Dec 31
Editor of DHP Stephanie Brown (@StephEmmaBrown) looks back at 2019.
As it is New Year’s Eve, let’s take one final look at 2019, before the resolutions of 2020 begin. In fact, it was a resolution that kicked off 2019 for DHP. Veganuary saw Greggs launch their vegan sausage roll and they quickly struggled to keep up with demand. Piers Morgan called the bakery ‘PC-ravaged clowns’, however, Zoe Farrell uncovered the long history behind veganism.
by Christopher Day (@ChrisDay96)
Since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, the country’s future relationship with the Republic of Ireland has been a key issue. The question of what to do about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has been crucial in negotiations between the UK and the EU, but (at the time of writing) no answer has been found agreeable by all parties. Given the legacy of British involvement in Ireland, and the continuing desire of Northern Ireland to remain in the UK, this issue is especially pertinent and potentially fractious. But that has not stopped several commentators from positing the troubling suggestion that the Republic could simply leave the EU too, thus avoiding the need to create a hard border on the island of Ireland. This idea is a non-starter; a poll in March 2019 showed that just eight percent of Irish people favoured leaving the EU. Rightly, those who have suggested this ‘solution’ to the issue have been widely castigated. Read more
By Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn)
Petitions, marches and referendums have been in the news a lot lately, manifestations of frustration from people who do not feel represented by those in power, and so undertake direct action in an attempt to gain leverage, produce change, or simply quell an increasing feeling of powerlessness. I am of course referencing the online petition to revoke article 50, which as I write has amassed 6,065,623 signatures and rising, comfortably securing the title of most popular online petition in the history of online petitions. The government responded to this petition on the 26th March, asserting ‘this Government will not revoke Article 50. We will honour the result of the 2016 referendum and work with Parliament to deliver a deal that ensures we leave the European Union’.
By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland)
Over recent months I’ve watched more parliamentary debates than ever before. I imagine I’m not alone. This is perhaps a bold confession for a historian of political culture – admittedly, I’m more familiar with nineteenth-century Hansard than BBC Parliament. Numerous historical parallels have been drawn over Brexit, some more accurate than others. I won’t dwell here on what the EU referendum result says about the legacy of empire, whether Brexit will split the Tory party like the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, or politicians’ astonishing displays of historical illiteracy over Ireland. But with media attention fixed firmly on Westminster as the drama continues to unfold, I’ve been reflecting on the place of constitutional history in the public imagination.
by Emily Redican-Bradford (efr27@cam.ac.uk) & Dr Hanno Balz (hb528@cam.ac.uk)
Emily Redican-Bradford interviews Dr Hanno Balz, who has recently joined the Faculty of History at Cambridge, having previously taught at the universities of Bremen, Lüneburg and John Hopkins. His research focuses on Modern German and European History.
Dr Balz, as part of your research, you examine the protest movements and student revolts of 1968. Does this time period represent a turning point in how protest and political cultures in Western Europe were understood, in your opinion?
Yes, I think we can say that, especially when we look at the protests as, first of all, student protests. This is the first time, after the Second World War, that the majority of the students are more liberal-minded or left-wing than the overall population. This was not the case before the war, when it was so much more elitist. In post-war societies, universities built a lot of new institutes and governments opened up the universities for working-class youth, because a new generation was needed for more demanding jobs. It was mainly training and educating white-collar workers, and that’s a change. It’s an expression of the New Left as well, and it’s also a youth movement that’s an anti-systemic movement, which ventures away from the old party structures, the labour union structures, that had had a grip on left-wing mobilization for the previous hundred years.
A week ago UK Prime Minister Theresa May caught almost everyone by surprise by calling an election for the beginning of June. As the dust settles and the party machines grind into action, Carys Brown (@HistoryCarys) takes a brief look at the key facts. Read more
