On 5 June 1975, voters went to the polls in Britain's first national referendum to decide whether the UK should remain in the European Community. As in 2016, the campaign shattered old political allegiances and triggered a far-reaching debate on Britain's place in the world. The campaign to stay in stretched from the Conservative Party - under its new leader, Margaret Thatcher - to the Labour government, the farming unions and the Confederation of British Industry. Those fighting to 'Get Britain Out' ranged from Enoch Powell and Tony Benn to Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Footballers, actors and celebrities joined the campaign trail, as did clergymen, students, women's groups and paramilitaries. In a panoramic survey of 1970s Britain, this volume offers the first modern history of the referendum, asking why voters said 'Yes to Europe' and why the result did not, as some hoped, bring the European debate in Britain to a close.

This book draws connections between Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher and works of classic American literature. Chapter I explores the horrors of the Civil War as conveyed in Mosher's Walking to Gatlinburg and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. Major characters escape the battlefield and then feel a need to redeem themselves for what could be a cowardly act. Chapter II analyses how Mosher and three classic authors explore the physical and moral dangers of industrialisation, especially women's safety. Chapter III compares Mosher's Walking to Gatlinburg to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in terms of the quest for Heaven. In Chapter IV, Melville's novels are used to address evil as it appears in Mosher's Disappearances. Chapter V explores black men with white women in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Mosher's A Stranger in the Kingdom. Humour is at the core of Chapter VI, comparing Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to Mosher's The True Account. In Chapter VII, the disappearing wilderness is the issue in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses and several of Mosher's works. Chapter VIII offers romantic love as a shield against other human beings. A conclusion draws on Steinbeck, Twain and Mosher to elaborate on how one should explore as much of the world as possible.

The Second Reform Act, passed in 1867, created a million new voters, doubling the electorate and propelling the British state into the age of mass politics. It marked the end of a twenty year struggle for the working class vote, in which seven different governments had promised change. Yet the standard works on 1867 are more than forty years old and no study has ever been published of reform in prior decades. This study provides the first analysis of the subject from 1848 to 1867, ranging from the demise of Chartism to the passage of the Second Reform Act. Recapturing the vibrancy of the issue and its place at the heart of Victorian political culture, it focuses not only on the reform debate itself, but on a whole series of related controversies, including the growth of trade unionism, the impact of the 1848 revolutions and the discussion of French and American democracy.

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most controversial figures of modern times. Her governments inspired hatred and veneration in equal measure, and her legacy remains fiercely contested. Yet assessments of the Thatcher era are often divorced from any larger historical perspective. This book draws together leading historians to locate Thatcher and Thatcherism within the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Britain. It explores the social and economic crises of the 1970s; Britain's relationships with Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States; and the different experiences of Thatcherism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The book assesses the impact of the Thatcher era on class and gender, and situates Thatcherism within the Cold War, the end of Empire and the rise of an Anglo-American 'New Right'. Drawing on the latest available sources, it opens a wide-ranging debate about the Thatcher era and its place in modern British history.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, the center of black social and business life in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the area known as Vinegar Hill. But in 1960, noting the prevalence of aging frame houses and ""substandard"" conditions such as outdoor toilets, voters decided that Vinegar Hill would be redeveloped. Charlottesville's black residents lost a cultural center, largely because they were deprived of a voice in government. Vinegar Hill's displaced residents discuss the loss of homes and businesses, and the impact of the project on black life in Charlottesville. The interviews raise questions about motivations behind urban renewal.

In 1783, at the opportunity presented by a new Panchen (or Teshoo) Lama, Bengal governor-general Warren Hastings sent a deputation to Tibet and Bhutan in the hope of promoting British-Indian trade across the Himalayas. Samuel Turner (1759 1802), an army officer in the East India Company, was appointed leader of the mission. His journal, offering first-hand descriptions of these countries, was originally published in 1800 and remained the only such English-language work for more than half a century. Assisted by the botanist and surgeon Robert Saunders and the surveyor and illustrator Samuel Davis, Turner interweaves geographical and scientific observations with descriptions of social and religious customs; the vivid account of his reception by the infant Panchen Lama is of particular note. The introduction sketches the history of Bengal Bhutan relations and George Bogle's prior mission, while later sections deal with Tibet and the influence of China. This was and remains an invaluable account of eighteenth-century diplomacy.

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most controversial figures of modern times. Her governments inspired hatred and veneration in equal measure, and her legacy remains fiercely contested. Yet assessments of the Thatcher era are often divorced from any larger historical perspective. This book draws together leading historians to locate Thatcher and Thatcherism within the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Britain. It explores the social and economic crises of the 1970s; Britain's relationships with Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States; and the different experiences of Thatcherism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The book assesses the impact of the Thatcher era on class and gender, and situates Thatcherism within the Cold War, the end of Empire and the rise of an Anglo-American 'New Right'. Drawing on the latest available sources, it opens a wide-ranging debate about the Thatcher era and its place in modern British history.

On 5 June 1975, voters went to the polls in Britain's first national referendum to decide whether the UK should remain in the European Community. As in 2016, the campaign shattered old political allegiances and triggered a far-reaching debate on Britain's place in the world. The campaign to stay in stretched from the Conservative Party - under its new leader, Margaret Thatcher - to the Labour government, the farming unions and the Confederation of British Industry. Those fighting to 'Get Britain Out' ranged from Enoch Powell and Tony Benn to Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Footballers, actors and celebrities joined the campaign trail, as did clergymen, students, women's groups and paramilitaries. In a panoramic survey of 1970s Britain, this volume offers the first modern history of the referendum, asking why voters said 'Yes to Europe' and why the result did not, as some hoped, bring the European debate in Britain to a close.