In 1962, Reginald Ashley, the Secretary of the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society, wrote that allotments are ‘the heritage of the tenement dweller’. He was writing at a time of great upheaval in the allotments movement; allotments had come under threat from post-war development and had largely lost their role in food production that had been vital during the Depression and both World Wars. In writing this statement, Ashley connected allotments to the idiosyncratic dwellings of Scottish city life; he made it clear that allotments are a part of, rather than an escape from, Scottish cities. For the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society, allotments are not only there to grow food but they also improve the mental and physical health of tenement dwellers by providing them with their own outside space. This thesis will explore the role of the allotment within the city, using Glasgow as the location of study. It will use archival research and oral history interviews to answer five core research questions: how has the purpose of an allotment changed and developed from 1930 to the present day; how has the allotment movement advocated for these changing purposes; what has been the role of allotments in sustainable food production; how have allotments developed as places of community; and, what do allotments mean to individual plotholders. Through answering these five questions, this thesis will argue that allotments have developed as places of both individuality and community, a paradox that is needed for the health and well-being of plotholders. It will conclude that allotments are an integral part of Scottish cities that need to be included in long-term urban planning, providing protected green spaces for plotholders, communities, plants and animals in otherwise changing and developing urban environments.

This thesis offers new insights and understandings of the complexity and development of the operational and organisational forms of the Women’s Liberation Movement over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. Through focusing on the local groups of Aberdeen, Brighton and Hove, Edinburgh and Bolton as case studies of the broader movement, this research argues that there were complex processes of development at the grassroots in which women conceived of, implemented and continued to develop new feminist methods of political organisation and structure, and continued to debate issues of organisation, structure and political practice throughout the period. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates that the development of new, alternative feminist organisational and political practices were central to the ways in which the WLM attempted to represent and manage the diverse opinions, positions, interests and socio-economic divisions within its membership from the very beginnings of the WLM. This study also explores the impact of local factors on each group and the extent to which these shaped and developed the organisation, structure and practices of local groups over the course of the 1970s and into the 1980s. In doing so, this thesis challenges a historiography that depicts the WLM as a ‘structureless’ movement and therefore as disorganised, and which outlines a simplistic ‘rise and fall’ chronology of the movement, from unity in the early 1970s to crippling division at the end of the decade. Rather, through the use of documentary evidence and oral history interviews with feminist activists, this thesis argues that attempts to solve and mange debate and disagreements between women were a significant part and purpose of feminist organisation and its subsequent development well beyond the supposed ‘end’ of the WLM in 1978.

This thesis represents an account of the experience of race in contemporary Britain. It adopts a ‘micro historical’ approach: the focus is on those of African-Caribbean descent in Handsworth, an inner-city area of Birmingham, during the ‘long 1980s’, defined roughly as the period from the middle of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. This was a period of heightened racial tension. Popular anxieties about the black inner city were brought to the fore following rioting in 1981 and 1985, after which Handsworth was conceptualised by the media as the ‘Front Line’ in an ongoing ‘war on the streets’. The long 1980s was also a period in which inequalities in housing, unemployment and other areas continued to disproportionately affect black communities in Handsworth. These issues were an important contributing factor to the black experience. However, this thesis argues that the black experience was by no means reducible to them. Race, it is argued, was something that was lived in Handsworth, sometimes in relation racism and inequality, but also in what E. P. Thompson famously argued to be ‘the raw material of experience’. Race was a ‘structure of feeling’ in Handsworth. It meant having to deal with the effects of discrimination or high unemployment, for example, sometimes on a daily basis. But the thesis will show that race was also often re-articulated as a positive identity, and was lived out in routines, traditions, institutions and everyday practices. Taken together, this constituted what can meaningfully be described as a black way of life in Handsworth, something that represents a significant part of the social history of contemporary Britain.

This thesis examines the eschatological thought of Bede (673-735). Relevant content is drawn from a wide range of Bede’s exegetical and non-exegetical works. The world ages analogy, crucial to Bede’s perception of time, chronology and eschatology, is discussed in the first four chapters. These chapters explain the significant changes that Bede made to the analogy following an allegation of heresy that arose in 708. Chapters five, six and seven outline Bede’s beliefs regarding key eschatological concepts such as: Antichrist, the day of judgement and the post-judgement afterlife. Bede’s ‘eschatological perspective’ is the final major theme to be considered. Bede’s perceived proximity to the end of time is shown to be a variable factor that changed according to time and circumstance. The thesis reveals that Bede was an innovative scholar who re-worked the traditional theoretical models that he inherited from earlier Christian theologians. Bede is shown to be a commanding scholarly authority who played an important role in defining the eschatological beliefs of his contemporaries. Finally, this thesis distinguishes aspects of Bede’s early eschatological thought from his beliefs in the mature stages of his authorial career. This has implications for the dating termini of several texts.

This thesis is a study of the transition from Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon culture in East Anglia from the mid fourth to the mid seventh century, and of the origins of the kingdom of the East Angles. It combines three types of evidence: archaeology, place-names and written sources. It aims to test the validity of this kind of multidisciplinary regional study. The first part of the thesis concerns material culture, and consists of a thorough investigation of the region's archaeological material from the late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods, focusing on the latest Romano-British evidence and earliest Germanic evidence. The early Anglo-Saxon-period population is characterised as heterogeneous, and the pays is posited as the most useful way of drawing distinctions within it. The second part looks at the linguistic evidence contained within the region's place-name corpus, and argues for the presence of a significant British element within the early "Anglo-Saxon" population. A comparison of the two types of evidence broadly confirms orthodox notions concerning Old English place-name chronology, although substantial intra-regional variation is highlighted. The third part collates evidence for the origins of the kingdom of the East Angles, and suggests that this variety was an important influence on its formation.

This thesis examines the development of mental health activism in the women’s movement in England from the establishment of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in 1968 until the end of the first nationwide charity campaign to focus on women and mental health, MIND’s Stress on Women, in 1994. Constructing in-depth case studies, this thesis assesses the assumption in the late 1960s and early 1970s that consciousness-raising facilitated women’s positive mental health, examines the formation of the London Women’s Liberation Workshop Psychology Group, traces the development of the Women’s Therapy Centre in London, and explores how the mental health charity MIND increasingly utilised and popularised women’s movement ideas and approaches across the 1980s and 1990s. In doing so, it explores how women’s movement mental health activists increasingly aligned feminist critiques of psychiatry and psychology, with the positive promotion of psychotherapy. Existing accounts of women’s movement mental health activism focus on the rejection of psychology and psychotherapy by its members. This thesis highlights how women’s movement members established community-based organisations and grassroots self-help groups to bolster their understandings of themselves and their political affiliations, and to support women experiencing mental health concerns and emotional distress. It therefore produces a more expansive understanding of the development of the personal politics integral to the women’s movement, challenges the popular narrative that women’s movement organisations became depoliticised in the 1980s, and documents the previously unexplored contribution of the women’s movement to the development of radical therapy networks and community-based mental health care in late twentieth-century England.

This thesis builds on quantitative British politics scholarship with four papers unified by a strong emphasis on positivist theory, research design and cutting edge statistical methodology. I examine political behaviour among representatives in the UK's House of Commons and voting behaviour in the 2016 EU Referendum. I show that the UK parliamentary system's reliance on strong party discipline has important adverse consequences for public approval. Firstly, I show how high-salience debates such Prime Minister's Questions bring out the worst behaviours in MPs. As parties' access to the floor (ability to make speeches) is reduced, MP behaviour becomes more aggressive. Secondly, with co-authors, I examine the conditions under which ideologically extreme MPs are more likely to vote against their party. We find that the impact of such behaviour affects party unity more often when in government, meaning that parties are more likely to appear united until they elected, at which point party divides become more apparent once again. Thirdly, I show that career progression in the House of Commons rewards 'insider' behaviour such as increased attendance and participation in House of Commons debate and a focus on national rather than local issues. The power political parties have over the future of political leadership tends to centralise power and reward party politicians to whom the general public feels no strong affinity. In the final paper, we analyse voting behaviour during the 2016 EU Referendum assessing the potential effect of rainfall on the referendum result. We find that if the referendum had occurred on a sunny day, the likely result would have widened the margin of victory for Vote Leave. In the most comprehensive statistical analysis of the referendum to date, we concur with earlier analyses that that the surprise result was driven by strong Brexit support in districts of economic and social deprivation, particularly in rural and suburban locations.

This thesis is an examination of several local families and their role shaping the palatinate of Durham’s position within the early Tudor state. Histories of the late medieval and early Tudor bishopric have tended to treat the palatinate as either an intractable obstacle to the consolidation of the English state, or as a highly distinctive and autonomous seat of power in the North-East, free from any meaningful encroachment by the crown. This thesis reframes Durham within the wider context of advancements in the early Tudor state and, particularly, more recent discussions on the nature and efficacy of patron-client or patronage networks. The central themes of this thesis are threefold. First, rather than see the history of Durham, its bishops, and landowners as a pitched battle against crown intervention, this thesis posits a new interpretation, one which foregrounds cooperation and mutual benefit. Early Tudor attitudes towards Durham were, for the most part, not grounded on a desire to abolish or undermine the bishopric and its political and administrative infrastructure. Where Durham’s resources could be applied for the betterment of the national polity, successive governments sought to work with, not against, the region’s landowners and officers, who in turn realised the benefits to be had from forging contacts with the court and other senior royal officials. Second, this increasingly pragmatic stance was nurtured through the formation and consolidation of patronage networks. It was through these symbiotic networks that both the crown and local landowners changed the nature of the bishopric’s role within the national polity; much like neighbouring Yorkshire, patron-client networks had the effect of bringing Durham more closely into line with central government, but not necessarily to the detriment of local customs and ideas of government. Finally, by examining the role of local landowners from outside the bishopric, in conjunction with Durham’s leading families and the bishops’ episcopal households, this thesis argues that the palatinate formed part of what was a highly effective regional community.

The last two decades have seen major interventions in naturalisation legislation across much of the ‘industrialised’ world, with successive UK administrations introducing and refining citizenship tests, language proficiency requirements, and ceremonial performances in an explicit bid to elevate the acquisition of citizen-status from a ‘right’ to a ‘privilege’ (Home Office, 2013a). In this thesis, I draw on theorisations of the border as a geopolitical, a biopolitical, and a ‘neuropolitical’ (Isin, 2004) phenomenon, and thus conceptualise these newly-instituted ‘citizenisation’ (Fortier, 2017) processes as a political project, as part of an assemblage of bordering practices through which to heighten and manage the anxieties of the neurotic subject within the securitised state, and to realise the nation state in domopolitical terms as a home (Walters, 2004). While discourse researchers have certainly provided much important empirical insight into the strategies employed in contemporary citizenship documentation, and in the broader discursive contexts in which these citizenship regimes are situated (e.g. Wodak et al, 2009; Löwenheim and Gazit, 2009), I argue that the citizenship regime cannot be understood as wholly constituted through the linguistic practices of élite policy and media actors, but should instead be conceptualised more broadly as discursive practice: as a complex set of linguistic, material, and symbolic practices. From this premise, I situate my research within a particular local context, drawing together a data set which takes into account policy documents and testing materials, observations of testing and ceremonial rituals, and interviews with twenty actors involved in the production of the citizenship regime, including citizenship officials and recent and prospective citizens. Articulating themes across the data set, I look to the ways in which both the state and the Good citizen-subject are performed and secured within this discursive landscape, and find important moments of disruption and contestation to this dominant discursive formation.

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