Argue pointlessly with Al about history and so on

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Seen Mikado's excellent new thread? This is the dark side. Mention a historical topic or question of interest to you, and I'll happily argue with you about it until I get bored or you run off crying. My main interest is in what used to be called social history, but there's nothing I would rule out starting a meaningless internet fight over.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why was the German working class so pro-Nazi?

LOL

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though actually there were working class areas where the Nazis polled very well; the classic examples are the Erzgebirge and the Vogtland in Saxony, which were depressed rural-industrial (mostly textiles) regions, without much in the way of trade union strength or SPD organisation.* And as this was before the mechanisation of agriculture all of those little Lutheran villages in North Germany were full of agricultural labourers and many obviously voted Nazi.

_{*There was also strong KPD support in much of the area, giving 1930s election results a rather... apocalyptic look.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What might a William Morris Government have looked like,

Brief.

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Some kind of Zinoviev Letter type situation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman were great historians, and Time on the Cross is the best work written on slavery. Discuss.

Shut your whore mouth.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Was the move towards gas central heating propogated by well meaning Labour led local authorities and Labour governments in the 1970's partly reponsible for the halving of coal production by the mid 1980's leading the the pit closure programme?

It was clearly partly responsible for the declining market share of coal and for subsequent declines in production (along with various other factors). Which means that it would have been responsible (in a hypothetical past-future) for another round of 'rationalisation' in the coal industry (i.e. 'strategic' pit closures and the running down of older coalfields; as happened in the 1960s) at some point in the latter half of the 1980s. But the actual pit closure programme was mostly political (rather than economic) in motivation; the aim being to take effective control of electricity generation out of the hands of a trade union that was notably hostile to the Conservative Party. Of course you could argue - and there were those in the NUM who did - that the path to the destruction of the coal industry was made easier by the movement towards gas central heating and towards a larger nuclear sector. There's something to this, but I tend to think that it's important not to lose sight of the political impetus.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A more detailed answer will eventually emerge, but one little anecdote arguably says more than an essay could: a question that was seriously debated amongst Social Democrats in the city was whether a Beethoven symphony was a socialist work if it was performed by a workers orchestra.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Historically which voting block has had more political clout in Wales, miners or sheep?

Up until 1922 sheep, after then miners.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How frequent were Medieval peasant uprisings?

Pretty rare - though not unknown - before the Great Famine (1315-17), extremely common afterwards, right up until the end of the period (the German Peasants War - the greatest uprising  of them all - was as late as the 1520s), though most of the best known revolts occurred in the latter half of the 14th century. As Mik has already pointed out, the entire ghastly 14th century was a time of social catastrophe in Europe (and like many social catastrophes followed a period of comparative calm and comparative prosperity), and social revolt was very clearly a direct response to this, or, rather, to the attempts of the authorities to manage social catastrophe. Revolts were often triggered by punitive taxation or policies aimed at maintaining social order via blatant economically repression (c.f. the notorious Statute of Labourers). One of the bloodiest revolts was the Jacquerie, which immediately followed the period of peak Black Death mortality and also happened during the middle of the Hundred Years War, and which probably wouldn't have happened had taxation policy in France not been so laughably crude and had not public works not depended on the corvée (yes, feudalism was indeed a direct cause of this particular revolt). They were never just 'peasants revolts' though; other social groups were always involved, and were sometimes (as in England in 1381, where craftsmen were at the forefront of events) more militant. Towards the end of the period, the earlier causes of revolts were - at least in Central Europe - often combined with religious fervour inspired by the early Reformers. The most extreme example this were the Taborites, who set about trying to impose a sort of chiliastic Christian communism across southern Bohemia via war wagons.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The twin developments of capitalism and the modern state. An exceedingly lengthy parallel process, the 'completion' of which remains within living memory, at least in some parts of Europe. One classic argument is that you can see the birth of both in the great crisis of the late middle ages that began with the Great Famine.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wasn't an intentional skip; sorry.

Anyway, the short answer is that they weren't quite as stupid as their cousins on the continent and so tried to drag their feet on the issue rather than outright oppose it (i.e. the partial enfranchisement of male workers in urban areas happened under a Tory administration). But drag their feet they most certainly did, which is why universal male suffrage - which as you know even Germany had - did not happen until as late as 1918 (for which see Mik's post). And special electoral rights for the upper and upper middle classes - the business vote and the university constituencies, both of which were egregious breaches of basic democratic principles - continued to exist until abolished by the Attlee government. Britain is an interesting case because of the deep attachment of its traditional elites to parliamentary principles and processes; as they would not dream of of weakening these in favour of strong executive government (this would be tyranny and, worse, positively continental), any extension of the franchise was automatically a genuine transfer of primary political power.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

By the time what Al considers democracy prevailed, Britain had just exited a catastrophic World War and was facing a full-fledged rebellion in Ireland and the elites were in no position to "disallow" anything.

As a coda to this, by 1918 the landed interests that had formed the core of Britain's traditional political elite were left pretty much bankrupt due to the agricultural depressions of the 19th century, which destroyed their main source of income (i.e. rent). This situation was not improved by Lloyd George's introduction of death duties* or by the further loss of earnings due to various social and political changes in Ireland (ironically some of this was carried out by a Tory government). The next generation was also severely depleted due to the slaughter on the Western Front (statistically speaking the most likely people in the British Army to be killed there were junior officers; they went over the top with their men, and were easily identifiable due to their different uniforms). Ultimately they even lost control of the political party that used to exist in order to further their interests; before 1914 the Conservative Party was generally led by members of the landed elites, after 1918 it was generally led by members of the upper middle class and the presence of aristocrats in senior cabinet posts became increasingly rare - where once they had been ubiquitous - and began to look anachronistic. Had he been born a few decades earlier, Alec Douglas-Home's background would not have been a political problem for him.

_{*Which would count as one of the great longterm political masterstrokes of the twentieth century, if the Liberal Party had managed to survive the consequences of its own incompetent foreign and military policies. Oh well.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why were the UK Liberals so incompetent?

In terms of running the country or electorally? I'm presuming that you mean before 1931 o/c.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And now for some hilariously crass Labour propaganda from the 1929 General Election:

1929 was the first General Election in which women under thirty had the vote. Many male commentators dubbed this the 'flapper franchise' because they were sexist idiots in a rather patronising reference to the supposedly frivo fashions of young women at the time. Note the young woman in the cartoon is dressed accordingly:

She is also wearing red, the colour of the Labour Party and the only strong colour used in the cartoon (note that it is also used for MacDonald's (ordinary and democratic) tie and for the border of the picture).

In the background we see the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Liberal leader David Lloyd George acting like sexist fossils from distant years before 1914. They are the 'poor old dears' that the young woman regards as 'pathetic'. At the sight of a young woman they tip their - grotesquely unfashionable and hideously elitist - top hats. Lloyd George's reputation for womanising is here referenced - and transformed into something highly negative - with a leerish wink; Lothario as dirty old man.

But it isn't just their hats and manners that are old fashioned, for they are wearing starched collars, morning suits, and spats. Contrast with the Ramsay MacDonald's ordinary (fashionable) three piece suit, his ordinary collar and tie, and his democratic trilby. The overall effect is slightly less subtle than the average lump hammer.

Here's a question to ponder though. What is the significance of the cartoon? Is the fact that it is a clear attempt to appeal to the votes of young women (contrast with typical political images of the era which focused largely on 'women as mothers' or - and this was particularly the case with Conservative propaganda - 'women as housewives': vote Conservative for lower prices on tea and groceries dear!) by playing with the idea that the other parties were old fashioned and inherently sexist more significant than the fact that it plays with sexist tropes itself?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'd actually argue that what did for them as a major party was not electoral incompetence, so much as political incompetence, specifically the sort that led to a) British involvement in the First World War and b) the subsequent gross mismanagement of the war effort by the Asquith government. Liberal Party factionalism - Asquith and Lloyd George both led separate Liberal Parties at the 1918 and 1922 elections; the Party only unified again in time for the 1923 election - added considerably to this credibility problem, and it is notable that the only senior Liberal with any mass credibility in the 1920s was David Lloyd George, who's populist image - never typical of a party dominated by a narrow circle of patrician and would-be patrician¹ Oxbridge men - was only reinforced by his record as a wartime Coalition Prime Minister. There was also the great damage that the War had done to the general credibility of Liberalism across in Britain; what did it even mean to be a Liberal after 1914? Peace, Free Trade and Progress were key to Liberalism's prewar appeal, and the War had either destroyed or grossly distorted all three.² To all of this we can then add a further act of gross political incompetence; Asquith's decision to pull support from MacDonald's minority Labour government in 1924 and trigger an immediate General Election. This was stupid for two reasons; the first was that elections in 1922 and 1924 had left the Liberal Party as bankrupt financially as it was politically, and the second was Asquith toppled the Labour government due to some trumped-up red scare bullsh!t, which guaranteed that the election would be fought in an atmosphere of anti-Soviet hysteria (infamously added to - and how - by the Zinoviev Letter). The Liberal Party's core lower middle class support stampeded to the Tories and Liberals never recovered.

Not that the Liberals were ever really that good at elections, mind. The campaign against the Corn Laws in the mid 19th century gave them such a great winning issue that sixty years later it was still at the core of Liberal electioneering:

Unsympathetic people might suggest that this was perhaps a little complacent.

<sub>1. i.e. H.H. Asquith (never Herbert!), the son of a West Riding wool merchant who spent a lifetime purging all remaining traces of his provincial background, including and especially his embarrassing Christian name.

2. Progress in the Edwardian Liberal sense was linked to technological progress and the rise of the machine, i.e. the very things that led to the horror of mechanised war.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

a) because the Football Association of Wales is older than FIFA*, b) because John Charles is dead, c) no idea, possibly never.

<sub>*FUN FACTS:

1. Due to its venerable age the FAW is on the International Football Association Board (the body that writes the rules). Even more absurd is that so is the Irish Football Association (i.e. Northern Ireland)!

2. Multiple members of its governing council live in nursing homes!

3. The FAW almost always votes the opposite way to the FA, no matter the issue or reasoning!</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's the deal with England's crazy different levels of local government? Why is it like that?

Botched local government reorganisation upon botched local government reorganisation. There was a project of wholesale local government reform that started in the 60s, but the government that ended up at the end of the timeline managed to cock it up pretty terribly (I am sure everyone will be shocked to learn that this government was the Heath government). The Thatcher government then poked holes in the new structure - abolishing upper tier local government in metropolitan areas (London included) for reasons that were largely political* - and then from the 90s governments of both colours decided that unitary authorities were a good idea, but seemed content to introduce them on a piecemeal basis. Tony Blair's enthusiasm for the idea of the American Big City Mayor added yet another layer of complexity; some local authorities (particularly ones with a reputation as basket cases) adopted them, and it was the model chosen for the rebirth of London government. The result of all this is an incomprehensible mess.

_{*Not that the GLC or - especially - the Metropolitan Counties ever worked particularly well.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Or to be slightly less glib but still risking serious oversimplification:

Irish Protestants were overwhelmingly-to-exclusively opposed to the movement for Irish Home Rule right from the very beginning. Most lived in Ulster (of course), the then-prosperous eastern half of which was the only genuinely industrial part of the island. It was widely believed that Home Rule would equate to Rome Rule; i.e. political domination by the despised Catholic majority who would pursue policies unfavourable to interests of the industrious Protestants. The situation grew increasingly toxic as Gladstone and the majority of the Liberal Party endorsed Home Rule and attempted to introduce it. The fears of Ulster Protestants were brilliantly exploited by enemies of Home Rule at Westminster (i.e. the Conservatives and their allies in the newly formed (1886) Liberal Unionist Party)* and the result was the birth of a broadly coherent Unionist political movement and (in 1905) the Ulster Unionist Council. So far so clear-ish?

What turned a potentially dangerous situation into an outright crisis was a sudden change to the British Constitution. The passage of the Parliament Act in 1911 established the absolute supremacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords. Home Rule had always been impossible because the Lords could kill it. Now all they could do was delay it. And guess what? The Liberal government lacked a majority and was dependent on the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party.² The Asquith government introduced the Third Home Rule Bill to the Commons in 1912, and several months later hundreds of thousands of Ulster Protestants signed the Ulster Covenant which pledged them to resist Home Rule by any means necessary (a not terribly subtle threat of civil war). A paramilitary organisation - the Ulster Volunteer Force - was formed by the same people who had organised the Covenant³. Ireland was all set for civil war - and it was not certain, not certain at all, quite how loyal British military forces stationed on the island would be - when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo.

Fast forward to 1918 and the political situation in Ireland is rather different to what it had been before the War (there's no need to go into any detail about this, presumably). Technically a compromise had been reached over Home Rule; the Government of Ireland Act (1920) partitioned Ireland into two autonomous regions (i.e. Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland) each of which would have their own parliaments. Events had, however, moved on rather, and by 1922 the Irish Free State had been established, leaving Northern Ireland as the only part of the island in the United Kingdom. It would be ruled as a quasi-independent Unionist state until the collapse of the Stormont regime half a century later.

<sub>1. Randolph Churchill described this as 'playing the Orange card'.
2. The gradualist and highly conservative Nationalist party led by John Redmond that was fated to be annihilated by Sinn Fein in 1918.
3. The leading figures were Edward Carson (Unionist MP for the University of Dublin and well known as the lawyer who destroyed Oscar Wilde), and James Craig (a veteran of the Boer War and Unionist MP for East Down; he would later become the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland).</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is your assesment of James Callaghan's Prime Ministership?

The record of his government wasn't that bad considering the economic climate and its dire parliamentary situation. It got stuff done (nearly all reversed by the Thatcher government, but that's not the point) and this was partly down to Callaghan's skills at day-to-day political management. He was less good at dealing with the strategic aspect of policy (on which - no matter the issue - he defaulted towards small 'c' conservatism... and he tended to promote people with the same tendency)*which had unfortunate consequences from a leftie point of view regarding economic policy. All the same (and I do not intend this to be read as 'damning with faint praise'), I don't think any of the other candidates to succeed Wilson would have done any better.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

a) What is your  evaluation of the importance of the Treachery of the Blue Books for the rise of Welsh nationalism?

The temptation to wonder whether 'rise' is an accurate word to use in the context of Welsh Nationalism is overwhelming, but I shall resist. Anyway, I think the answer to this has to be split into two parts; the contemporary importance of the Blue Books farrago to nationalism in Wales and its importance to nationalists in the 20th century.

What backlash there was against the Blue Books was largely directed at the fact that they defamed Welsh Nonconformity rather than (as was claimed later) that they defamed the Welsh Nation.¹ Probably this had the effect of encouraging greater political activity amongst Nonconformists and this in turn had major political consequences (though I would point out that this would surely have happened anyway; the inferior legal and social status of Nonconformity was always a bit of a proverbial red rag to a clichéd bull), the most importance of which was the absolute electoral domination of Welsh Liberalism after 1868. Not that you can seriously give more than a minor role to the Blue Books backlash to that, though people have tried.

Ah, but you asked about Welsh Nationalism not Welsh Liberalism didn't you. Essentially Welsh Nationalism did not exist in the mid 19th century, not even really in a proto form.² Did the Blue Books controversy alter this? Well considering that the first genuinely nationalist political movement in Wales, Cymru Fydd,³ was not founded until 1886...

As to the second part of my answer, well, modern Welsh Nationalism is effectively the child of that sour-faced pedantic bigot Saunders Lewis⁴ and his associates (Rev. Lewis Valentine and so on), and not just because these were the people who founded Plaid Cymru. They placed the Welsh Language above all things and believed that Welsh history had been dominated by English attempts to destroy Welsh culture. To these people the Blue Books were concrete proof of what they already believed and thus had a central role in their understanding of the 19th century. These days almost the only people in Wales who care about (or even know about? Quite probably) the Blue Books are nationalists, and for some, particularly at the more extreme 'cultural nationalist' end, the matter rankles.

<sub>1. Admittedly most Nonconformists saw themselves as 'more Welsh' than members of the Church of Wales, but this was a fundamentally sectarian grievance and one that relied on a degree of circular logic (i.e. they regarded themselves as being 'more Welsh' entirely because they were Nonconformists). Welsh Anglicans certainly did not see themselves as non-Welsh and there were substantial Anglican minorities even in supposedly monolithically Nonconformist regions such as Arfon. Reading nationalism into 19th century Welsh sectarianism is an error, though quite a common one. Another error - though thankfully less frequent than it once was - is to act as though religion was a proxy for class in Wales.

2. Christ, even the National Eisteddford didn't exist until 1860 and that great Juggernaut of the Taffia, the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, wasn't re-founded until 1873!

3. Hilariously (and inevitably) enough it was actually founded in London. Its nationalism was extraordinarily mild and it was never anything more than a faction of the Liberal Party in Wales (David Lloyd George was a member) and was only ever dominant in the North and not for all that long. Its importance to the political history of Wales is greatly exaggerated.

4. It would be remiss of me not to note at this point that Lewis - an antisemite and a fan of Hitler - was born on the Wirral (i.e. England) and educated at the University of Liverpool (i.e. England). Not all early Welsh Nationalists were like this, in fairness.</sub>

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Well, 1880-1960 isn't a single period is it? But this is simple enough. Before 1914 both the Labour Movement in Wales (even those parts of it that had converted to Socialism and had affiliated to the Labour Party) and what passed for Welsh Nationalism were comfortably ensconced under the great cultural umbrella that was Welsh Liberalism. Tension was limited and some Labour figures in Wales were even sympathetically disposed towards Welsh Home Rule (though it's important not to exaggerate that tendency).

The political landscape of Wales was rather different after 1918. The Labour Movement radicalised - parts of the Valleys made Clydeside look like Nottinghamshire - and rose to political domination in South Wales, while Welsh Nationalism changed from being a tepid tendency with modest demands and a low profile to an independent and notably immoderate cultural and political movement, albeit one with vanishingly low levels of electoral support. To the extent the Labour Movement and Nationalism had a relationship it was one marked by mutual hostility; Labour figures and Trade Unionists¹ tended to regard Welsh Nationalism as the snobbish obsession of a reactionary cultural elite, while most Welsh Nationalists regarded the Labour Movement (entirely English speaking outside parts of the North West and Carmarthenshire) as a bunch of cultural collaborators who lacked good manners. There were exceptions on both sides² but the key word there is 'exceptions'.

After the War, and with Plaid starting to attract a significant in some Welsh speaking areas, this rather frosty relationship developed a new and rather toxic character. Welsh Nationalists started to see themselves as radicals and began to portray the Labour Movement as essentially sclerotic in character³, while within the Labour Movement opinion shifted from regarding Welsh Nationalism as bourgeois to regarding it as being essentially bigoted.⁴ Many - and this was not a fringe view at all - went further and tended to see Welsh Nationalism as being a form of fascism or even Nazism.⁵ Again, there were exceptions but again their exceptional nature needs stressing.⁶ Of particular importance is the fact that even those Labour figures who favoured some form of self government for Wales (a minority view that was regarded as ideologically suspect in NUM dominated South Wales) mostly regarded Welsh Nationalism as beneath contempt.

<sub>1. Like there was (or is) much of a difference in Wales, lol.
2. And even a weird semi-nationalist movement of Labour-ish studnts; not that these people had much time for actual Nationalists.
3. A line of attack that has not been modified in roughly sixty years.
4. Again...
5. By the 1960s comparisons to the Nazis were sometimes even made at electoral declarations, often in response to abusive behavior from Plaid activists (mostly young and male at this point, note). At least one Labour MP directed a sarcastic Hitler salute at Plaid supporters in response to being shouted down at a declaration.
6. Huw T. Edwards (a trade unionist and Labour figure with nationalist views and temporary Plaid membership in the early 60s) has probably had more attention from historians than maybe he deserves for this reason.</sub>