Search results
96 v 3 v Male misconduct Men suspected of misconduct were often high-profile individuals in positions of authority. Municipal, administrative forms of misconduct – roughly analogous to what Nivet calls ‘political collaboration’1 – were taken seriously by the French authorities after the liberation. Members of the Gendarmerie Nationale and the Commissariat Spécial of Lille carried out time-consuming investigations up to the end of 1919. All but two of these involved accusations of questionable occupation conduct on the part of the Mayor, the Municipal
37 v 1 v Sexual misconduct Notions of misconduct were always heavily gendered –it was seen as a fundamentally female phenomenon.1 This ties in not only with the demographic of the occupied zone but also with the idea that complicity reflected weakness and submission. Similar ideas persisted after the Second World War.2 Philippe Nivet states that in 1914–18 this gendering of what he calls collaboration was the cornerstone of the non-occupied French view of the occupied populations as ‘Boches of the Nord’.3 In the occupied Nord, many locals also engaged in
67 v 2 v General misconduct and popular reprisals Three main forms of misconduct involving both men and women can be identified: denunciations, working for the Germans and espionage. As with sexual misconduct, there was a strong belief among locals that compatriots engaged in such activities, but the line between perceptions and reality is and was often blurred. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated, the strength of belief in misconduct and disdain for perceived traitors was so great that the latter were the victims of popular reprisals and revenge during and
31 Part I ‘Misconduct’ and disunity This first part of the book considers French behaviours under occupation that challenge the narrative of dignified suffering and patriotism.1 There is a temptation simply to label such behaviours ‘collaboration’, as certain historians have done.2 I believe that this should be avoided. Only very few members of the occupied population used the word in a negative sense,3 making its use anachronistic –although anachronistic terms can still be useful to historians. Yet the term is too associated in French cultural and historical
NGOs and MeToo The Oxfam scandal provides a clear case study for how this behaviour might manifest itself and how institutional responses often fail. In February 2018, a series of allegations surfaced about the behaviour of Oxfam employees in Haiti during the 2010 earthquake. The Times broke the story, reporting bullying, sexual misconduct, the downloading of pornography and intimidation of more junior staff ( O’Neill, 2018a ). There were widespread
This study considers the ways in which locals of the occupied Nord responded to and understood their situation across four years of German domination, focusing in particular on key behaviours adopted by locals, and the way in which such conduct was perceived. Behaviours examined include forms of complicity, misconduct, disunity, criminality, and resistance. This local case study calls into question overly-patriotic readings of this experience, and suggests a new conceptual vocabulary to help understand certain civilian behaviours under military occupation.
Drawing on extensive primary documentation – from diaries and letters to posters and police reports – this book proposes that a dominant ‘occupied culture’ existed among locals. This was a moral-patriotic framework, born of both pre-war socio-cultural norms and daily interaction with the enemy, that guided conduct and was especially concerned with what was considered acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Those who breached the limits of this occupied culture faced criticism and sometimes punishment. This study attempts to disentangle perceptions and reality, but also argues that the clear beliefs and expectations of the occupied French comprise a fascinating subject of study in their own right. They provide an insight into national and local identity, and especially the way in which locals understood their role within the wider conflict.
This book will be useful to undergraduates, post-graduates and academics interested in an understudied aspect of the history of modern France, the First World War, and military occupations.
House of Commons are likely to feel sufficiently secure to take an The House of Lords and reluctant reform 129 independent line from that of the party leadership in the Commons. This independence is often considered a great benefit to robust deliberation but it has also until recently severely limited the sanctions that could be applied to peers even in cases of serious misconduct. Although the composition of the House of Lords was radically changed by the addition of life peers after 1958 and by the removal of most hereditary peers in 1999, there has nevertheless
. The shocking incident at Northwick Park continued a trend of diminishing confidence in the regulation of research. In 2000, inquiries were held into allegations that research was carried out on newborn babies without parental consent in a hospital in North Staffordshire. 6 Scandals surrounding retention of body parts originated in Bristol and Liverpool with evidence of children’s body parts being retained for research without their parents’ consent or knowledge. 7 And in 2010 Andrew Wakefield was struck off the medical register for serious professional misconduct
chapter 5’s examination of Brixton records, by exploring unstudied interviews with residents and inquiry proceedings demonstrating the high level of accusations of police misconduct not appearing in the inquiry report, and the continued discontent created by such exclusions. The Hytner Inquiry Soon after disorder subsided in Moss Side, the Manchester City Council resolved to request that the Home Secretary extend Lord Scarman’s Brixton disturbances public inquiry to consider events in Manchester; or, if that was not possible, to establish another similar independent
The departure of civilian men from Lille was ordered on 30 September;9 500 out of 1,476 municipal employees were allowed to remain, but municipal life was nevertheless paralysed.10 Here, locals committed many crimes in this period, especially theft and pillage but even some murders,11 a situation exacerbated by the German evacuation on 8 October of all French policemen under the age of fifty-five, including the Chief Commissioner.12 Given this, it is even more surprising that few instances of violent vengeance against those accused of misconduct occurred (see