This chapter begins by tracing developing patterns of divergence and convergence in the perceived interests dominant in each country's leadership. It argues that Britain's defence strategy was pragmatically steered towards complementing the US capabilities and spinning its 'expertise' in counter-insurgency warfare. The chapter shows how in some instances, the US restrictions and the perceived 'obstacles' could be navigated through Anglo-American relationships. British policy emphasised 'interoperability', converging doctrine and providing unique capabilities in an attempt to secure 'fit' and relative value to America, all factors which shaped the propaganda war. A significant military contribution was perceived by the leadership to be the way to secure influence with America, but British resource was quite limited. Notions of British 'expertise' were emphasised during the 'War on Terror' as a means to unify Britain's domestic military, and also played on the American sentiment for tradition.

This chapter explores the responses to the Ryan Report and, more generally, to analyse differing explanations for the system of industrial and reformatory schools that operated for over 100 years. It describes the Irish experience in comparative perspective. Ireland was not unique in confronting abusive regimes in institutions where children were maintained by state, religious and other philanthropic bodies for their protection, reclamation and rescue. The chapter presents some methodological difficulties associated with understanding and interpreting past practices in such institutions, and with the use of commissions or committees of inquiry, which aim to serve both investigative and therapeutic functions. All of the institutions cited in The Magdalene Sisters of the alliance between Catholic Church and Irish state operated across Europe and North America; thus they were not unique to Ireland, as is sometimes intimated.

Lindsay Anderson's film, This Sporting Life (1963), is the subject of this chapter. This chapter provides a sustained discussion of the relationship between the film's style and meaning. The key to understanding this film is to examine the relationship between the film's organisation of space and its deployment of characters within this space. This movie demonstrates a remarkable predilection for filling its frames with bodies. In addition, the stylistic choices that Anderson makes in order to pursue this policy have resulted in some of the most interesting critical debates concerning New Wave film. Thematically, there is an overwhelming desire for personal expression evident in Anderson's film. As the film unfolds, the demonstration of this desire is accompanied by the inevitable dissatisfaction that comes from a lack of personal fulfillment. Internally, both of these things contributes with equal ferocity to the wide spaces of the rugby pitch that Frank Machin (Richard Harris), the film's protagonist, plays upon and the narrow rooms of the house he shares with Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts), his landlady.

Prior to the 1970s, the history of post-war British anarchism had been a story of patchy, partial and inconsistent advance, intertwined with often prolonged periods of retrenchment. Division and disunity still afflicted sections of the anarchist movement, but the upturn in the current's fortunes and the volatile political context of early Thatcherism continued to keep centrifugal pressures in check. Anarcho-punk provided the momentum to re-energise the movement, but its impact changed its profile and the centre of political gravity within it. As anarcho-punk had been able to do five years earlier, Class War seized the initiative and the notoriety of the movement. The particular culture and form of the anarchist punk milieu and that surrounding Class War made the brokering of alliances with other activist forces extremely difficult, reinforcing an isolating 'otherness'.

Reflecting Comintern pressure, in the early 1930s the urban-oriented Communist movement began organising peasants and agricultural workers in the Mitidja and other rural areas against expropriation and used electoral campaigns to promote their ideas. The Mitidja case signalled the importance of alliances, both for peasants and for Communists, who were most successful when they engaged in with land, national and religious struggles that reinforced each other. But by the mid-1930s the overwhelmingly European Communist movement, predisposed to prioritise urban workers and with little desire to traverse the rough roads and mountainous terrain by bus or donkey, refocused on the towns. Nonetheless, the political triangle of city – countryside – mountain was in place.

This chapter takes a look at Phillips, who was concerned with twentieth-century Britain and the ways belonging has been made difficult for non-white citizens. It discusses several of Phillips' works, and it traces the origins of the UK's unwelcoming attitude towards blacks entering the country, as well as the related anxieties surrounding national identity.

The Enterprise of Scotland was specifically designed to serve the ends of the Scots Jacobite movement. The first decade of the eighteenth century was one of unusual religious peace within the Jacobite movement. This chapter looks at the social and political structure of Jacobitism and Scotland. The image of true royalty carefully maintained at the court of the exiled Stuarts confirmed the Jacobite communities of the British Isles in their belief that they were loyal soldiers in a righteous cause. The Jacobite court in exile and its associated European Jacobite diaspora were safe from the day-to-day hostility of the English/British state. The English Jacobites came into the new reign in the ascendant in terms of Jacobite politics. England and Scotland were in the region of 98 per cent Protestant, and for the great majority of English and Scots Protestants to be a Protestant was to abhor Catholicism.

When the FLN launched armed struggle in November 1954, Communists were divided over participation in the guerrilla war. Rural Communists who worked with peasants and agricultural workers welcomed armed struggle from the start. But increasingly autonomous vis-à-vis the PCF, the PCA committed itself fully to the national liberation struggle. In June 1955 the PCA’s central committee agreed to form armed units – the Combattants de la libération [liberation fighters]. A minority of Communists argued that the Party should dissolve and that its members should join the FLN, but the majority agreed on the need for an independent communist party. The French state, concerned about communist-nationalist collusion during the Cold War, engaged in the fierce repression of communists. When the first Communist maquis was smashed, the Communist armed units merged into the FLN’s Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN). However, the PCA was caught between the French state’s fear of Soviet expansion and the FLN’s intolerance of Communism and political pluralism. Despite the merger of Communist fighters into the ALN, they often remained suspect in the eyes of ALN leaders, a suspicion that deepened after the 1956 Soummam Congress.

Energised by the December 1960 protests, the PCA increased its propaganda, aiming at Muslim youth. Against the backdrop of negotiations and terrorism, the PCA published its independence programme in April 1962. It envisioned an Algerian nation that was democratic, pluralist and multicultural, yet predominantly Arabo-Berber, and it called for an opening of public political space to be filled by Algerian voices. The PCA’s socialist ideas presumably influenced the FLN. However, the two organisations presented two opposing notions of socialism: while the FLN promoted a one-party socialist state, the PCA supported class struggle within a pluralist political system.

This chapter uses JPod, Coupland's surreal tenth novel, to re-read aspects of his work and, in particular, his recurrent interest in visions of the future. It uses this absurdist science-project or anti-art manifesto as a lens through which to review his creative work and its aesthetic and ideological implications. Whatever the future of Coupland's writing, it is unlikely to be found in a retreat into the past. The twenty-first century landscape of his recent fiction is frequently troubled; it is marked by random violence, loneliness and moral ambiguity. But, the future is dynamically open. A comforting vision of the past holds no temptation for this writer of the ambiguous, dangerous, beguiling present and possible future.