It is a commonplace among historians of the First World War that during this period Britain and America changed positions as dorninant and subordinate financial powers. The great gap in the histories, however, has been any description of how this came about, Historians of the period have generally relied on one book, E. V. Morgan's Studies in Brtish financial policy 1914–1925 (1952), with the occasional use of Henry F. Grady's British war finance, 1914–1919 (1923). Both are very useful, and within its field Morgan in particular will be difficult to supplant; but within the context of Anglo-American relations they only treat one side of the stroy. It is clear that during the war Britain was dependent increasingly on American finance, private and later public, both to supply her civilian and military populations and to fight the war; and further, that by late 1916 decisions taken in America could have a direct bearing on British ability to finance her own operations. Once America entered the war this influence became even more direct. Negotiations over finance largely took place in America, by means of temporary and permanent missions. This article will describe the most important of these missions, and trace the gradual change in the balance of British and American financial power.

Churchill's ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946, was a major effort to promote both a strengthened Anglo-American combination and a firmer western front against the Soviet Union. In the months between his electoral defeat and his talk at Fulton he had viewed Soviet consolidation in Europe with continuing concern, probably coupled with despair at his own inability to do very much about it. This presidential invitation, however, to deliver an address at an American college could provide a means to push to the fore the policies that he believed in. Certainly, the effect of his talk can be overestimated, but, despite its failure to create the very close alignment Churchill hoped for with the United States, it undoubtedly contributed to hardening western positions towards the Soviets.

The issues raised by eugenics are of more than passing interest for the student of political thought. In itself a minor offshoot of turn-of-the-century socio-biological thought which never achieved ideological ‘take-off’ in terms of influence or circulation, there was certainly more in eugenics than nowadays meets the eye. The following pages propose to depart from the over-simplistic identification of eugenics, as political theory, with racism or ultra-conservatism and to offer instead two alternative modes of interpretation. On the one hand, eugenics will be portrayed as an exploratory avenue of the social-reformist tendencies of early-twentieth-century British political thought. On the other, it will serve as a case-study illustrating the complexity and overlapping which characterize most modern ideologies. While recognizing, of course, the appeal of eugenics for the ‘right’, a central question pervading the forthcoming analysis will be the attraction it had for progressives of liberal and socialist persuasions, with the ultimate aim of discovering the fundamental affinities the ‘left’ had, and may still have, with this type of thinking.

The repeal of the sacramental test in the Corporation and Test Acts seemed far more important in later years than when it was carried. In 1828 the event aroused comparatively little opposition, and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that ‘the repeal took place with amazing smoothness. Hardly a dog barked.’ The practical change made by repeal was scarcely perceptible. Repeal merely confirmed and strengthened the liberty enjoyed under Annual Indemnity Acts, while dissenters still found it difficult to enter some town councils until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 caused a striking influx of them to take place. Despite the lack of concern in 1828, the duke of Newcastle claimed in 1837 that ‘a sure consequence’ of repeal was the emancipation of catholics in 1829; that, as a consequence of this in turn, ‘liberalism, conciliation, and concession, prevailed without limit’ and that, ultimately, by an incredible combination of terms, ‘Jesuitical influence triumphed, and the Reform Bill was carried…Revolution was forcibly established.’ Neither the advocates of repeal in parliament, nor those politicians who acquiesced in it, expected that catholic emancipation would follow as a necessary consequence, though the former hoped that this cause would be encouraged. Even further removed, in 1828, seemed a wide measure of parliamentary reform. When this did come in 1832 it opened to dissenters a share in political power which was not envisaged four years before and gave greater importance to the change of 1828. Members of Oxford university showed this in 1863 when remonstrating with one of their M.P.s, W. E. Gladstone, for favouring the removal of the declaration adopted in place of the sacramental test in 1828

Although many in the West have written on the Popular Front and its role in French or Spanish politics during the thirties, very little has been revealed about its origins. Indeed, one of the foremost historians of the Popular Front has expressed perplexity on this matter. Daniel Brower asks: ‘What brought on this change? Why had fascism suddenly assumed such threatening proportions in the eyes of Comintern leaders? To this day the answer remains obscure.’ The aim of this article is to throw some light on this question.

One of the more remarkable features of the Second World War was the emergence of a ‘reforming consensus’ within the two major political parties in Britain. As Addison has pointed out ‘a massive new ground emerged in British polities’ and Conservative and Labour leaders alike openly began to espouse the case for ‘“pragmatic reform” in a mixed economy’. By 1945 the emphasis on social equity in ‘the people's war’ and the removal of lingering doubts as to Labour's fitness to govern, had combined with collective memories of the inter-war period, with its mass unemployment and social distress, to produce a new ‘left of centre’ consensus on the issue of postwar reconstruction. This applied not just to the maintenance of full employment and the inauguration of a ‘welfare state’, but also to the reorganization of certain industries. In this latter category by far the most appropriate illustration of the basic measure of agreement between the parties is provided by their approach to the reconstruction of the coalmining industry. As with other industrial sectors the Labour party was irrevocably committed to nationalization as the key element in its reconstruction programme. In this instance there was, of course, a major difference with the Conservatives who wished to retain, as far as possible, the basic principles of private enterprise. But divorced from the rhetoric of laissez-faire capitalism, what did this mean in practical terms? It is worth noting that the successive modifications during the thirties to the statutory cartel system instituted under part I of the Coal Mines Act, 1930, had been made at the instigation of a Conservative-dominated National government and had meant that the freedom of action of the individual colliery undertaking was severely circumscribed by 1939.

‘Lord Randolph Churchill and Tory democracy’ is a cliché topic of late-Victorian historiography. All the monographs on Lord Randolph emphasise his enthusiasm for tory democracy. This enthusiasm has been explained by recent historians of Victorian Conservatism in terms of personal ambition rather than commitment to specific policies. But both these schools of interpretation are based on mistaken assumptions and insufficient or misleading evidence. I believe that neither the ‘orthodox’ nor the ‘revisionist’ explanations of Churchill's involvement with tory democracy fit the facts of the case in most of their aspects. The following inquiry examines the various ways in which Churchill actually was, or has been alleged to have been, involved with that ambiguous concept, tory democracy. This necessitates an examination of the usage and meaning which Churchill gave to the phrase and of the extent to which he associated it with progressive social policies. It is also instructive to compare Churchill's outlook with that of Gorst, his Fourth Party colleague, who was also identified with tory democracy. In order to assess the role which ambition played in determining Churchill's support for tory democracy it is necessary to consider his relations with the official tory leaders and his own political expectations. Finally, it is relevant to examine his involvement in the activities of the National Union of Conservative Associations. On the one hand, it has been argued that his role in the National Union was indicative of his desire to launch progressive toryism on a recalcitrant party, while on the other, it has been viewed simply as part of his campaign to further his own position in the party.

On 9 February 1933 the Oxford Union debated and carried by 275 votes to 153 the motion ‘That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’. After a few days this became a major news story, first in Britain then also in the world press: the British embassies in Madrid and Santiago cabled the Foreign Office in alarm at the appearance of the story in the Spanish and Chilean press. The motion was taken up also by student debating societies all over Britain and overseas: in the United States, for example, any pledge to take no part in war came to be known as the ‘Oxford pledge’ or the ‘Oxford oath’. Since the debate, which took place ten days after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, appeared to contrast British liberal, pacifist effeteness with fascist martial virility it was seized on in Germany and Italy. The Liberal M.P. Robert Bernays told the house of commons how he had been asked about the debate later in 1933 by a prominent Nazi youth leader: ‘There was an ugly gleam in his eye when he said: “The fact is that you English are soft.”’ And on 7 July 1934 Alfred Zimmern, professor of international relations at Oxford, wrote from Geneva to the former Union president responsible for the debate: ‘I hope you do penance every night and every morning for that ill-starred Resolution. It is still going on sowing dragons’ teeth. If the Germans have to be knocked out a second time it will be partly your fault.

In 1934 two commissioners (for England and Wales and for Scotland) were appoineted to tackle the problems caused by high and Persistent unemploed in areas dependent on a narrow and depressed range of industriues. These Statutory Special Areas were only some of the most depressed parts of the country, in scotland largely west-central Scotaland but excluding Glasgow. defects in the policies adopted, and in their implementation by the commissioners, are well known, especially their alleged failure to encourage adequatelythe newindustrial development the special Areas needed. Certainly the powers and the financial provision given tio the commissioners in 1934 were slight, but they were increased in new legislation in 1937 and had little time to become effective before the outbreak of war. In addition, lack of success, especially in the end towards which the policies were directed as much as because of their own inadequacy or insufficiency. the end, justifiable in the conditions of the 1930s, was to releive unemployement, not to encourage a distinctive policy of regional industrial diversification. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population Suggested a new direction in 1940, but its views were applied as part of an overall strategy only in the 1960s. A comment of 1952 may be applied from the pre-war years throughout the 1950s. Only the name of the special Areas had been changed.

Divide et impera. So much of Western imperial behaviour reflected a wilful policy of ‘divide and rule’ in order first to establish and then to perpetuate control over subject peoples in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Accordingly the administration of foreign rule often amounted to artfully manipulating, emphasizing and exploiting local divergencies, whether tribal, sectional, ethnic or economic, and playing off one group or state against another. As a shorthand summary and epigram for imperialism divide et impera may be satisfactory. But it suggests merely one stage of the process: for in asserting its mastery over others the imperial power often opened itself to internal cleavages on the more technical question of exactly how to rule, or, during the decline of empire, whether or not to yield control. This was certainly the British experience. And one of the more dramatic manifestations of ‘divide and rule’ in reverse (‘rule and be divided’) came in 1937 in the instance of partition for Palestine.

The Anglo-American Committee, whose appointment was announced on 13 November 1945, had its origins in a purely British initiative: an ad hoc, spur-of-the-moment attempt to associate the United States responsibly with British policy in Palestine. However, this committee did not succeed, any more than had its many predecessors, in finding a solution to the Palestine problem palatable to all parties. Nor did it bring relief to the mass of refugees wasting away in displaced-persons camps in Europe. Its vigorous rejection of partition was shortly to be brushed aside by a different kind of logic, that of force majeure.