Preparations in the north-west for the reception of ‘war refugees’ began immediately after the invasion of Holland on 10 May 1940, with local authorities throughout Lancashire and Cheshire being called upon by the Ministry of Health to provide hospitality for an estimated 20,000 refugees. Interpreters throughout the region, it was said, would be provided by the Manchester Dutch Society. The story of the Dutch orphans is more than a narrative of heroism and salvation, although it is certainly that. It is also a reminder of the tragic dispersal and the destruction of German and Austrian Jewish families.

This chapter develops the theoretical analysis byproviding an historical account of the developmentof wage labour, in a long duration account from thebeginning of the 19th century through to mid-20thcentury in the United Kingdom. It shows how newforms of coercive labour developed with industrialcapitalism through employment and welfare law. Itargues that state power, through law and fiscalregimes, conditions the exchange between labour andcapital. As such, it critiques the abstraction ofthe economy as a separate sphere and discipline,proposing a co-evolutionary account of economicorganisation, law and fiscal regimes.

This chapter seeks to examine the impact and legacy of the failed Sunningdale initiative on British policy in Northern Ireland. At a superficial level British policy towards the problem oscillated markedly in the 25 years between the Sunningdale and Belfast/Good Friday Agreements. The approach of seeking to build a power-sharing devolved government with a strong Irish dimension proved unattainable in 1974. Over the subsequent years the British appeared to toy with: Irish unity; full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom; devolution without an Irish dimension (or indeed much power to share); and a variant of joint authority with the Irish government without power-sharing in Northern Ireland, before returning successfully to the Sunningdale model in the late 1990s. This chapter will question the reasons for this oscillating approach. Was it a result of a disillusion with Sunnningdale amongst British policy-makers; a reflection of their pragmatism; a desire to insulate wider British politics from the Irish question; or an indication of a lack of ideological commitment and interest in Northern Ireland in wider British political circles? Drawing on the available archival sources, and interview data from British policymakers, the chapter will argue that it was not slow learning that delayed the ‘return’ to Sunningdale for the British, but the realities of events on the ground in Northern Ireland and the political attitudes of those involved in the conflict. The British were key players in this conflict but their ability to control events and outcomes was severely limited. Sunningdale represented what the British believed would be the most acceptable solution to the problem in 1973, but the conditions were not conducive for almost a quarter of a century.

The Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, are generally known today as an inclusive and tolerant movement, broadly Christian, committed to working for peace and consensus, socially activist, politically radical and culturally liberal, although, at the time of their inception in the 1650s, their reputation was less benign. This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to explore early Quaker discourse, comprising not only Friends' words but also their deeds. Their written testimonies, warnings and exhortations are examined, but so too are accounts of the ways that they inhabited and moved through the social and material world. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter describes the impact of Conservative governments' domestic and imperial policies on an increasingly vociferous extreme right, showing how the Conservative Party both alienated and attracted the extreme right while maintaining opposition to any groups or individuals that possessed fascist antecedents or characteristics. There was little detectable change in the Conservative Party's relationship with the extreme right under Harold Macmillan's leadership. The Conservative Party had played a part in the marginalisation by opposing the League of Empire Loyalists and investigating the Elizabethan Party. The New Daily's article concluded by stating that it believed Central Office was interested in the ‘Hastings Experiment’, and promised to forward its full results to the Party Chairman. The Monday Club's damage limitation had immediate consequences. The Freedom Group and the Monday Club operated along the Conservative Party's nebulous right-wing border, but were now more firmly within it.

This chapter analyses the processes of institutionalisation and institutional reform in Catalonia and Scotland in order to identify and explain the capacity of regional politicians to act collectively in pursuit of their collective self-interest. It examines whether politicians have attempted to reform their institutions according to their own professional self-interest and how successful they have been in these attempts. The institutional analysis reveals that the collective action of regional politicians as a class for itself is related back to the institutional structure enabling and restricting their behaviour and to the established career patterns and to the internal structure of the political class in itself that are conditioning its territorial and functional cohesion.

Chapter 2 briefly examines some influential accounts of global or cosmopolitan citizenship (Nussbaum, Linklater, and Dobson). Like nation-statist approaches, theories of global citizenship construe citizenship as a zone of privilege, differing only in seeking to extend such membership and its goods beyond the state; also, cosmopolitan accounts typically lack attention to the international institutions and mechanisms needed if global citizens’ intentions are to be realized in the form of decisions made, implemented, and enforced. Moreover, we need clearer understandings of the distinctions, and connections, between morality, ethics, and politics than are supplied in this literature. In preparing the development of a response to these challenges the analytical categories of ‘identity’, ‘status’, and ‘role’, are discussed, and it is argued that we should disaggregate social identities (roles and statuses) from political identities (roles and statuses). Then, we can begin to see citizenship as an institutional role needed for the fulfilment of universal moral duties, and no longer as the token of status or indicator of social membership to which privileges properly attach.

The Tribunal process has provided the intangible outcome of providing crucial insights into how power operated in Ireland. This chapter demonstrates that an improper relationship existed between the receipt of political donations and discretionary political decisions which at best can be described as being in breach of the most rudimentary conflict of interest considerations. It provides empirical evidence which illustrates how pervasive corruption was within every layer of political action and how those who donated to leading members of the government also benefited from favourable political decisions. It also illustrates how the definition of corruption developed from a narrow interpretation of legal statutes to an emergent awareness of the ethical dimensions of improper political behaviour and what factors facilitated this transition. The chapter examines McCracken, Moriarty and Flood / Mahon Tribunals of Inquiry with particular reference to the relationship between payments to politicians by businessmen and the decision-making process.

This book provides an alternative interpretation of the popular League of Nations movement in Britain. It argues that the League inspired a rich and participatory culture of political protest, popular education and civic ritual which took root in British society between the wars. The book also addresses why the story of the League movement forms an integral part of the larger history of the democratisation of Britain's political culture between the wars. The League of Nations Union's (LNU) individual membership covered all parts of the United Kingdom but was disproportionately concentrated in England. This book also argues that the creation of the League of Nations inspired a lively popular movement in Britain whose influence was widely felt after 1919, from Westminster village to village hall. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.