This chapter reviews the changes to service allowances in the immediate postwar period and considers whether the experience of administering these allowances during the Second World War resulted in any significant changes in the existing administrative systems. It discusses why the maintenance of a high military profile had political as well as economic implications. The chapter reflects upon the problems associated with retaining and recruiting career soldiers, such as the well-being of families of soldiers on active duty, financial issues, pension levels and dependent allowance. Further, it examines the changes in service allowances resulting from the introduction of national Family Allowances and the beginnings of the welfare state.

This chapter presents conclusions to Part III, covering Chapters 11–14. It has long been evident that few late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British trade unionists were state socialists let alone Marxists, but it is no longer adequate to account for this with reference to some sort of ignorance, confusion or apathy. Following the reconstruction of the political theory of two key craft union leaders it becomes clear that this cannot adequately be defined in terms of a mere absence; while following the careful tracing of their political practice it becomes clear that they were far from being passive observers of the actions of professional politicians. On the contrary, these trade unionists had a distinctive, positive, and active political identity, and they were closely involved in all the turning points in national labour politics. A full account of the behaviour of craft union leaders at key moments, and the pattern of thinking which lay behind it, therefore becomes vital for a proper understanding of the development of the early Labour Party.

The Liber Historiae Francorum (LHF) is our most valuable guide through the last half of the seventh century and the first two decades of the eighth. The LHF was written while a Merovingian king ruled over the Franks and by someone geographically very close to the political centre of that realm. In the LHF the advent of the Pippinids into Neustria was a major political event. For the LHF, even after the Pippinids had made their political weight felt in Neustria, the most important expression of proper rule is a hereditary Merovingian king, reigning cum consilio of the Frankish nobility. For part of the period the Passio Leudegarii is of great help in adding to what can be gleaned from the LHF.

Accommodation, clothing and diet all changed significantly over the seventy-year period considered in this study. Housing improved overall. The various new housing initiatives from the 1860s helped to raise the minimum standard of accommodation. Changes in education, work and leisure meant that people of all ages were going out in public more, and so needed presentable clothes. Improved communications and a thriving retail sector disseminated fashion into the smallest towns.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP)–Sinn Féin talks of 1988 wholly contradicted the intended outcome of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and were prefaced by an exchange of letters by John Hume and Gerry Adams. Hume focused upon the means and the motives of the republican movement, and also offered an alternative explanation of the Northern Ireland problem, as well as a political approach towards its resolution. Adams's letter to him was much shorter, but included a position paper outlining his party's understanding of the conflict and the means to its resolution. Hume and the SDLP faced enormous criticism for talking to Sinn Féin. Pan-nationalism was about providing republicans with a credible alternative to the armed struggle. Hume turned to London, hoping that the British government would offer validation of the arguments he had presented to Sinn Féin.

John Hume was not the sole originator of the ideas that redefined Irish nationalism; he was both a propagator and broker of revisionist nationalism. The New Ireland Forum created an essential ideological consensus among constitutional nationalists, a consensus that Hume played a major part in shaping. The Ulster Workers' Council strike may have acted as a wake-up call to the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Rather than talks between the SDLP and unionists, the Anglo-Irish Agreement first produced an intra-nationalist dialogue. Hume's agreed Ireland was an attempt to convey his conviction that Irish unity was only feasible, and indeed only meaningful, if it had the allegiance of both traditions in Ireland. The SDLP's increasing predetermination towards Irish unity only made it less likely that the party would win any significant Protestant support. Austin Currie suggests that Hume's greatest asset was his political vision.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the authors. Despite the relatively small number of Scots in South Africa, they were there in larger numbers than their proportion within the United Kingdom warranted. And their experience and their alleged capacities, as well as their ‘pushiness’, ensured that they always ‘punched above their weight’. Whether justified or not, they had a high reputation as people who could cope with the environment, as agriculturalists, as artisans in the construction industry and as engineers. Scots in SOuth Africa were highly influential in the Church; in education; in medical, scientific and environmental professions; as well as in the military, in business and in trade union activity.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Scottish involvement in the British Empire. It then considers whether there was a distinct Scottish identity which was maintained, promoted or even developed at the so-called periphery of empire, and argues that, for good or ill, Scots contributed more powerfully than their numbers would suggest to the processes of westernisation and modernisation in southern Africa. Through their linguistic and ethnographic activities, particularly in the context of the frontier missions, they had a considerable influence upon attitudes to African peoples, to the classic nineteenth-century activity, derived from the Enlightenment, of creating taxonomies and stereotypes for humans as much as for the phenomena of the natural world. Such activities led to strong, though inevitably diverse, ideas about the frontier, African administration, labour policy and much else.

This chapter focuses on the British government and its treatment of prisoner-of-war families during the Second World War. It raises the question of how the British government and the British public actually viewed its servicemen who had fallen into enemy hands, and establishes a general framework within which to locate government treatment of prisoner-of-war families as distinct from service families in general. The chapter examines the extremely complex relationships between the various state departments and agencies concerned with the welfare of and information relating to British prisoners of war during the Second World War to understand the relationships between servicemen's families and the state.

Within a month of the Sunningdale Agreement's demise, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) released a policy statement which made clear that there would be no departure from the party's essential political programme. The post-Sunningdale period saw the SDLP hold to its immediate political aims; the party was still convinced of the essential rectitude of its programme. The SDLP appeared to confirm Ian McAllister's opinion that the party was trying to demonstrate an open-mindedness – a willingness to consider any agreement which allowed some form of power-sharing and an Irish dimension. It is noted that John Hume had reverted to the revisionist nationalism of his early political career. The SDLP called upon the British government to assume proper responsibility for Northern Ireland, to take decisive political action to bring about a just settlement and to show that it was prepared to face down the unionist veto over the implementation of such a settlement.

This chapter gives an analysis of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage (GWSAWS) relationship with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), which suggests a requirement to re-evaluate the supposedly superior democratic character of constitutional versus militant suffragism. The Scottish Women's Liberal Federation (SWLF) consistent support for women's equal enfranchisement demonstrates the requirement to broaden the understanding of suffragism to incorporate the efforts of organisations such as the SWLF and the British Women's Temperance Association Scottish Christian Union. The work of Liberal women—and female temperance reformers—for women's suffrage can be equivalent to that of organisations that are more often associated with suffragism, but equally the SWLF made a distinct contribution to the campaign. Finally, as women's organisations, the SWLF and GWSAWS were key sites of upper-middle-class women's participation in public life: these organisations aimed to encourage women's involvement in formal politics, while bringing their members into the public sphere of debate and reforming activities.