Zimbabwe and political transition

This paper looks at the factors which helped ZANU-PF as a former liberation movement retain power and lead to a one-party dominant state. It also explores the extent to which ZANU-PF is adapting to democratic politics and multiparty elections

Thatcher, the Commonwealth and apartheid South Africa

Controversial she may be, but the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher still played a role in the dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid regime, says Sue Onslow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies

Interview with Lord Hurd of Westwell: Commonwealth Oral History Project

Interview with Lord Hurd of Westwell, conducted 6th March 2013 as part of the Commonwealth Oral History Project. The project aims to produce a unique digital research resource on the oral history of the Commonwealth since 1965 through sixty oral history interviews with leading figures in the recent history of the organisation. It will provide an essential research tool for anyone investigating the history of the Commonwealth and will serve to promote interest in and understanding of the organisation. Biography: Hurd, Douglas. (1930-present). House of Commons, Member of Parliament for Mid Oxon, 1974-1983. Member of Parliament for Witney, 1983-1997. Opposition Spokesman for Europe, 1976-1979. Foreign and Commonwealth office, Minister of State, 1979-1983. Home Office, 1983-1989. Home Secretary, 1985-1989. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 1984-1985. Foreign Secretary, 1989-1995. Baron of Westwell, 1997-present. House of Lords, member, 1997-present. Constitutional Commission, member, 1998-1999. Westminster Abbey, High Steward, 1999-2011. Archbishop of Canterbury’s Review, Chair, 2000-2001

#Zimbabwe2013: Elections are stolen months before the poll date

As the results of the Zimbabwe elections continue to make headlines, Sue Onslow explores the depths to which Zanu-PF is entrenched within the Zimbabwean state and society, an undeniable factor in their victory in the recent polls

The Commonwealth and Challenges to Media Freedom

The absence of the official Commonwealth from the public debates on issues around media freedom—not least the disquieting rising number of attacks on journalists in countries across the association1—needs to be addressed.2 Other multilateral organisations and agencies have taken a firm and highly visible lead, coordinating a wide range of activities and institutional frameworks to underpin the safety of journalists, government frameworks of accountability, and issues around access to information.3 In contrast to the quiescent Commonwealth, the Francophonie’s work on education, structures and adjudication in this area is particularly striking.4 Yet Commonwealth civil society organisations have done considerable work in the past on this issue, so the official Commonwealth does not have to reinvent the wheel. The Commonwealth Expert Group publication, Freedom of Expression, Association and Assembly, published in 2003, set out core frameworks and areas of activity, yet this report has dropped below the horizon. The fate of this historic Commonwealth energy and activity on media freedom issues underlines that until and unless there is ‘ownership’ by a core group of governments, ‘soft power’ initiatives by civil society will remain largely irrelevan

Nelson Mandela left his mark on the Commonwealth

Sue Onslow reflects on how the Commonwealth opposed apartheid and the impact Nelson Mandela had on the organisation when he became leader of South Africa

Voices of the Commonwealth

This article describes a major exercise undertaken by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, to put together an oral history of the modern Commonwealth. The project was set in the context of a wider research agenda aimed at investigating whether the Commonwealth has made any difference globally in policy terms. As part of the exercise, the author, who was the lead researcher on the project, interviewed senior figures within the Commonwealth who played key roles in shaping the destiny of the organization and in influencing policy. The article is a personal account of the exercise

Review of Women of the Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain

\u27Everything in the literary world is done by favour and connections\u27. Mary Howitt\u27s assessment of the importance of contacts in the London of the 1840s is borne out in Barbara Onslow\u27s wide ranging and fascinating study of nineteenth century women journalists. \u27Journalism was an open profession\u27, as she observes, \u27but it was a masculine one\u27 and women who sought access to it relied on a variety of networks. Her book is, indirectly, a superb study of female networking. Family connections helped women like Mary Howitt, Anna Maria Hall, Isabella Beeton and Alice Meynell, each of whom teamed up with her husband in publishing a journal, but in doing so ran the risk of remaining in the shadow of her more illustrious spouse. Siblings and parents could be valuable, as Geraldine Jewsbury found with her elder sister Maria Jane, and Anna Hall with her mother. Older literary women like Anna Jameson and Eliza Lynn Linton proved generous patrons to young aspirants. There were also a number of influential female circles, one centring on Mrs. Samuel Carter Hall\u27s (Anna Maria) \u27at homes\u27, another on George Eliot\u27s Sunday afternoons at The Priory, and salons run by the Duchess of Sutherland, and earlier by the Countess of Blessington. Religious denominations, many of them in provincial towns, provided social and intellectual networks from which women in particular benefited, and families like the Yonges, the Mozleys and the Gaskells became the focus of influential feminine circles. Later the Langham Place group of feminists generated a number of networks as did various suffrage societies. But as journalism became more professionalized women\u27s lack of formal education and their restricted participation in public life became significant, and, Onslow argues, the expansion and democratization of the press militated against women. The cosy world of family connections and patronage seemed light years away from the climate of the \u27new journalism\u27, with its more pressurized working conditions, aggressive advertising, and competition. Onslow draws on a variety of self-help manuals and articles directed at the would-be woman journalist of the nineties, offering advice on how to secure work in the new era. Amateurism had created its own anxieties earlier in the century. The new professionalism, implicit in the creation of the Society of Women Journalists in 1893, and the opening of the Institute of Journalists and the Society of Authors to women, did not reduce those anxieties. Before the advent of regular columns and by-lines, the editorship of a journal, with its status and secure income, was a much sought after, and for women, an elusive prize. As Onslow demonstrates, women were barred from editorships of the high profile reviews and organs of opinion. She writes perceptively about Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Ellen Wood as editors of Belgravia and the Argosy, and of a number of other successful women editors, notably the formidable Christian Johnston of Taits Edinburgh Magazine, Eliza Cook, and the women editors of religious periodicals, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna of the Christian Lady\u27s Magazine, and Charlotte Yonge with her long-lived Monthly Packet