This thesis is about organizations working in the field of British civil liberties between 1934 and 1989. It examines the relationship between the concepts of civil liberties and human rights within a British context, and discusses the forms of political activism that have accompanied this subject. At the centre of this work is an examination of the politics of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), an organization that has played a key role in the protection and promotion of civil liberties from its formation in 1934. It also examines the activities of a range of other organizations that considered themselves to be active on such a subject. The thesis argues that thinking about civil liberties has been extended throughout the twentieth century to incorporate a more positive and broader conceptualization of rights. However, for all the increased importance of the politics of human rights, a tradition of civil liberties has remained crucial to organizations working within such a field. The thesis also seeks to demonstrate that concerns about civil liberties have often reflected the political ideologies of those acting on such issues. Whilst a large amount of conceptual agreement has existed over the importance of the subject within Britain, this has consistently been met with disagreement over what this means. NGOs have played crucial roles as mediators of such a conflict. In performing such a role, the civil liberties lobby has been characterised by a set of professional, expert activists that have, at times, been able and will to engage with radical political ideas.

The Third Battle of Ypres was officially terminated by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig with the opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. Nevertheless, a comparatively unknown set-piece attack – the only large-scale night operation carried out on the Flanders front during the campaign – was launched twelve days later on 2 December. This thesis, a necessary corrective to campaign narratives of what has become popularly known as ‘Passchendaele’, examines the course of events from the mid-November decision to sanction further offensive activity in the vicinity of Passchendaele village to the barren operational outcome that forced British GHQ to halt the attack within ten hours of Zero. A litany of unfortunate decisions and circumstances contributed to the profitless result. At the tactical level, a novel hybrid set-piece attack scheme was undermined by a fatal combination of snow-covered terrain and bright moonlight. At the operational level, the highly unsatisfactory local situation in the immediate aftermath of Third Ypres’ post-strategic phase (26 October-10 November) appeared to offer no other alternative to attacking from the confines of an extremely vulnerable salient. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the affair occurred at the strategic level, where Haig’s earnest advocacy for resumption of the Flanders offensive in spring 1918 was maintained despite obvious signs that the initiative had now passed to the enemy and the crisis of the war was fast approaching.

While relatively neglected in the historiography, the 4th Earl of Minto, who achieved the distinction of serving consecutively as Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India from 1898-1910, is more truly representative of the methods Britain adopted to govern its Empire than his more illustrious contemporaries. He was one of the many aristocrats who, while increasingly marginalised in other aspects of British political life, were believed to possess important qualities that made them ideally suited to the highest levels of imperial service. As part of the governing elite, Britain’s aristocrats shared many of the assumptions held by politicians, civil servants and military officers, about imperial governance. Vague notions circulated about Britain’s duty to civilize its possessions, but most policy-makers eschewed ‘ideological’ visions in favour of a more pragmatic approach based on recognition that protecting the empire from both internal and external threats was vital to maintaining Britain’s leading position amongst its rival Great Powers. The pragmatism of its governors provided an element of continuity in the diverse territories of Britain’s empire. This thesis examines the role of Lord Minto in the formation of defence and foreign policy to illustrate the centrality of the pragmatic approach to British imperialism. He held his posts at a time of transition for the Empire. Ideas about the duties of imperial governors were changing, as power shifted either to local governments in the self-governing colonies or back to the metropole from the periphery. Yet as Britain faced an increasing range of challenges, governors remained able to influence many of the decisions made in response. Like most governors Minto worked under a series of constraints. He was forced to repair the damage caused by his predecessors and contain the unrealistic aspirations of his superiors, although, a soldier himself, he found his military colleagues a valuable source of support throughout his career. In Canada Minto worked hard to ensure that Laurier’s government accepted its imperial responsibilities, most notably during the South African war, but also that his British superiors understood Canadian attitudes towards the Empire and rapprochement with America. As Viceroy, Minto’s priority remained protecting the security of the Raj, particularly the strategically vital North West Frontier, often against the insistence of a Liberal government focused on economic retrenchment. That he was able to achieve these aims and restore stability to previously troubled territories is a tribute to the effectiveness of pragmatism.

This thesis aims to make an original contribution to knowledge by looking at the phenomenon of resistance in the French region of Upper Normandy between 1940 and 1944 from a perspective of ‘history from below’, by looking principally at the testimonies of former resisters, and demonstrating a political history of resistance. The introduction defines what is meant by Upper Normandy and justifies its choice as a region for this study, before analysing both the historiography and the epistemology of resistance, both locally and nationally, and then giving a justification and an analysis of the methodology used. The main body of the thesis is then divided into four chapters. Chapter one looks at resistance that was designed to revolutionise society, by looking at Communist resisters and the idea of the grand soir, as well as the sociological origins of these resisters, and how this influenced their resistance action. Chapter two looks at more gradualist forms of resistance, which were conceived to slowly prepare for an eventual liberation and the struggle against Vichyite hegemony, arguing that these resisters formed a ‘resistance aristocracy’, aiming to slowly forge a post-Vichy vision of the polis. Chapter three analyses resistance purely from a patriotic angle, and identifies three different forms of patriotism, before arguing that resistance was part of a process to ‘remasculate’ France after the defeat of 1940, and that these resisters saw their engagement as primarily being one of serving France. Chapter four looks at auxiliary resistance, or resistance actions that were designed to help people, whether they were fleeing persecution or were active resisters, aiming to show that resistance went beyond just organisations and networks, and could be about facilitating other actions rather than direct confrontation. The conclusion then argues for a new understanding of resistance, not as une organisation or even un mouvement, but as a form of la cité, or polis, engaged in creating a new form of polity. It shows that the political history of resistance is a combination of institutional politics and expression politics, and that resistance, even if not necessarily politicised, was political by its very nature.

This thesis examines the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a co-educational outdoors organisation that claimed to be a youth organisation and a cultural movement active from August 1920 to January 1932. Originally part of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the Kibbo Kift offers rich insight into the interwar period in Britain specifically because it carried forward late Victorian and Edwardian ideology in how it envisioned Britain. Members constructed their own historical narrative, which endeavoured to place the organisation at the heart of British life. The organisation’s internal life revolved around the unique mythology members developed, and the movement aspired to regenerate Britain after the First World War physically and spiritually. This thesis argues Kibbo Kift was a distinctive movement that drew upon its members’ intellectual preoccupations and ideals and inspired its members to create unique cultural artefacts. While the Kibbo Kift was ultimately too politically ambiguous to have lasting political impact on a national scale, examining the organisation offers important insight into intellectual thought and cultural production during the British interwar period. This thesis charts the changes the organisation underwent through its membership and the different trends of intellectual thought brought in by individual members, such as its leader, John Hargrave, brought to the group. It examines the cultural production of the organisation’s unique mythology, which created a distinctive historical narrative. It surveys gender issues within the organisation through the “roof tree”, an experimental family unit, and the group’s increasing anti-feminism. Finally, it considers how Clifford H. Douglas’ economic theory of social credit caused the Kibbo Kift to transform into the Green Shirts Movement for Social Credit and later into the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This study addresses Government media policy throughout the Falklands War of 1982. It considers the effectiveness, and charts the development of, Falklands-related public relations’ policy by departments including, but not limited to, the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The literature of the 1980s concerning the media during the conflict still dominates the historiography of the subject. This thesis is the first significant reappraisal of the work offered during the decade in which the war occurred. It is informed by recently released archive material and newly conducted interviews, and boasts an extensive analysis of the content of the printed press during the conflict. There are a number of central hypotheses contained in this research (as well as many lesser theories). This thesis argues that media policy observed by the MoD in relation to the Task Force journalists was ill-prepared, reactionary, driven by internal MoD motivation and that ultimately, control of policy was devolved to the men on the ground. This thesis advances that MoD media policy in Britain, while as reactive as that rolled out to the Task Force, became more effective as the war progressed. The MoD failed to adequately cater for the British media until the middle of May 1982, at which time a number of sensible and potentially successful initiatives were introduced – specifically the News Release Group and the Military Briefing Group. It is also the contention of this work that the machinery developed centrally, by the Cabinet Office and No.10 Press Office in the form of the South Atlantic Presentation Unit and Information Group, had the potential to be successful additions to the regular organisation of Government. However, neither had enough authority and were plagued by departmental rivalries. While the media-related initiatives of the MoD ultimately became more successful, those of wider Government became less effective. Finally, this thesis provides a serious analysis of the printed press in order to substantiate the hypothesis that much of what had been argued about the printed press was generalised and oversimplified – its reliance on Argentine source material, its jingoistic nature, the dominance of reports on armed conflict and its aversion to a diplomatic settlement.

This thesis presents a new way of thinking about medieval bestiaries. It adopts a locational lens to examine the context and monastic re-fashionings of the medieval Latin prose bestiary in Canterbury from 1093-1360. It has examined the catalogue and codicological evidence concerning the monks’ patronage, ownership, reading and interpretation of these books. It has sought to discover how the bestiary articulated the Canterbury monks’ affective and self-reflective thought modes and interacted with their other beast literature and animal art. This thesis forms a significant contribution to knowledge on the monastic perception and reception of the bestiary by reshaping our understanding through two original approaches. Firstly, it widens the definition of bestiaries to match medieval viewpoints and therefore includes extant copies and catalogue records of extracts and collations as well as whole and fragmentary bestiary books and contemporary Canterbury Cathedral Priory decorative inhabited and zoomorphic initials. Secondly, it pays close attention to the place, space, and context of the bestiary in terms of associated texts, Benedictine spiritual exegesis, and how, where, when, and why it was studied and for what purposes. This attention has led, among other findings, to the redating of the earliest Latin prose bestiary from England to the time of St Anselm’s archiepiscopate and confirmed M.R. James’s view that it was a Canterbury production. This new timeframe has allowed an analysis of the bestiary as part of the Anselmian cultural and intellectual revival and permitted the link between the bestiary and Benedictine preaching to the laity to be examined. It finds strong political reasons for the advancement of the bestiary by Canterbury monks in the twelfth century and for their continued study of the bestiary in the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth century. This thesis provides a methodogical approach regarding how Canterbury monks read their bestiaries and associated texts that is applicable to historians studying such materials elsewhere, thereby enhancing our understanding of Benedictine monastic culture.

A marriage between the English Prince and the Spanish Infanta was deemed desirable following the signing of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty in London in 1604. After several years of tortuous negotiations, the match failed in 1624 and England declared war on Spain the following year. This thesis addresses the end of the Anglo-Spanish Match negotiations in the period 1617-1624 by placing reasons for its failure in the global context of European diplomacy and dynastic politics in the early seventeenth century. Traditional historiography has considered the failure of the marriage diplomacy as the inevitable consequence of religious differences and cultural misunderstandings between England and Spain. Consequently, scholars have only looked within Europe when investigating the end of the union. My research, however, depicts a more composite picture not only by expanding the geographical boundaries of the investigation but also by demonstrating the extent to which new imperial rivalries played a much greater role in the marriage diplomacy than has previously been recognised. In the first chapter, I discuss the notion of reason of state in the relationship between England and Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century and I investigate the way in which the choice politically and/or economically most favourable was often taken regardless of religious considerations and increasingly in response to extra-European concerns. The body of the thesis is then dedicated to a few episodes when the imperial rivalry between England and the Iberian Peninsula influenced the end of the negotiations. In the second chapter, I look at Walter Raleigh’s second expedition to Guyana and the actions of the Spanish ambassador in London, Count of Gondomar, who asked that Raleigh should receive an exemplary punishment in order to maintain the marriage agreement after the English explorer had attacked Spanish settlements. In the following chapter, I move towards the East and analyse the taking of the Portuguese port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf by the English East India Company in 1622. In doing so, I outline the complex dynamics underlying the union of the Iberian crowns (1580-1640) as well as the specific repercussions of this episode on the Infanta’s dowry to be given by Spain to England. The fourth chapter introduces a further key player in both European diplomacy and the imperial rivalry between Spain and England, which is to say the Dutch. By looking at the ‘massacre’ at Amboyna in 1623, I prove that the rivalry with the Dutch in the Spice Islands, and especially the executions at Amboyna, initially pushed King James to pursue the marriage alliance with the Spanish Habsburgs with even greater commitment. In the last chapter, I look back at Europe to discuss how the two composite monarchies reacted to the arrival at their respective courts of the news of recent episodes of conflict in the West and East Indies. This concluding chapter argues that the awareness in Madrid and London of what had happened in the Indies put additional burdens onto the already deteriorating marriage negotiations and fundamentally contributed to their failure. Thus, the thesis sheds light on a well-known episode of Anglo-Spanish relations by observing it through a new lens. As a result, I improve our traditional understanding of the end of Anglo-Spanish Match as well as of global connectedness in the early seventeenth century.

This thesis examines gender differentiation in prosecutions for minor offences in local secular and ecclesiastical courts in Kent from 1460 to 1560. Chapter one explains the need for research on gender and crime in local courts, and for studies bridging the historiographical gap between medieval and early modem England. Chapter two examines crimes against property, arguing that reasons other than gender may explain the apparent lenience towards female thieves. Women were disproportionately prosecuted for small thefts and peripheral offences like hedgebreaking and receiving: this could indicate, not that they lacked initiative, but that they were more likely to be prosecuted for offences which were overlooked when committed by men. The reverse appears to be true for physical violence, the subject of chapter three. Here the evidence suggests that men were charged for very minor assaults, whereas minor violence by women was only prosecuted in special circumstances. Almost equal numbers of men and women were prosecuted for verbal offences, the subject of chapter four, but the women were accused mainly of scolding or quarrelling with their social equals, and the men of insulting or slandering their social superiors. Chapter five deals with prosecutions for sexual misconduct. Thechurch courts were relatively lenient towards females accused of fornication or adultery-, both ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions, however, prosecuted `bawds', who were mainly female, and prostitutes, but rarely the men who used their services. Chapter six is concerned with alleged sorcerers (mainly women), and with sabbath breakers, illegal games-players and vagabonds (largely men). The concluding chapter discusses the similarity of the policies of the ecclesiastical and secular courts, and the tendency for charges against women to be vague and generalised while those against men were specific. It then focuses on the different crimes for which men and women were typically presented, particularly sexual and verbal offences for women and physical assault for men. These and other gendered offences reflect contemporary assumptions and fears about femininity and masculinity: women were expected to be quarrelsome, malicious gossips and sexual delinquents, while physical violence was expected and feared in men. It is suggested that the way local courts exercised their considerable discretion over what, and whom, to prosecute reflected and reinforced these preconceptions, and operated both to control women and to minimise men's fears about them.

The ways in which English men and women used numbers underwent a transformation during the last half of the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth century. This dissertation analyses the changes in how ordinary, non university-educated, people encountered, perceived and employed numbers in their lives. It argues that as a result of this greater engagement with the ‘new’ Hindu- Arabic number system there was an increased sense of number awareness within the population as a whole and in Kent in particular. At the beginning of the sixteenth century most English men and women expressed numerical concepts through a combination of performative and object-based systems, such as finger methods, tally sticks and counting tables. Those who used written systems relied primarily on number words and Roman numerals. From 1539 onwards with the publication of an ever-increasing number of vernacular arithmetic textbooks, together with rising literacy rates and increased educational opportunity, the number of people using Hindu-Arabic numerals increased. By the mid seventeenth century both Roman numerals and Hindu- Arabic were used interchangeably and by the late seventeenth century Hindu-Arabic numerals became dominant. During this same period people increasingly used numbers to interpret the world around them as trade, exploration and scientific advances required a more numerate population. Mathematical texts and teachers stressed the utility of numbers. Almanacs became ubiquitous and provide an insight into the rate at which the ‘new’ number system spread throughout society. By examining a diverse array of sources and placing a case study of Kent within the wider national framework, this dissertation considers the ways in which increased educational opportunities led to the development of numeracy within the populace. It asserts that literacy is the key driver for numeracy and hence educational opportunity is inextricably linked to the development of numeracy.