Ever since the Brexit vote of 2016, the term « culture war » has been increasingly employed to describe a fundamental shift in British politics towards a more Americanised and highly divisive political style. This paper will reconceptualise the term - originally popularised in the early 1990s by US sociologist James Davison Hunter – from the perspective of British cultural studies so that it can be productively applied to the British cultural context. Here, the clash between « traditionalist » notions of national identity and « progressivist » ones constitutes a major polarising factor. The paper focuses especially on the polarising debates about British history which resurfaced after the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. Here, the culture-war discourse interrelates with what we call the « master narrative of nostalgia ». This dominant cultural narrative, which was (and is) for instance prominently instrumentalised in the context of Brexit, provides a mainly positive perception of the past, marginalising conflicting views or even omitting them entirely. We will illustrate this process by looking at selected examples of recent rhetorical products from the traditionalist bloc such as speeches or statements made in both traditional and social media.
This article examines the place of Ian Gilmour (1926-2007) within the “One Nation” conservative tradition. First, it examines possible definitions of “One Nation” conservatism, rejecting claims that one can fully find its origins in the writings of career of Benjamin Disraeli, or that the ideology is so wide and amorphous that it can encompass Thatcherism as well as those more sympathetic to state aid for the poor. Rather it suggests that to capture the essence of “One Nation”, one should examine the original pamphlets of the group, “One Nation” (1950) and “Change is Our Ally” (1954). This reveals that “One Nation” conservatism has four aspects: a desire to accept the welfare state (albeit with more targeting and less universality), a suspicion of central planning (albeit with tolerance of Keynesianism), an emphasis on a distinctive conservative tradition to developing the welfare state, and a set of concerns that are particular to the mid-twentieth century – including underpopulation, a need for migration to the Commonwealth, and worries about lack of resources for the welfare state at a time of austerity. Second, the article stresses that by the 1970s and 1980s, five factors concerning the economy and the welfare state had significantly changed conservative thinkers’ calculations, including the advent of affluence in the 1950s and 1960s, the increasing life expectancy of the population, the end of the economic “golden age” and the undermining of Keynesianism in the 1970s, the rise of “New Right” conservatism, and new constitutional challenges associated with the EEC, Celtic nationalism, and class dealignment. Third, the article argues that one can, nevertheless, make a judgment about how closely Ian Gilmour’s work fits into the “One Nation” conservative tradition, and examines three areas of his work. Firstly, looking at his views on history and the constitution, the article contends he respects the original account of historical development given in “One Nation”, but develops it, providing a more detailed account of Conservative Party history to try and prove that the party has been most successful when least “ideological”. This is coupled with advocacy of constitutional changes to reduce centralized power – including increased use of referendums and reform of the House of Lords. Secondly, considering economics, Gilmour’s rejection of Thatcherite monetarism and advocacy of Keynesianism arguably remained true to the “One Nation” tradition, but his increasing tendency to uphold all of what he saw as a post-war “consensus” and claim that Thatcherism was entirely unconservative departed from it. Finally, considering social policy, again some of Gilmour’s arguments remained firmly within the “One Nation” tradition – including those lamenting unemployment, criticizing the Thatcherite distinction between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. But others – such as his strong support for a centralized NHS, advocacy of universal benefits, and support for a universal basic income – departed from it. Overall, the article contends Gilmour was a powerful re-interpreter of the “One Nation” tradition, even if he did not always remain true to its original tenets.
One of the most recent historiographical contributions on the participation of the Irish brigade recruited by General Eoin O’Duffy in the Spanish Civil War is Tim Fanning’s edition of The Salamanca Diaries (2019), an extensively annotated selection of texts taken from the profuse personal diaries of Father Alexander McCabe, rector of the Irish College in Salamanca during the war period. Through his laborious analysis of the huge handwritten material, in quite illegible and tight handwriting, Fanning has rescued an essential source for the reconstruction of the events that accompanied this irregular adventure of the Irish volunteers who came to Spain in 1936 to fight on the Franco side.
This essay focuses on Irish writer Kevin Barry’s first collection of short stories, There Are Little Kingdoms (2007). The Ireland depicted in this work is the Ireland of the new millennium – a territory facing the transformations of Celtic Tiger prosperity. The analysis of these short stories, which provide several snapshots of contemporary Ireland, will explore how the Republic depicted in Barry’s work is a territory in some ways bound to its rural past, often characterised by its short-sightedness despite pretensions of development. Changes are occurring, but at the same time stasis permeates the scenarios of the plots. The irony is salient, considering that the Celtic Tiger era is a time associated with prosperity and joy, yet the lives and stories of the characters of There Are Little Kingdoms (2007), as this essay will reveal, are downbeat.
In The Sea (2005) and The Gathering (2007), John Banville and Anne Enright incorporate modernist and postmodernist intertextuality into accounts of bereavement. While the shattered existence of the protagonists is seemingly devoid of religious belief, they mobilize the palimpsestic immemorial past of mythological and fairy-tale intertexts to make sense of broken realities. The narrators’ self-portraits and invocations of lost people and places, oscillating between reminiscence and mythification, underscore postmodernism’s play with canonical stories. Both authors use mythological syncretism to express their characters’ quest for meaning: while Greek, Egyptian and Norse gods invade The Sea’s modern-day “Atlantis” (132), The Gathering is peopled with subverted Christian and Irish figures. However, rather than restoring coherence, myth and fairy-tale tropes are suffused with desperate irony, and the magic spell woven by mythological counterpoints turns out to be a post-traumatic, grimacing reflection of the characters’ troubled psyches, or an obfuscating screen. By interweaving and debunking seminal myths and tales, Banville and Enright give life to personal myths that bespeak the characters’ deep-seated sense of loss and disenchantment. The reader is thus left wondering if, by filling the gaps of post-traumatic memory with mythological rewritings, these defamiliarizing narratives of bereavement convey potential solace or reinforce their protagonists’ post-traumatic loss of landmarks.
Folklore, as a historical and cultural process producing and transmitting beliefs, stories, customs, and practices, has always thrived and evolved in the broader context of history and culture. Consequently, tradition and modernity have long coexisted and influenced one another, in particular in the world of folk narratives, orality and literature, storytellers and writers. Since the nineteenth century, folklorists (a category including a variety of figures) have collected, transcribed and published pieces of oral tradition, thus giving folklore a textual form and nature. However, folk narratives continue to be also a living and performed experience for the tradition bearers, a process giving rise to ever new and different expressions, according to the changing historical, social, cultural, and economic conditions. To be sure, folklore – and folk narrative – needs to be constantly lived and performed to remain something actually pertinent and significant, and not only within the oral and traditional contexts. Interestingly, between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, folklore increasingly came to be regarded as and transformed into an inheritance, a valuable, national heritage particularly fitting for those countries, such as Ireland, in search of a strong, national identity. In this light, folklore and folk narratives, beside their routine existence within their original contexts, were consciously “performed” by the official culture, which employed them in politics, education, literature, etc. In the process, it could happen that folk materials were dehistoricised and idealised, “embalmed” according to Máirtin Ó Cadhain, and even trivialised. This situation was turned into a fruitful and significant source of inspiration for the literary parody of Myles na gCopaleen (Flann O’Brien) who, in his Gaelic novel, An Béal Bocht, revealed the funny yet distressing truth of the Irish folklore being misunderstood and betrayed by the Irish themselves.
Background:With growing concerns about risk of harm from cancer screening, particularly from overdiagnosis, this study aimed to assess public attitudes to cancer screening in Great Britain.Methods:We used a population-based survey to assess attitudes to cancer screening, screening history and demographic characteristics, in men and women aged 50–80 years. Data were collected using face-to-face computer-assisted interviews in 2012.Results:In our sample of 2024, attitudes to cancer screening were overwhelmingly positive with almost 90% believing that screening is ‘almost always a good idea’ and 49% saying they would be tested for cancer even if it was untreatable. Attitudes were particularly positive among those who had previously taken part in breast or colorectal screening.Conclusions:Our findings suggest that attitudes to cancer screening are very positive in Great Britain. Widespread enthusiasm for cancer screening may hamper attempts to encourage a greater appreciation of the limitations and potential harms of screening.
The Easter Rising was a turning point in contemporary Irish history. Although it lasted for a few days, from Monday 24 to Saturday 29 April, 1916, it had great impact in Ireland itself, and it also aroused considerable interest in many other countries, particularly in those with a significant Irish community, as in the case of Argentina. The aim of this paper is to study the way in which the contemporary Argentine graphic media (published in Spanish and in English) presented and commented about the events that took place in Dublin. While it will try to contribute to the knowledge of the global echoes of the Easter Rising, this analysis will seek to help in a better understanding of the ideas of the English-speaking groups in Argentina, and particularly of the Irish community in that country, a group formed mainly by Argentine-born people of Irish descent.