during the years 1837-60. The power of the spoken word was such that all major pressure groups employed lecturers and sent them on extensive tours. Print historians tend to overplay the importance of newspapers and tracts in disseminating political ideas and forming public opinion. This thesis demonstrates the importance of older, traditional forms of communication. Inert printed pages were no match for charismatic oratory. Combining personal magnetism, drama and immediacy, the itinerant lecturer was the most effective medium through which to reach those with limited access to books, newspapers or national political culture. Orators crucially united their dispersed audiences in national struggles for reform, fomenting discussion and coalescing political opinion, while railways, the telegraph and expanding press reportage allowed speakers and their arguments to circulate rapidly. Understanding of political oratory and public meetings has been skewed by over-emphasis upon the hustings and high-profile politicians. This has generated two misconceptions: that political meetings were generally rowdy and that a golden age of political oratory was secured only through Gladstone's legendary stumping tours. However, this thesis argues that, far from being disorderly, public meetings were carefully regulated and controlled offering disenfranchised males a genuine democratic space for political discussion. Its detailed research into Yorkshire and the North East, demonstrates both the growth of popular political speechmaking and the emergence of a class of professional lecturers. It identifies a paradigm shift from classical oratory to more populist styles of speaking, as more humble speakers took to the platform; and it argues that through the growth of popular political oratory the platform had been rehabilitated by the 1860s and the lecture format commercialized