50 years after Enoch Powell’s self-styled detonation in the form of his so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, this volume brings together contributions from international scholars in the field of history, political science and British studies, with new insights from hitherto unexplored archives. It investigates some of the key national and grassroots parameters which, from above and from below, led to Powell’s violent irruption into the immigration debate in 1968. It apprehends Powell as a political and intellectual figure firmly established in the British Tory tradition, a tradition which was to shape the 1970s debate on race and immigration, and be avidly instrumentalised by the British far-right. It also analyses Powell’s positioning vis-à-vis the Irish question, and apprehends Powell’s late-1960s moment from an international standpoint, as one of the early stages of the conservative revolution which was to culminate in 2016 with Trump’s election. Lastly, this book weaves a thread between Powell and another recent political detonation: Brexit.

Making the Weather is the story of six post-war politicians, all of whom exerted an outsized influence on the political life of the UK: an influence greater than that of most prime ministers. Vernon Bogdanor’s cast includes three from the political Left – Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan, Roy Jenkins, and Tony Benn – and three from the Right – Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph, and Nigel Farage. Each study is a fascinating analysis that examines how these men achieved such prominence and influence and how, though very different figures in many ways, they came to dominate the political landscape, often for a period of years. Each of the six made fundamental contributions to the debate about Britain’s future and to the vibrancy of our democracy. From immigration to Europe, from the NHS to devolution, the issues and causes that brought these men to prominence are still of considerable contemporary relevance.

The crafts of governance and diplomacy are spectacular, theatrical, and performative. Performing Statecraft investigates the performances of states, their leaders, and their citizens on an expanded field of the global arts of statecraft to consider the role of performance in the domestic and international affairs of states, and the interventions into global politics by artists, scholars, and activists. Treating theatre as both an art form and a practice of political actors, this book draws together scholarship on the embodied dimensions of governance, the stagecraft of revolution, arts activism on the world stage, sports performance by heads of state, the performativity of national dress, speechmaking and colonialism, war and medicine, singing diplomats, indigenous sovereignties, and performed nationalisms. It brings the perspective and methods of performance studies to bear on global politics, offering exciting new insights into encounters between states, sovereigns, and people. Whether one is watching a campaign speech, a nightly news broadcast, a sacred dance, or a play about global conflict, these chapters make clear the importance of performance as a tool wielded by amateurs and professionals to articulate the nation in global spaces.

This book examines how representations of African in the Anglophone West have changed in the post-imperial age. The period since the Second World War has seen profound changes in sub-Saharan Africa, notably because of decolonization, the creation of independent nation-states and the transformation of the relationships with the West. Using a range of case studies from news media, maps, popular culture, film and TV the contributions assess how narrative and counter-narratives have developed and been received by their audiences in light of these changes. Examining the overlapping areas between media representations and historical events, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies and Media and Cultural Studies.

Inside the Black Box of ‘White Backlash’ researches the contents of the letters of support sent to British politician Enoch Powell in the wake of his so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of April 20, 1968. Never has a politician received so much written support in so short a time. This book takes a thematic approach to investigate the way British whites used Powell’s speech to vent their frustrations, anger, hostility against (non-white) immigrants and the evolution of British society in the late 1960s. Each chapter unpacks one facet of a 10,000-letter sample, out of the approximately 100,000 letters Powell received: Race, State, War, Empire, America, Class, Gender, Elites, Parties, ‘Against’ - with this last chapter analysing letters of protest against Powell. This extraordinary archival material provides an altogether unique window into British society in the late 1960s and reads like a (white) anthropology of nativist Britons in times of swift change. The book will be of interest to both students and academics of race, immigration and ethnicity, as well as by the general public. Olivier Esteves appears in this short video about the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0lA5Nb9cso

The inter-war period (1918-1939) is still remembered as a period of mass deprivation - the 'hungry thirties'. But how did this impression emerge? Thousands of conversations about life in the inter-war period - between parents and children around the dinner table; among workmates at the pub - shaped these understandings. In turn, these fed into popular politics. Stories about the embryonic welfare system in the early-twentieth century informed how people felt towards the National Health Service; memories of the Great Depression shaped arguments about state intervention in the economy. Challenging accounts of widespread political disengagement in the twentieth century, Politics of the Past shows how re-telling family stories about the inter-war period offered ordinary people an accessible way of engaging in politics. Drawing on six local case studies across Scotland and England, this book explains how stories about the inter-war working-class experience in industrial areas came to appear commonplace nationwide.

This edited book aims to contribute to the political science scholarship on populism by focusing on the contemporary manifestations of populism in light of the current context. Populism has gone global, with populist parties gaining considerable ground, particularly in the last decade: populists are now in government in almost every part of the globe. In so doing, this book not only takes stock of the previous work on populism, but also builds upon it to further deepen our understanding of the phenomenon and take research forward. The authors explore different facets of the most recent manifestations of populism, trying to engage in new avenues as suggested by recent and authoritative academic work. The approach is comparative and multi-dimensional, with a cross-regional focus on Western Europe and the USA. The 12 contributions gathered in this book address a wide spectrum of aspects, many of which are largely understudied.