British Public (british + public)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Sir Robert Walpole and Hanover*

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 192 2003
Nick Harding
Historical commonplace notwithstanding, Sir Robert Walpole was not instinctively hostile to Hanover. On the contrary, he consistently argued that Britain's dynastic union with the Electorate should hurt neither country. Walpole and his surrogates formulated this policy to reconcile his early misgivings about Hanoverian influence during the Northern War with his later support for Hanover when endangered by British policy after 1725. Hanover's exposure to Britain's enemies and the accession of George II, whose German sentiments were initially less pronounced than his father's, temporarily combined to make the Electorate more popular. Walpole's policy served him well until the War of Austrian Succession, when the British public cared less for equity than for Hanoverian submission within dynastic union. A survey of his career, however, shows Sir Robert Walpole and British public opinion to have been more charitable towards Hanover than previously thought. [source]


Why politics needs marketing

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & VOLUNTARY SECTOR MARKETING, Issue 2 2003
Article first published online: 12 JUL 200, Roger Mortimore
This paper examines the survey evidence for the low standing of politics, politicians and political institutions in the mind of the British public, and discusses its consequences. Present public opinion about political parties in Britain, and about politicians in general, is predominantly negative. Politicians are distrusted, to a considerably greater extent than can be explained solely by their bad press. Nor is the public very familiar with politicians or political institutions. Yet it can be shown that in general (and not only in the political field) ,familiarity breeds favourability, not contempt'. This may be feeding through into hostility towards the entire sector,not only the strictly ,political', but other institutions such as public services which the public associates with politics or government. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications [source]


The Save the Children Fund and the Russian Famine of 1921,23: Claims and Counter-Claims about Feeding "Bolshevik" Children,

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
LINDA MAHOOD
Drawing on literature on the social construction of social problems, this paper examines the British Save the Children Fund's claims making activities regarding support for child famine victims in Russia in 1921,23. It examines 1) how the Fund constructed famine in Russia as a social problem that was worthy of British, and wider international, support and attention; 2) the rhetorical strategies used by the Fund to construct the causes of the famine for the British public; and 3) the claims the Fund made about why Britons should care about starving children in Russia. We also attend to counter-claims made about the Fund and its involvement with Russia. We used unpublished letters, memos and reports from The Save the Children Fund archives to examine how the Fund responded to attacks on its activities coming from Russian émigrés and from The Daily Express. We suggest that the examination of this case through the concept of claims making offers a lens to understand how children in distress in the early 20th century became the objects of British, and wider international aid. [source]


Een-Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 1 2008
TIMOTHY PARSONS
British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non-western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non-western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden-Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden-Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ,martial tribe' in the imagination of the British public. Baden-Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden-Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden-Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden-Powell that ,tribal' Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age. [source]