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, through the fledging institution of parliament. Baronial demands, articulated through documents which echoed the claims set out in Magna Carta in the reign of King John and the Provisions of Oxford of Simon de Montfort’s baronial opposition in the reign of Henry III, were expressed anew in the last years of the reign of Edward I. This is most evident in the ‘Confirmation of the Charters’, an agreement
5 Opposition in slow motion The CPGB’s ‘anti-revisionists’ in the 1960s and 1970s Lawrence Parker In common with other national parties in the world ‘official’ communist movement, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) gave birth to pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet inner-party oppositional groupings in the 1960s and 1970s. While there were important structural impediments to the growth of such oppositions,1 this article focuses particularly on the ideological problems associated with these trends and thus maps out a thesis as to why such groups proved to be a
1 ‘Recognised’ forms of opposition Opposition to the Great War took many forms. This was perhaps not surprising, given its scale. It was a unique occasion for Great Britain. Never before had the whole, industrialised nation been mobilised for war on this scale. In medieval times, men who worked on the land had, in times of threat, left their harvests and gone to war as part of the agreement between landowner and serf. Much later, with the establishment of a regular army and navy, there was little need of binding agreements. As often as not, men joined up out of
Greece as an example of unbroken national unity was strange, it is understandable why de Valera desired to emphasise Ireland’s nationhood and unity in the context of worldwide discussion of national self-determination. Looked at in another way, though, the exchanges show the powerful desire to minimise political opposition in Irish political culture. After over thirty years of organised Ulster unionist opposition
which I am now speaking for the first time affords one very stimulating thought: it gives no opportunity for the opposition to interrupt or to tend towards pessimism, and therefore I have … the field almost entirely to myself’. 1 He was, in fact, interrupted by an automotive horn. Cosgrave was presumably joking about the absence of opposition, but the comment does betray a feeling that the Government
1 Stuart Ball The Conservatives in opposition, 1906–79 The Conservatives in opposition, 1906–79: a comparative analysis Stuart Ball The experience of being in opposition for a lengthy period is not one which the modern Conservative Party is used to, and it has tended to find it difficult. Since the 1880s, the Conservatives have grown accustomed to being seen – and to see themselves – as the party of government. They have been in office for so much of the period that exercising power has seemed to be the natural state of affairs, and this adds to Conservative
4 Declining opposition to betting on racing hen Mass Observation studied Bolton in 1938 it noticed a number of ‘major oppositions’ which cut across the life of the community, separating married couples and families – issues about which persons apparently alike with respect to income, age, appearance or knowledge might violently differ or feel resentment. One was the drinking of alcohol. Another was betting.1 They were defined as part of dominant popular culture or as part of oppositional culture, depending on one’s social identity. Betting was an intensely
7 The PSOE in opposition, 1996–2004 Sweet defeat turns bitter: the PSOE 1996–2000 The refusal of the Catalan nationalist Convergència i Unió to support the government’s budget for 1996 left González with no option other than to bring forward the date of the general election to March 1996. The PSOE entered the general election campaign in poor shape. The second half of 1995 had been dominated by the revelation that the Security Service, CESID, had spent the last decade listening into and recording the telephone conversations of prominent politicians, business
1 The shock of opposition, 1945–51 A right response to defeat? The Conservative Party entered the 1945 General Election suspicious of its leaders and split over social policy. The direction of Party policy was uncertain, with the Tory Reform Group, Progress Trust, Imperial Group, and numerous smaller bodies fighting for predominance in a party with a moribund and bankrupt machine. The progressive Tory Reform Committee had already welcomed publication of the Beveridge Report advocating extensive social reform, but right-wing Conservatives had attacked it
process can neither be swift nor easy. It will never come if a beginning is never made. Only a strong, constructive, constitutional Labour opposition can make that beginning. The electors must choose between Ulster’s past and Ulster’s future. 2 The Northern Ireland Labour Party fights this election in association with the British Labour Party: our candidates support and share British Labour’s high ideals and practical policies. And Northern Ireland Labour believes deeply, as does the British Labour Party, in the fundamental rights of human beings without regard to the