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-level steering group for Britain’s offensive Cold War activities, and its associated committee of officials, successively chaired by the Foreign Office officials Gladwyn Jebb and Pierson Dixon. While the work of the ministerial body remains shrouded in secrecy, new archival releases have made it possible to detail the development of Britain’s overseas Cold War strategy, approved by ministers in December 1950
This chapter charts the basis and evolution of a decision that is set to define the ten-year premiership of Tony Blair; the decision to go to war in Iraq. It begins by focusing on the institutional context within which the decision was taken, paying particular attention to the ongoing presidentialization of British politics and consequent downgrading of Cabinet as a decisionmaking body
A memorial watercolour commemorates Lieut Col Robert Loyd Lindsay’s service during the Franco-Prussian War. 1 Straight-backed, golden-haired and imposing, Loyd Lindsay strides away from a gutted house, his soldierly bearing conferred by long and distinguished service in the British army. At first glance, one would assume that he was on campaign. Closer
In October 1899, Britain went to war against the two Boer Republics in the name of upholding the rights of British residents or ‘Uitlanders’. When tense early days of unexpected defeats were followed by the relief of Mafeking in May 1900 many Britons savoured a long-awaited moment of jubilation. Crowds jostled on the streets to sing patriotic songs
British security and as effective ways to mitigate them. The term ‘mixed methods’ has a variety of meanings across the social sciences. In recent work in Political Science, for example, it often refers to combining quantitative data with detailed case studies: the large-N quantitative analysis informs the choice of small-N cases, which provide additional context and explanation
When Britain formally entered the First World War, the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), a specialist corps responsible for providing medical care to British Army personnel, immediately deployed a significant contingent of medics to accompany the British Expeditionary Force. This included 900 medical officers, 10,000 other ranked members of the RAMC and
How can potential future terrorists be identified? Forming one of the four
pillars of the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST, Prevent
seeks to answer, and act on, this question. Occupying a central role in security
debates post-9/11, Prevent is concerned with understanding and tackling
radicalisation. It carries the promise of early intervention into the lives of
those who may be on a pathway to violence.
This book offers an innovative
account of the Prevent policy, situating it as a novel form of power that has
played a central role in the production and the policing of contemporary British
identity. Drawing on interviews with those at the heart of Prevent’s
development, the book provides readers with an in-depth history and
conceptualisation of the policy. The book demonstrates that Prevent is an
ambitious new way of thinking about violence that has led to the creation of a
radical new role for the state: tackling vulnerability to radicalisation.
Foregrounding the analytical relationship between security, identity and
temporality in Prevent, this book situates the policy as central to contemporary
identity politics in the UK. Detailing the history of the policy, and the
concepts and practices that have been developed within Prevent, this book
critically engages with the assumptions on which they are based and the forms of
power they mobilise.
In providing a timely history and analysis of British
counter-radicalisation policy, this book will be of interests to students and
academics interested in contemporary security policy and domestic responses to
the ‘War on Terror’.
situations carries a great deal of political and moral weight. Both find particularly strong expression in actions taken to defend a state’s territorial integrity. But where the national interest is less immediate or obvious, it is unsurprising to note the emphasis given to moral duty. So it was that in 1996 when then-UK Secretary of State for Defence Michael Portillo, announcing Britain’s willingness to
memories of childhood survivors, and in family and local memory, he rightly notes that its victims have been ‘largely ignored’ at a national level. This stands in stark contrast to the British experience of the Blitz, which acts as a lieu de mémoire and the backbone of national identity emerging from the Second World War. In France, five times more people were killed by bombing than were shot in German reprisals for acts of resistance, yet les fusilés are commemorated in plaques and statues across France. Resistance and collaboration have dominated versions of ‘the dark
his reading of Benjamin in “Law and Violence” might be freed from an unhelpful debt to Derrida and recalibrated to strengthen his attempt to find relief from the law, within and alongside the law. McEwan’s novel centers on a British High Court Judge, Mrs Justice Fiona Maye, who works within the Family Division. It has been carefully researched and draws in particular on three judgments from 1993, 2001, and 2012/2013.11 The last judgment, Re G (Children) (Religious Upbringing: Education) [2012] EWCA Civ 1233, [2013] 1 F.L.R. 677 by Sir James Munby, is particularly