The anatomy of an eviction campaign: the general election of 1868 in Wales and its aftermath

In this article, an attempt will be made to gauge the true extent of landlord intimidation in the principality through a detailed examination of the evictions following the 1868 election. Whilst the idea that landlords coerced their tenants at election time was regarded as axiomatic by Victorian radicals, they never produced much hard and fast evidence to support their claims. The 1868 election in Wales, however, is remarkable for having produced just such a detailed account. A well-known Welsh journalist, John Griffith, toured the afflicted counties of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire in the winter of 1869-70 and drew up a series of reports which were published by a Liberal newspaper, the Cambria Daily Leader. His reports gave the names and addresses of both the evicted tenant and the evicting landlord, along with details of each case designed to show that the only cause of the eviction notice having been served was the tenant's Liberal vote at the election. What makes this series of reports so valuable, however, is that a Conservative newspaper, the Welshman, reproduced the reports and invited the accused landowners to respond to the charges made against them. The reports and the landowners' replies form a body of contemporary evidence which has not hitherto been examined and presents a unique opportunity to explore both sides of an alleged evictioni campaign in considerable detail. Sbove all, it provides a solid foundation for judging whether the Welsh landlords deserve their harsh historiographical reputation. In order to set the Welsh material in its proper context, the article begins by examining the whole issue of evictions in England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Victorian period. In the second section, the article examines the place of the idea of landlord coercion within the electoral rhetoric of Welsh Liberals. The specific charges made against the landlords in 1869 are then analysed in the context both of the reports prepared by Griffith and of the responses made to them by the landowners. The article concludes that, although there were conditions under which Welsh landlords were prepared to evict tenants for 'political' reasons, the pattern of landlord-tenant relations in the principality was generally good, and that an historiographical revision in line with that undertaken for other parts of the UK is overdue

Conscience or coercion? Clerical influence at the general election of 1868 in Wales

For many people in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, religious principle was the chief determinant of voting behaviour, and politics was perceived to be "an activity of significance mainly because religious issues were so prominent".1 The importance of religious questions at election time naturally brought politics within the purview of the church and the chapel. In general terms, the Anglican clergy, though overwhelmingly Conservative in their voting behaviour, tended to shrink from contact with the electoral process itself.2 The dissenting ministers, however, embraced it, and enrolled themselves as unflagging champions of the Liberal cause. As John Vincent once observed: "No other occupation was so partisan, so militant, so unfloating, as the Dissenting ministers. They were a sort of Communist hardcore of the Popular Front".3 The Catholic clergy, meanwhile, especially in Ireland, took a similarly prominent role in the organization of politics, having a crucial voice in everything from the choice of the candidate to the refreshment of the voters on polling-day.4 Given the extent of their involvement, it is surprising that s

The parish elite at play? Cricket, community and the ‘middling sort’ in eighteenth-century Kent

In the past twenty years a considerable amount of work has been undertaken on the ‘middling sort’ in eighteenth-century England. This amorphous social group, stretching between the labouring classes on the one hand and the lower reaches of the gentry on the other, has formed a key element in discussions of the social, economic and political history of urban England during this period. The new culture of association that characterised middling sort life in towns has been subject to particular scrutiny. Historians such Jonathan Barry have shown how the middling sort came to rely upon ‘a network of social and institutional relationships’ within their respective towns that took in business partnerships, charities and friendly societies, political clubs, learned societies, local government, and, of course, the churches. The values ‘embedded in associational life’, he argues, taught members how to negotiate the dialectic tension between ‘self control and obedience to others, between competition and cooperation, between restraint and liberality’: they provided a ‘prudential code for bourgeois life’. As such, the associational culture of the middling sort was central to how eighteenth-century towns operated, bolstering both civic and bourgeois identities

Temperatures in Spark Plugs Having Steel and Brass Shells

This investigation was conducted at the Bureau of Standards for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Brass has often been assumed superior to steel for spark plug shells because of its greater heat conductivity. The measurements described in this report prove the contrary, showing that the interior of a spark plug having a brass shell is from 50 degrees to 150 degrees c. (90 degrees to 270 degrees f.) hotter than that of a similar steel plug. Consistent results were obtained in both an aviation and a truck engine, and under conditions which eliminated all other sources of difference between the plugs. It is to be concluded that steel is to be preferred to brass for spark plug shells. This report embodies the results of measurements taken of electrodes and a comparison of brass and steel insulators of spark plugs while they were in actual operation. The data throw considerable light upon the problem of the proper control of temperatures in these parts

The Church of England and the enclosure of England's Open Fields: a Northamptonshire case study

This article explores the tithe system in eighteenth-century Northamptonshire. At enclosure, many clergy exchanged their right to take tithe for a portion of the newly enclosed land in the parish. The article argues that while the clergy made financial gains from this, more important was the removal of a recurrent source of dissension with parishioners. As such the article tempers the dominant narrative that emphasizes only the material enrichment of the clergy at enclosure, and sees the social and cultural gulf this opened up between the clergy and their parishioners as a potent source of rural anticlericalism

Defending the constitution: the Conservative party and the idea of devolution, 1945-74

In retrospect, the interwar years represented a golden age for British Conservatism. As the Times remarked in 1948, during the ‘long day of Conservative power which stretched with only cloudy intervals between the two world wars’ the only point at issue was how the party might ‘choose to use the power that was almost their freehold’. Nowhere was this sense of all-pervading calm more evident than in the sphere of constitutional affairs. The settlement of the Irish question in 1921-22 ensured a generation of relative peace for the British constitution. It removed from the political arena an issue that had long troubled the Conservatives’ sense of ‘civic nationalism’ - their feeling that the defining quality of the ‘nation’ to which they owed fealty was the authority of its central institutions, notably parliament and the Crown – and simultaneously took the wind from the sails of the nationalist movements in Wales and Scotland. Other threats to the status quo, such as Socialism, were also kept under control. The Labour Party’s failure to capture an outright majority of seats at any inter-war election curbed its ability to embark on the radical reshaping of society that was its avowed aim, a prospect which, in any case, astute Tory propagandising ensured was an unattractive proposition to most people before the second world war

Mii o gwayak inaajimotaagooyaan [this is how it was told to me]: narrative identity and community-building in northern Minnesota

The research discussed in this dissertation employs a mixed-methods, qualitative approach to understanding the role of specific narratives, and of storytelling practice in general, in shaping perceptions of Anishinaabe indigenous identity, history, and politics in northern Minnesota, as well as the social and political climate of the region, including relations between the indigenous and settler populations. In order to glean an understanding of the complex influences of narratives on these social and cultural phenomena, three specific narrative case studies were examined in comparison with one another, and against the backdrop of the general narrative life of the region. Each narrative case represents a different narrative type, and each case also carries significant weight within the local environment in which it circulates, communicating particular messages concerning the content and meaning of Anishinaabe history and identity. The study is grounded in the consideration of (A) the relative importance of different types of narratives, (B) the means by which narratives move within and across various social and political spaces, and (C) the ways in which these movements across social and political borders help to determine the shape, meaning, and membership of the communities on either side. In addition to the examination of these central questions, the findings are also used to theorize more broadly on definitions of nationhood and nationalism, transnationalism, and on the kinds of epistemological critiques that indigenous political structures and movements pose to dominant assumptions in both academic studies of macro-level political, cultural, and economic relationships, and in the colonial and imperial politics of the settler state.

Aerodynamic Changes in Patients with Chronic Cough Treated with Cough Suppression Therapy

Voice therapy has been suggested as the choice of treatment for patients with chronic cough. However, the voice aerodynamic parameters that may account for improvement in cough symptoms have not been well studied. The purpose of this study was to determine the changes in the aerodynamic parameters of phonation and self-ratings of cough severity following cough suppression therapy