This thesis examines the Anglo-Jewish community in the three decades following its so-called emancipation as legally equal citizens. Beginning with Lionel de Rothschild's entry into Parliament in 1858 and concluding with the Anglo-Jewish Exhibition's encomium to Jewish life of 1887, this era witnessed the reconceptualisation of Anglo-Jewish identity as the minority completely entered British society after centuries of marginalisation. This thesis focuses upon three interlinked case-studies of different strands of Jewish leadership as they experienced their new identity and numerous practical issues regarding everyday interaction: the first Jewish MPs; the representative Board of Deputies of British Jews; and the community's religious infrastructure. Through analysis and comparison of these elite groups this work explores questions of inter-faith and inter-ethnic dialogue, minority-majority relationships, acculturation, and subculture formation in late nineteenth-century Britain. It argues that Anglo-Jewry's emancipation was ambiguous; British acceptance was not neutral but carried reciprocal expectations. The community thus felt the dichotomy of Diasporic Jewish existence - being particularist in a universalist society - acutely in these years. Moving in tandem with British society forced many concessions from Jews' sectarian identity, the form and extent of which remained indeterminate as a result. The expected acculturation was forthcoming and the community fashioned itself a distinctive British variant of Jewish existence. However, this thesis contends that this was not always a forced or unpleasant experience. Many Jews willingly embraced aspects of British identity they appreciated. There were also numerous instances of the community being able to preserve its exceptionality. The British state and wider society showed a remarkable willingness to accommodate cases of Jewish particularity. This thesis demonstrates the tolerant nature of Britain's civil society (and indicates some of the boundaries to this), whilst also revealing the remarkable level of confluence between Anglo-Jewish and British ideals at this time. Fundamentally, it suggests, with some reservations, that Anglo-Jewry be viewed as an example of successful integration.

This thesis is a contemporary history of one episode in the United Kingdom's experience of the European Community (EC). It charts the making of the Single European Act (SEA) from its early 1980s' origins, through the bargaining process of the Dooge Committee and 1985 intergovernmental conference (IGC), to the SEA itself. By studying the origins of a specific treaty, the thesis analyses the impact of EC membership on one west European nation state and places the historical episode in its wider context. The historical method is appropriate for studying these events despite the contemporary nature of the period. Detailed, empirical analysis of the episode reveals most fully the complexities of the process of European integration as this member state experienced it. But the thesis also draws on academic disciplines beyond the faculty of history: these include comparative politics, economics, international relations, European law and international political economy. The study of the SEA enters their various internal debates, especially over the nature of the state and international system (chapter one), but keeps its historical approach. The thesis addresses the making of the Single European Act by asking two questions. First (chapters two, three and four), why did the United Kingdom agree to formal reform of the EC and ultimately the 1985 intergovernmental conference? Second, once the conference had opened (chapters five and six), why did the Single European Act take the specific form that it did, despite the United Kingdom's efforts? Answers to these two questions confirm elements of the two competing theories on integration; neo functionalism and neo-Realism. The answers also demonstrate that neither theory can fully explain all that happened, when it happened or why. One reason is that two distinct processes were at work: theory to date had not distinguished them, but close empirical analysis revealed their important differences. The first proces was informal, economic integration which usually took place among societal actors. This underpinned and informed the British Government's policy preferences. The second was formal integration, state-led codification through bargaining which (surprisingly) did not follow the premises of the latest theoretical endeavour, 'intergovernmental institutionalism'. The distinction between the two processes and the actors they involved, and also their interrelationship are among the thesis's contributions to the theoretical debate.

This study surveys the social, economic and political development of the Leicester working class between 1860 and 1906. Special attention is given to hosiery and footwear workers who collectively represented over 60% of the industrial workforce in 1891. It is argued that as these two trades were still based on an outwork system well into the last quarter of the century, working practices and cultural activities of the workforce still manifested many aspects of an artisanal milieu. Furthermore, the inefficiency of capitalist control endemic to the outwork system assisted in retaining a strong element of independence in working class political activity. Thus Leicester working class Liberalism was always staunchly radical. Centralisation and mechanisation in hosiery and footwear challenged existing working practices and led to widespread discontent. This unrest also had fundamental political implications. It is argued that Liberalism began to weaken in Leicester when it became identified with a group of employers active in imposing factory production. It is further argued that the process of political change amongst the working class was also partly the product of Leicester's indigenous popular radical tradition. The eventual victory of the factory system brought further political change. Local Socialism abandoned its early interest in cooperative production as the developments in the world of work rendered the ending of artisanal methods. Problems of poverty caused largely by displaced footwear workers became the prime concern of the infant Labour Party. It is argued that Labour consolidated its position in local politics and Liberalism ceased to be an effective force in working class areas because the new party was able to harness the problem of unemployment to its cause. Yet ambiguities remained. Old radicalism, Socialism and reformism were the major elements in working class politics in the years prior to the 1906 general election. These-apparently contradictory aspects were ideally suited to the personality and political philosophy. of J. Ramsay MacDonald, who skillfully utilised them in his successful parliamentary campaign.

This thesis is a study of popular allegiance in five midland counties during the English Civil War, 1642- 1646. It considers the relationship between allegiance and popular religion and culture. It aims to provide a regional case study of popular reactions to the war, with particular reference to recent theories of allegiance, which have emphasised the role played by religion and culture. Although the approach is broadly chronological, religion and culture are discussed mainly in the first half of the thesis, and popular allegiance in the second. Chapter One surveys popular religion and culture in the region from c. 1603 to 1638. Chapter Two characterises popular politics on the eve of the Civil War. Chapter Three deals with popular religion and culture in the late 1630s and during the war. In particular, it considers whether or not distinct cultural regions had evolved by this time, and the nature and extent of popular puritanism and 'Anglicanism'. Chapter Four provides a narrative of military events in the region during the war, and discusses the impact of the conflict on civilian communities. Chapter Five describes the geographical pattern of allegiance, through an analysis of military recruitment and civilian reactions. Chapter Six considers what factors may have motivated popular responses to the war. It is argued that there was often a positive response to the war, and that we must seek a multicausal explanation of this phenomenon. In particular, religio-cultural factors were a major influence. But it is argued that religlo-cultural and societal factors only partly explain the complex pattern of allegiance that emerged. Emphasis is placed on the role of local, contingent factors such as the distribution and influence of propaganda, and the impact of plunder, extortion and other products of a war which intruded into most communities in the region.

Existing histories of post-war Britain offer limited perspectives on how, why and where working-class culture became the subject that Raymond Williams described as 'a key issue in our own time'. Little of the work that has attended to this issue has examined it beyond its anthropological sense as 'a whole way of life'. In contrast, a concept of the 'aesthetic' is enlisted here as an apposite way of approaching the idea of culture in its more limited sense, defuied by Williams as 'the arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort'. This thesis locates the issue of working-class culture in the context of the postwar settlement as an aspect of the mentalites of Welfare State Britain. It suggests that there was a re-imagining of the majority as part of a wider, democratic reconceptualisation of the public and cultural spheres. This idea is explored through the study of a range of contemporaneous projects designed to describe, validate, reclaim, rejuvenate and indeed generate an 'authentic' working-class culture. These projects include the wartime activities of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the post-war Folk Revival, the work of Richard Hoggart, radio producer Charles Parker, Arnold Wesker's Centre 42 project and how creative practices pursued in post-war education engaged with concepts of working-class culture. The aesthetic framework is enlisted also to the framing of the discourses, assumptions and idealism that impelled these projects. What is revealed are the historically specific conceptualisations of class, culture and politics that informed and limited this work, the Utopian ambition behind it and the manner in which ordinary people were represented and encouraged to represent themselves.

This inter-disciplinary study explores the entry into childhood made by migrant Irish children who lived in the urban, industrialised environment of Derby in the English Midlands between 1830 and 1870. It shows how these children were inserted into an area of childhood experience as they moved between the town's factories, mills, schools and the workhouse, entering a psychological and social state of childhood that was available for the children of the poor in mid-nineteenth century Britain. The study argues that Irish children's moves into childhood were largely accomplished through their association with the Roman Catholic church. In particular, they were encouraged to enter an experience of childhood through the work of the Sisters of Mercy, who played a key role in enabling them to make the transformation from 'worker' to 'child'. An exploration of schooled literacy will demonstrate that certain reading texts Irish children met in school took them into a world of childhood that opened up learning possibilities for them. The study argues that the particular childhood experience under review needs to be inserted into the cultural debate about childhood; a debate which at present defines working-class childhood in general terms, largely as a single a-cultural state. Yet as migrants, Irish children experienced cultural shift and change, and were possibly bilingual. Their distinctive physical features, their dress, their language, their cultural traditions, and above all their religion, set them apart from local children. The story of these Irish children and their move into childhood is therefore another story to add to the complex of stories about nineteenth-century childhood.

This work examines periods and episodes which illustrate the Labour Party's developing attitudes towards the monarchy. Chapter One traces the historical background in the nineteenth century, identifying those aspects of radicalism, republicanism and a changing monarchy which had a subsequent bearing on Labour views. It finds that the lack of a serious challenge to the monarchy resulted from its increasing popular acceptance, the prevalence of anti-monarchic sentiment over republicanism, and the indifference of social democracy to strictly political reform. Chapter Two finds the monarchy increasingly accepted by Labour during the Great War, and includes sections on republicanism during the war, patriotism, anti-Germanism, royal visits, civil liberties, and the Crown and royal philanthropy. Chapter Three concentrates on the early 1930's, and examines Labour's concerns about the powers of the Crown in the aftermath of 1931. The ideas of Laski and Cripps receive particular attention, as does the paradox of the left's fear of the use of the Crown's powers to frustrate them, whilst recognising the necessity of its use to realise their Jacobin plans. The next two chapters incorporate discourse analysis techniques. Chapter Four takes an extended look at the 1935 Silver Jubilee and 1937 Coronation celebrations, and analyses the range of Labour responses to the events, at local as well as national level. The chapter includes a section of textual analysis, contrasting Labour's Daily Herald with its popular rivals in their coverage of the two celebrations. The contrastive analysis points up the centrality of Labour's constitutionalism to its approach to the monarchy. Chapter Five deals with the Abdication crisis, again analysing the spread of Labour opinion, contrasting those ready to exploit the political opportunity with the constitutionalists. Chapter Six looks at the Honours System, and at the development of Labour's attitudes and conduct in the matter. It finds Labour drawn into the system it inherited and examines the justifications offered.

This thesis explores the supposed development of an 'imagined community' of the British during the eighteenth century. Responding in particular to Linda Colley, it aims to show that her use of Benedict Anderson's well-known definition of the nation is both inappropriate and misleading. Taking as its evidence the substantial genre of contemporary historical writing about pre-Norman Britain, it attempts to develop an account of that genre's relationship to the growing reading public in Britain, its capacity to provide the imaginative terrain in which that public might consider itself to possess a shared identity, and the limits and obstacles to such a project. In doing so, it also explores the nature of the historical genre in this period, and finds its development to be tightly bound up with developments in print culture more generally, but especially with the rise of the novel and of the newspaper (the very genres lying at the heart of Anderson's account of nationalism). Later chapters concern themselves with developing the arguments brought out in the first half of the thesis, using different forms of evidence: histories of the common law, the debate on population, and the debate over the French Revolution. Here I deal variously with issues of custom, tradition, commerce and improvement, and their purchase upon notions of truth, as well as with the position of marginal figures - women, 'the mob' - in the supposedly national imagination. I conclude by arguing that the nation represented by Anderson is fundamentally utopian in character, that it did not and does not meet the essentially elitist 'imagined community' which my thesis uncovers, and should not be used to describe it.

This thesis analyses the Conservative Party's electoral demise in Scotland from 1979 to 1997. This subject has already been extensively explored elsewhere. However, whilst acknowledging the validity and importance of what might be described as the canon of traditional reasons given for the Party's problems north of the border, this thesis identifies and explains the importance of a previously undervalued dynamic in the Scottish party political process. The central argument of this thesis is that the role of local party politics in Scotland has a significant impact on General Elections. The hypothesis under consideration is whether the Conservative Party found it particularly difficult to recover in General Elections subsequent to notable losses in levels of Local Government representation north of the border. Thus, the more qualitative aspects ofthis thesis establish why this might have been the case. This extra aspect of the party political system in Scotland is developed through a series of studies that analyse primary and secondary sources and the results of an elite and Local Councillor interview programme. These studies assess what Conservative Governments in London were hoping to achieve with their policies, how Local Government in Scotland reacted and what effect these dynamics had on the electorate north of the border. After a case study on Stirling that examines how the matters in hand impacted upon a specific community, the Conclusion is then informed by a study of General and Local Government Election results from across the whole of the UK from 1979-1991. This thesis is not a comparative study of Local Government in Scotland and England. However, as the results in Chapter 1 demonstrate, the Conservatives did seem to find it much more difficult to recover from Local Government representation losses in subsequent General Elections north of the border. This suggests that the variable under consideration is a significant addition to the canon of reasons for their electoral demise in Scotland.

After centuries of relative isolation as an outpost loyal to the English Crown the small Island of Jersey was, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, opened to the twin forces of large-scale immigration and economic expansion. Jersey was a product of peculiar historical circumstance, which resulted in a cossetted existence and a high degree of independence. Economic growth, founded on a merchant-based economy and on agriculture, was both fuelled by and attracted English and French immigrants. The presence of a large urban population, many of who were non-local, and wealth, created friction in a society whose institutions were designed for a dispersed rural population. An identifiable urban bloc developed and demanded access to power proportional to its wealth and size and the reform of certain structures along lines more conducive to economic life. Alongside direct political challenge was a more subtle linguistic and cultural challenge. This thesis examines these forces at work in Jersey society and assesses their impact. Emphasis is placed on the rural community, as the representative of traditional Jersey society and the guardians of local power and independence. It is argued that the potential forces of change and challenge were, by the end of the century, fairly comfortably assimilated or contained. With the exception of a Nonconformist challenge in the countryside, the challenges to Jersey society were inseparably linked to immigration and economic expansion, yet never provided a coherent and concerted attack on all fronts. The rural community was most successful at defending its institutions, yet was unable to stem the flow of English language and culture. In the short term Jersey succeeded in controlling the forces ranged against its society, but in the long tern institutional strength belied a weakening at the foundations.