bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
For the “Re-edification of Townes”: The Rebuilding Statutes of Henry VIII
Authors: Tittler Robert
Published: November 2007

The several statutes passed between 1534 and 1544 devoted to the rebuilding of decayed urban housing, collectively known as the Rebuilding Statutes, have been drawn upon in at least two scholarly debates about English government and economic life in the sixteenth century. First, in his discussion of Thomas Cromwell and the Henrician government's efforts to respond to economic and social problems, Professor (now Sir) Geoffrey Elton identified these statutes as important examples of central government initiative. Elton traced the inception of these acts to complaints about the state of housing brought by individuals at court and by the M.P.s of several individual towns. He saw the legislation itself as an example of the central government empowering individual towns to attend to the economic reality of decayed houses in their midst, and found it “an interesting precedent for local and private acts procedures (sic) of later days.” For Elton, then, the Rebuilding Statutes offered evidence of central government initiative in setting economic policy, a view intended to support his more general thesis about the primacy of the 1530s as a “revolutionary” point in the development English governing institutions. The same observation may be taken in support of Elton's later concept that Parliament, along with other central institutions, formed a “point of contact” with such particular and local interests as the towns listed in these statutes.
Country Matters: The Growth of Political Stability a Quarter-Century On
Authors: Landau Norma
Published: November 2007

Like Professor Roberts, I, too, think that re-evaluation of J. H. Plumb'sThe Growth of Political Stability, 1625-1725poses interesting questions. However, unlike Professor Roberts, I do not think that the scholarship of the past quarter-century has undermined the foundations of Plumb's book. In large part, our assessments differ because we interpret Plumb's book differently. Roberts questions Plumb's identification of the structures that stabilized English politics; but Roberts does not present Plumb's diagnosis of what had been destabilizing English politics, and why. I consider that diagnosis the foundation of Plumb's book, for I read Plumb as arguing that the government of independent gentlemen—even if it be government by independent gentlemen—is no easy matter. How to govern effectively without arousing the ire of those whose autonomy effective central government would inevitably infringe? How to avoid attracting the enmity of powerful landowners, of merchants with power of their own, and of a populace with an experience of rebellion egregious even for seventeenth-century Europe? Roberts does not argue with Plumb's diagnosis of the causes of instability. However, his own solution to that problem implies that Plumb's book is ill-founded, for Roberts never mentions the problems intrinsic to governing the independent. Instead, he proposes that England achieved stability because English politicians elaborated constitutional conventions that subordinated the monarch to Parliament, and because the Church of England no longer had to fear for its existence. Roberts is dancing to a Whig beat, but Plumb played a Country tune.
Wellington and the “Open Question”: The Issue of Catholic Emancipation, 1821–1829
Authors: Davis Richard W.
Published: November 2007

For all the recognition of the immense importance of Catholic Emancipation, both in itself and for what it is supposed to have led to (most notably, parliamentary reform), significant questions still surround it. Why, after Daniel O'Connell's victory in County Clare in June 1828 precipitated a crisis, did that crisis drag on for more than six months of perpetual wavering and mixed signals from the British government? Why was a cabinet not summoned? Why did the prime minister so long refuse either to confide in or to remove the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland? Finally, what was the likely effect of these months of shuffling and confusion in shaping the course of politics in the years to come?

The Duke of Wellington is central to answering such questions. Before 1828, Wellington was a key player whose doubts and fears were broadly representative of those that reshaped the positions of many of emancipation's most powerful opponents and brought them around to the necessity of accepting the measure. In 1828 and 1829 as prime minister, Wellington made decisions that were critical in determining how the measure would be carried. Some of those decisions had an important bearing on how emancipation was received in the country and therefore on the political divisions that followed.

The explanation usually given for the government's failure to act is that the king refused to permit it and would not allow the cabinet to consider the matter. In January, when the king asked Wellington to form a government, he had stipulated and the duke had agreed that Catholic Emancipation should not be a government measure.
Heroes or Villains?: The Irish, Crime, and Disorder in Victorian England
Authors: Swift Roger
Published: November 2007

During the Victorian period the link between Irish immigration, crime, and disorder in England was widely regarded by contemporary observers as axiomatic. In 1836 the Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain devoted four pages to the examination of Irish criminality, noting that “the Irish in the larger towns of Lancashire commit more crimes than an equal number of natives of the same places,” and in 1839 the Report of the Constabulary Commissioners observed that in the towns of South Lancashire, “when large bodies of Irish of less orderly habits, and far more prone to the use of violence in fits of intoxication settled permanently in these towns, the existing police force, which was sufficient to repress crime and disorders among a purely English population, has been found, under these altered circumstances, inadequate to the regular enforcement of the law.”

The belief that the Irish in England were the harbingers of crime was by no means novel. With the substantial increase in Irish immigration during the early Victorian period, the host society's widespread belief in the innate criminality of the Irish—and, more particularly, of the Irish poor—formed an integral component of the negative side of the Irish stereotype. Witness, for example, Thomas Carlyle's much-quoted view that “in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence” the Irishman constituted “the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder,” or Henry Mayhew's assertion that “as a body, moreover, the habitual criminals of London are said to be, in nine cases out of ten, ‘Irish Cockneys,’ that is, persons born of Irish parents in the Metropolis.”
“A Tonic to the Nation”: The Festival of Britain, 1951
Authors: Leventhal F. M.
Published: November 2007

No event of the post-Second World War decade in Britain is recalled as affectionately or enveloped in such an aura of nostalgia as the Festival of Britain, a five-month series of cultural events and exhibits, with its centerpiece at the South Bank in London. But the Festival dear to the recollections of those growing up during and after the war diverged sharply from the original conception of its progenitors.

In 1943 the Royal Society of the Arts, partly responsible for the Great Exhibition of 1851, suggested to the government that an international exhibition along similar lines be staged in 1951 to commemorate the earlier event. To propose a celebratory occasion in 1943 was an act of faith that the war would not only end successfully, but that Britain would have recovered sufficiently by 1951 to warrant such a demonstration. In September 1945, with the war over and Labour in power, Gerald Barry, the editor of the News Chronicle, addressed an open letter to Stafford Cripps, then President of the Board of Trade, advocating a trade and cultural exhibition in London as a way of commemorating the centenary of the Crystal Palace. Such an exhibition would advertise British products and display British prowess in design and craftsmanship. He favored a site in the center of London, such as Hyde Park or Battersea, either of which would provide ample space for such an exhibition. What prompted these suggestions was the need to provide practical help to British commerce at a time when it was clearly under pressure shifting from wartime controls to peacetime competition.
High Officeholding, Foreign Policy, and the British Dimension in the Tudor Far North, 1525–1563
Authors: Palmer William
Published: November 2007

On 4 September 1537, Sir Thomas Wharton wrote Thomas Cromwell triumphantly proclaiming the Tudor triumph in the north of England. “In the late Lord Dacre's day,” Wharton declared, “there was a cry of ‘A Dacre, a Dacre,’ and afterward, ‘A Clifford, a Clifford,’ and even then, ‘A Dacre, a Dacre.’ Now [there is] only ‘A King, a King.’” In addition to proclaiming royal supremacy in the north, Wharton also was noting a pattern of persistent change in officeholding in the far north, from Dacre to Clifford, and back to the Dacres. The shifts of fortune among the northern nobility under the Tudors have received considerable attention from scholars. Most importantly, Mervyn James has argued for a gradual Tudor revolution in the north, in which the government slowly replaced traditional noble elites with royal appointees. In several case studies Richard Hoyle has challenged James's interpretation of the behavior of particular nobles, and George Bernard has mounted an often persuasive jeremiad against James and others who have seen an essential conflict during the Tudor period between Crown and nobility. Both Hoyle and Bernard question James' assumption of a natural hostility between king and nobility, arguing, in Hoyle's words, for a relationship that “operated to their mutual and reciprocal benefits.
“Let Truth Be Free”: John Bunyan and the Restoration Crisis of 1667–1673
Authors: Greaves Richard L.
Published: November 2007

In the mid-1980s Stuart historians began a major re-evaluation of the restoration era. Among the principal themes are the period's unsettledness, the continuing impact of the radical tenets that had been manifested so forcefully in the mid-century upheavals, the significance of religion and ideology, and renewed debate over the origin of political parties. As I have suggested elsewhere, the period is most accurately conceived as a time of recurring crises of varying magnitude and duration. The first extended from Oliver Cromwell's death in September 1658 to the passage of the Conventicle Act in 1664, the second from 1667 to the enactment of the Test Act in 1673, the third from the revelation of the spurious Popish Plot in 1678 to the repression of the Rye House schemers and the Monmouth/Russell/Essex cabal in 1683, the fourth the rebellions of the earl of Argyll and the duke of Monmouth in 1685, and the fifth the crisis that entailed the collapse of James II's regime and the constitutional settlement of 1689.

Bunyan lived through the first four periods of crisis and died amid the final one. It is appropriate to ask how this reinterpretation of the restoration period affects our interpretation of Bunyan. Elsewhere I have offered some suggestions, particularly with respect to the crisis of 1678–83 and our understanding of The Holy War, Of Antichrist and His Ruine, and Seasonable Counsel: or, Advice to Sufferers. This essay will focus on the crisis of 1667–73, the principal interpreter of which is Gary De Krey. For him this controversy at root entailed a crucial debate about liberty of conscience—a revival of the debate that in his judgment was central to the mid-century revolution. De Krey makes a compelling case for the significance of the debate in the period 1667–73 because it challenged many of the assumptions on which the restoration settlement was founded, including the limits of political authority, the relationship between church and Crown, and the rights and obligations of subjects. In their various assertions of the right of conscience, nonconformists rejected the restoration settlement by insisting on God's ultimate sovereignty in the spiritual realm and “the autonomy of the conscience as God's vicegerent in that sphere.” For them the issue was not parliamentary versus royal sovereignty—not least because the policy of persecution was parliamentary—but the sovereignty of the conscience against any persecutorial authority.
Eighteenth-Century English Politics: Recent Work
Authors: Black Jeremy
Published: November 2007

This article is intended as a sequel to that written in 1992 and published in Albion the following year (vol. 23, 2 [Fall 1993]: 419–41). It reflects the wealth of scholarship published in recent years, evidence, if any is needed, that the eighteenth century is far from dead; however, it is more than an update or appendix. One of the major problems with review articles and historiographical surveys is that they can range so far back in time that they seem to repeat the controversies of the past rather than to take sufficient note of those of the present or to point the way to those that may be imminent.

Too much historiographical work relates to long-published scholarship. Though this older work was important, surely less emphasis should be placed today on Butterfield and Namier. Not only do their studies appear dated or superseded; they are of interest from the point of how we have got to where we are, while no longer throwing much light on matters. The same is true of works that caused a splash when they appeared, but now seem very much of their time, such as John Brewer's Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (1976).

We are all devoured by time. One of the great pleasures of scholarship is that others come along and build on, revise, or reject our work. Thus, one of the advantages of writing a sequel is that adopting the historiographical longue durée is not necessary and going for the here and now is possible. As with my former essay, there is a powerful element of choice and subjectivity.
“All for Each and Each for All”: Reflections on Anglo-American and Commonwealth Scientific Cooperation, 1940–1945
Authors: MacLeod Roy
Published: November 2007

Twice this century, the wartime mobilization of civilian academic science has been rightly recognized as one of the most remarkable achievements of Britain, the Commonwealth, and the United States. If the first world war demonstrated the Empire's “strength in unity,” the second placed far greater demands on Allied and imperial resources in research, development, and supply. Where the first war witnessed a limited application of scientific advice, on request, and in response to limited problems, the second saw scientists and engineers develop an enormous range of technologies, frequently ahead of military requirements. In the course of the scientific war, new principles of liaison emerged, replacing peacetime practices of professional and institutional coordination. Imperial relations fostered by peacetime bureaux devoted to natural products and industrial research were overtaken by new, larger, and more powerful ministries devoted to supply and production. In certain respects, the demands of science began to drive imperial policy, weaving a fabric of relationships that survived to influence Commonwealth and international science diplomacy well after the war had ended.

At an official level, these were among the most apparent outcomes of imperial science at war. The principal technical results of Allied collaboration—in radar, jet engines, the atomic bomb, for example—are well known. However, beneath myriad homerics of technical and organizational triumphs resides an equally important legacy of imperial rhetoric, symbol, and metaphor, in which the discourses of imperial science and commonwealth became re-examined and revalorized. The respective roles of the “metropolis” and the “periphery”—the geometries of Empire—were redefined by decisions that governed the supply of raw materials, the sharing of sensitive information, and the development of weapons.
“In the Thickest of the Fight”: The Reverend James Scholefield (1790-1855) and the Bible Christians of Manchester and Salford
Authors: Pickering Paul A. , Tyrrell Alex
Published: November 2007

Few places in early nineteenth-century Britain had as grim a reputation as the Manchester suburb of Ancoats. In this concentration of “dark, satanic mills” and festering slums were some of the worst social problems of the Industrial Revolution. Angus Reach, a journalist with the Morning Chronicle, who visited Ancoats in the late 1840s, described it as “entirely an operative colony” containing “some of the most squalid-looking streets, inhabited by swarms of the most squalid-looking people which I have ever seen.” While making his way through this “labyrinth,” Reach saw no promise of anything better. Even the handful of chapels seemed to complement the scene of hopelessness; in a pathetically futile attempt to carry the eye up to a vision of something better their “infinitesimal” Gothic arches and ornaments only served to reinforce “the grimy nakedness” of the surrounding factories.
The Troubled Deathbeds of Henry I's Servants: Death, Confession, and Secular Conduct in the Twelfth Century
Authors: Crouch David
Published: November 2007

When Sir Richard Southern wanted to illustrate the moral compromise that was the inevitable cost of being a courtier and servant of King Henry I of England—the culture of whose court encouraged profiteering and sharp practice—he found the material to hand in a number of surviving letters of the unfortunate Nigel d'Aubigny. At some time between 1109 and 1114 Nigel fell ill, and he believed himself dying. He dictated to his royal master a letter—on which one can almost see the spots of the tears—begging him to confirm the restorations of land that he wanted now to make to various churches he had formerly deprived. Another letter was to his brother, listing further—rather weighty—restorations he wanted made to numerous laymen likewise defrauded by him in the course of his career. Perhaps he felt rather silly when he got better, as he did, and lived for many years more to meditate on his unworthiness.

Sir Richard proved his point, but it occurs to me that the same evidence can be used to explore further a different but related issue: how it was that these men who lived and worked in Henry's service were so very conscious of the moral compromises they had made. If Nigel d'Aubigny was brought to the state that his letters reveal that he was, when he was threatened by death, it can only be because he had been aware of actions that might be considered his sins for quite some while.
King James's Civic Pageant and Parliamentary Speech in March 1604
Authors: Bergeron David M.
Published: November 2007

Near the end of a speech to his first Parliament (19 March 1604), James makes a rhetorical move, disingenuous and shrewd. He offers an excuse “in case you have not found such Eloquence in my Speech, as peradventure you might have looked for at my hands. I might, if I list, alledge the great weight of my Affaires and my continuall businesse and distraction, that I could never have leasure to thinke upon what I was to speake, before I came to the place where I was to speak.” Because James has had almost a year since being named King of England to contemplate his maiden speech to Parliament, we may take his “excuse” as special pleading. Clearly his strategy nicely reinforces the obvious eloquence of the speech; indeed, hearers may marvel all the more at the quality of the speech, given James's apparent lack of leisure to prepare it. James cannot, however, offer a compelling case for lack of time to write this important, initial speech to Parliament; in fact, his own care as a writer argues against this. But if, for the sake of argument, we take him seriously, where might James easily and readily have gotten the major ideas and themes of the speech (beyond his own obvious writings)? I answer that he could have found them in the magnificent royal entry pageant in his honor that occurred only four days (15 March) before the speech to Parliament. Most of the ideas that inform James's speech find some kind of dramatic representation in the pageant. Indeed, I will argue that the pageant and Parliament speech form a continuous event, designed to honor, instruct, and celebrate the king. These two events constitute the most important public events of James's early English reign and therefore make an exceptional claim for historical significance. In order to reach Westminster and Parliament, James must first figuratively and literally pass through London's civic pageant.
Naval Impressment in Tobias Smollett'sRoderick Random
Authors: Ennis Daniel J.
Published: November 2007

In his discussion of Joseph Conrad's fiction inThe Political UnconsciousFredric Jameson writes:

the sea is the empty space between the concrete places of work and life; but it is also, just as surely, itself a place of work and the very element by which an imperial capitalism draws its scattered beachheads and outposts together, through which it slowly realizes its sometimes violent, sometimes silent and corrosive, penetration of the outlying precapitalist zones of the globe.

This linkage of the sea with capitalism allows Jameson to deal with Conrad's novels (especiallyLord JimandNostromo) as, to use Jameson's own phrase, socially symbolic acts—the sea is “the privileged place of the strategy of containment” and it provides Conrad a laboratory where “human relations can be presented in all their ideal formal purity.” Jameson has identified nautical fiction's important place in any story of the novel—the confining (yet paradoxically freeing) nature of the sea (and the ship) screens out the extraneous material of the world, forcing confrontation, laying bare power relations and allowing the writer to focus on the human condition. The sea allows for only the essentials: clearly defined hierarchies, and life and death on easy terms. Jameson links Conrad with high modernism and thus with capitalism, but his positioning of the sea in relation to power and history can be, I believe, “read back” and then applied (in a necessarily nascent form) to the literary sea of the eighteenth century.
The Amboyna Massacre in English Politics, 1624–1632
Authors: Chancey Karen
Published: November 2007

On March 9, 1623, ten English merchants were beheaded on Amboyna in Indonesia by order of Harman van Speult, the Dutch governor of the island. They died accused of plotting to seize control of Fort Victoria, the island's stronghold, in order to take over the local spice trade. Considering the number of lives lost in the centuries of conflict between Dutch and British merchants in the East Indies, the incident on Amboyna seems in hindsight to have been a rather insignificant affair. Yet the occurrence played an important role in English politics under the early Stuarts, and influenced English/Dutch relations for a century.

News of the incident, which the English came to know as the Amboyna Massacre, reached England on May 29, 1624, and caused a diplomatic dilemma. James I, who was negotiating an alliance with the Netherlands against Spain, chose to deal with the situation through diplomacy rather than military reprisals, a position his son supported. It was a decision for which neither the Stuarts' contemporaries nor their modern chroniclers would forgive them. John Chamberlain, the friend and correspondent of many important court figures, wrote in July 1624 that he hoped James would “say lesse so he would do more” to make the Dutch pay for insulting English honor. By February of the next year, he was lamenting that he had “knowne the time when they [the Dutch] durst not have offered the least of those indignities we have lately swallowed and indured.” Chamberlain's belief that James's policy consisted primarily of inaction, and that it played into the hands of the Dutch, has been a popular theme in modern accounts.
From a Protectionist Party to a Church Party, 1846–48: Identity Crisis of the Conservative Party and the Jew Bill of 1847
Authors: Chung Heera
Published: November 2007

This article investigates the influence of the Maynooth and Repeal crises on Conservative politicians after 1846 and the putative maintenance of their identity as defenders of the Church after the Disruption of the party. Historians of the Conservative party have long realized that it suffered from a crisis of identity for a long time after 1846. Some of the leading Peelites were heading more and more towards the Liberal party, and most backbench Peelites gradually joined the Protectionist party; but the Protectionists did not have enough experienced leaders to qualify for the inheritance. Norman Gash has argued that “the Protectionists were not a political party in the sense of one able to provide and sustain a Government in the circumstances of the mid-nineteenth century…. The weakness of the Protectionists was not merely that after 1846 they represented the Conservative party with most of the brains knocked out, but that until they could shake off the monolithic character implied by their title, they could scarcely hope to become a national party or form a viable Government.” Likewise Robert Stewart and John Ramsden consider that the Protectionists were unable to take the place of the Conservative party, given their lack of effective and experienced leaders. It is undeniable that the Protectionist party was not as strong as the Conservative party had been in terms of executive capacity or party organization. But to say also that it was unable to inherit the mantle of Conservatism is to fall into the same trap as Gash and to exaggerate the importance of Peelite executive ability. More significant is the fact that the party of Stanley and Disraeli maintained fidelity to the core principles of the Conservative party—i. e. the constitution of Church and State, and the principle of protectionism. In this sense, the Protectionist party did become the sole inheritor of the Conservative party during the later 1840s.
Providence, Predestination and Progress: or, did the Enlightenment Fail?
Authors: Clark J. C. D.
Published: November 2007

Early in 2002, the earth experienced a near-miss: an asteroid passed within a whisker (in astronomical terms) of the planet. Had it struck, it would have done so with a force six hundred times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. No observer saw it coming, and it was tracked only after it had passed; yet this event produced little surprise. We already knew that the secure foundations of modernism had moved beneath our feet: the idea of continental drift; then pollution; then global climate change; then epidemic disease, AIDS; now the realization that life on this planet is regularly challenged, and at longer periods catastrophically transformed, by the impact of extraterrestrial objects. Asteroids are rational in the sense that they obey mechanical laws well understood since Newton; yet their intrusion into our world says nothing of human or divine reason, and seems to re-assert the old doctrine: chance rules all.
English History Abridged: John Stow's Shorter Chronicles and Popular History
Authors: Beer Barrett L.
Published: November 2007

John Stow's abridged chronicles present a short, simplified version of English history that formed an important component of sixteenth-century popular culture. The author was a citizen historian, a self-educated man, whose social status placed him outside the gentry, and a scholar who was closer to medieval traditions than to the New Learning associated with Renaissance humanism. Stow and his chronicles therefore stand apart from the university-educated intellectual elite whose writings shaped the high culture of Elizabethan England. His abridged chronicles, based on his largerAnnales of England, offered readers of lower social and economic status a more affordable national history than was available in the larger quarto volumes. This essay considers the character of abridged chronicles, examines Stow's interpretation of a variety of significant topics from the Norman Conquest to the death of Henry VIII, and argues that Stow's work offers valuable insights into the historical understanding of ordinary men and women.

For centuries John Stow, identified in theDictionary of National Biographyas a “chronicler and antiquary,” lived in the shadow of more illustrious contemporaries. Shakespeare preferred Raphael Holinshed's chronicle to Stow'sAnnales of Englandas the source for his history plays while William Camden was a scholar of vastly greater erudition to whom theDNBassigned the higher status of “historian.” In contrast to the glittering literati of Elizabethan England, Stow is usually cast in gray, a worthy man of negligible learning who through a lifetime of hard work produced books that were generally accurate but dull.
Henry Brougham and the 1818 Westmorland Election: A Study in Provincial Opinion and the Opening of Constituency Politics
Authors: Hay William Anthony
Published: November 2007

An extensive literature that has appeared over the past two decades on the Hanoverian electorate and political culture at the constituency level provides a more sophisticated understanding of party conflict in Britain during the long eighteenth century than earlier work focused on high politics or other subjects. H. T. Dickinson points out that most people experienced politics at the constituency level where negotiations between different political groups within communities and the voters provided a voice for competing interests that an older historiography focused on high politics failed to recognize. These local aspects of Hanoverian politics established the context for two important developments in the early nineteenth century; a greater appreciation for the impact of public opinion on politics at Westminster and the development of a two-party system. The emergence of a self-conscious provincial identity sustained by new economic and institutional forces drove both trends. Christopher Wyvill's Yorkshire Association formed in 1779, the General Chamber of Manufacturers founded in 1785, anti-war petitioning efforts by local groups during the conflict with Napoleon, and the successful campaign in 1812 against the regulatory Orders in Council demonstrated the growing impact of provincial activism. The intersection between new provincial interests focused on issues debated at Westminster and constituency politics with its own rituals and dynamics provides an opening to explore the final decades of the Hanoverian political order. Connections between local and metropolitan drew into sharper focus as party conflict at Westminster extended into national politics.
Which?craft in Post-War Britain: The Consumers' Association and the Politics of Affluence
Authors: Black Lawrence
Published: November 2007

Consumption has recently acquired key importance in re-interpreting post-war British politics. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska has argued the Conservative construction of a popular alliance in opposition to rationing and controls was crucial to their electoral recovery after 1945 and in securing an advantage among women voters. A wealth of evidence indicates Labour, by contrast, had scant purchase on affluence in the later 1950s. It was not only, as Amy Black and Stephen Brooke would have it, “Labour's befuddlement at the problem of women and gender,” but that it was ambivalent, if not hostile, towards the goods, lifestyles and values associated with consumerism and the people obtaining and exhibiting them. Other factors blur differentiation between the parties. Both were affiliated to the world of production—through their business and trade union links. Richard Findley has contended the Conservative abolition of resale price maintenance (RPM, whereby manufacturers fixed retail prices) in 1964, aroused electorally deleterious opposition from manufacturers and backbenchers. And while Labour consumerists were rare commodities, as is argued here, Labour revisionism made an important contribution to the Consumers' Association (CA).

This focus on consumerism corrects the neglect of it by narratives like political consensus or historians' consuming passion with production and work. It arises from rethinking Britain's much vaunted “decline” as, for example, the transition to a post-industrial society. In Matthew Hilton's hands how the consumer “interest” was variously articulated and gendered becomes a means to unlock modern citizenship and the configuration of private and public spheres.
Murine Antithymocyte Globulin Therapy Alters Disease Progression in NOD Mice by a Time-Dependent Induction of Immunoregulation
Authors: Simon Greg , Parker Matthew , Ramiya Vijayakumar , Wasserfall Clive , Huang Yanfei , Bresson Damien , Schwartz R. Fletcher , Campbell-Thompson Martha , Tenace Lauren , Brusko Todd , Xue Song , Scaria Abraham , Lukason Michael , Eisenbeis Scott , Williams John , Clare-Salzler Michael , Schatz Desmond , Kaplan Bruce , Von Herrath Matthias , Womer Karl , Atkinson Mark A.
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—Antilymphocyte serum can reverse overt type 1 diabetes in NOD mice; yet, the therapeutic parameters and immunological mechanisms underlying the ability for this agent to modulate autoimmune responses against β-cells are unclear, forming the rationale for this investigation.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—A form of antilymphocyte serum, rabbit anti-mouse thymocyte globulin (mATG), was utilized in a variety of in vivo and in vitro settings, each for the purpose of defining the physiological, immunological, and metabolic activities of this agent, with particular focus on actions influencing development of type 1 diabetes.

RESULTS—We observed that mATG attenuates type 1 diabetes development in an age-dependent fashion, only proving efficacious at disease onset or in the late pre-diabetic phase (12 weeks of age). When provided at 12 weeks of age, mATG reversed pancreatic insulitis, improved metabolic responses to glucose challenge, and rapidly increased frequency of antigen-presenting cells in spleen and pancreatic lymph nodes. Surprisingly, mATG therapy dramatically increased, in an age-dependent fashion, the frequency and the functional activity of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T-cells. Adoptive transfer/cotransfer studies of type 1 diabetes also support the concept that mATG treatment induces a stable and transferable immunomodulatory repertoire in vivo.

CONCLUSIONS—These findings indicate that an induction of immunoregulation, rather than simple lymphocyte depletion, contributes to the therapeutic efficacy of antithymocyte globulin and suggest that time-dependent windows for the ability to delay or reverse type 1 diabetes exist based on the capacity to enhance the functional activity of regulatory T-cells.
Nephropathy in Type 1 Diabetes Is Diminished in Carriers of HLA-DRB1*04
Authors: Cordovado Suzanne K. , Zhao Yuan , Warram James H. , Gong Hongguang , Anderson Karen L. , Hendrix Miyono M. , Hancock Laura N. , Cleary Patricia A. , Mueller Patricia W.
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—The purpose of this study was to examine whether known genetic risk factors for type 1 diabetes (HLA-DRB1, -DQA1, and -DQB1 and insulin locus) play a role in the etiology of diabetic nephropathy.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Genetic analysis of HLA-DRB1, -DQA1, -DQB1 and the insulin gene (INS) was performed in the Genetics of Kidneys in Diabetes (GoKinD) collection of DNA (European ancestry subset), which includes case patients with type 1 diabetes and nephropathy (n = 829) and control patients with type 1 diabetes but not nephropathy (n = 904). The availability of phenotypic and genotypic data on GoKinD participants allowed a detailed analysis of the association of these genes with diabetic nephropathy.

RESULTS—Diabetic probands who were homozygous for HLA-DRB1*04 were 50% less likely to have nephropathy than probands without any DRB1*04 alleles. In heterozygous carriers, a protective effect of this allele was not as clearly evident; the mode of inheritance therefore remains unclear. This association was seen in probands with both short (<28 years, P = 0.02) and long (≥28 years, P = 0.0001) duration of diabetes. A1C, a marker of sustained hyperglycemia, was increased in control probands with normoalbuminuira, despite long-duration diabetes, from 7.2 to 7.3 to 7.7% with 0, 1, and 2 copies of the DRB1*04 allele, respectively. This result is consistent with a protective effect of DRB1*04 that may allow individuals to tolerate higher levels of hyperglycemia, as measured by A1C, without developing nephropathy.

CONCLUSIONS—These data suggest that carriers of DRB1*04 are protected from some of the injurious hyperglycemic effects related to nephropathy. Interestingly, DRB1*04 appears to be both a risk allele for type 1 diabetes and a protective allele for nephropathy.
Recruitment to a Clinical Trial Improves Glycemic Control in Patients With Diabetes
Authors: Gale Edwin A.M. , Beattie Scott D. , Hu Jinghui , Koivisto Veikko , Tan Meng H.
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—We assessed the effect upon A1C of recruitment to a clinical trial in patients with diabetes who had been screened and interviewed to determine eligibility but whose therapy was otherwise unchanged.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Eligible trials were selected from the global program of an insulin manufacturer. Included were studies in which patients were seen on a single screening visit, pharmaceutical therapy was not altered before randomization, and A1C was measured in a central laboratory at both screening and randomization. Three trials involving patients with type 1 diabetes (n = 429) and three trials involving patients with type 2 diabetes (n = 611) were identified for analysis. The main outcome measure was change in A1C. Separate regression equations on the change in A1C were fitted for type 1 and type 2 diabetes and included effects of baseline A1C and the interval between the screening and randomization visits.

RESULTS—A1C changed by −0.13% (range +0.09 to −0.26%) in those with type 1 diabetes at a median of 28 days and by −0.16% (−0.14 to −0.27%) for those with type 2 diabetes at a median of 14 days. The mean change in A1C in those with an interval of ≥28 days was −0.24% for those with type 1 diabetes and −0.23% for those with type 2 diabetes. The reduction was proportional to initial A1C, with large decreases in those with the poorest initial control but no overall change in those at or below the 10th percentile of A1C.

CONCLUSIONS—Recruitment to a clinical trial, independent of any therapeutic intervention, produces improvements in glucose control.
Trends in Hospitalizations for Diabetes Among Children and Young Adults
Authors: Lee Joyce M. , Okumura Megumi J. , Freed Gary L. , Menon Ram K. , Davis Matthew M.
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—The purpose of this study was to examine national trends in hospitalizations associated with diabetes for U.S. children and young adults.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—The study included hospital discharges for individuals aged 0–29 years with a diagnosis of diabetes (250.xx) in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (1993–2004). Outcomes were weighted, nationally representative estimates of the frequency of population-adjusted hospital discharges and hospital charges (2004 $U.S.).

RESULTS—Among individuals aged 0–29 years, population-adjusted rates of hospitalizations associated with diabetes over the 12-year period increased by 38% (99.1 of 100,000 in 1993 and 136.4 of 100,000 in 2004; P < 0.001 for curvilinear trend). Age-specific increases in annual hospitalizations for diabetes occurred primarily among individuals aged 20–24 years (152.6 of 100,000 in 1993 and 222.2 of 100,000 in 2004) and 25–29 years (224.9 of 100,000 in 1993 and 331.2 of 100,000 in 2004). Trends in hospitalizations among younger individuals showed no significant patterns. Hospitalization rates were consistently higher for females than for males, with a greater rate of increase for females (42%) than for males (29%) (P < 0.001). Inflation-adjusted total charges for diabetes hospitalizations increased 130%, from $1.05 billion in 1993 to $2.42 billion in 2004.

CONCLUSIONS—The number of young adults hospitalized with diabetes in the U.S. has increased significantly over the last decade. Sex-specific differences in hospitalization rates and trends in obesity among U.S. children may amplify future trends in diabetes hospitalizations and corresponding rapid growth in associated health care expenditures.
Management of Type 2 Diabetes in Treatment-Naive Elderly Patients
Authors: Pratley Richard E. , Rosenstock Julio , Pi-Sunyer F. Xavier , Banerji Mary Ann , Schweizer Anja , Couturier Andre , Dejager Sylvie
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of vildagliptin in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Efficacy data from five double-blind, randomized, placebo- or active-controlled trials of ≥24 weeks’ duration were pooled. Effects of 24-week vildagliptin monotherapy (100 mg daily) were compared in younger (<65 years, n = 1,231) and older (≥65 years, n = 238) patients. Safety data from eight controlled clinical trials of ≥12-weeks’ duration were pooled; adverse event profiles in younger (n = 1,890) and older (n = 374) patients were compared.

RESULTS—Mean baseline A1C and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) were significantly lower in older (70 years: 8.3 ± 0.1% and 9.6 ± 0.1 mmol/l, respectively) than in younger (50 years: 8.7 ± 0.0% and 10.5 ± 0.1 mmol/l, respectively) patients. Despite this, the adjusted mean change from baseline (AMΔ) in A1C was −1.2 ± 0.1% in older and −1.0 ± 0.0% in younger vildagliptin-treated patients (P = 0.092), and the AMΔ in FPG was significantly larger in older (−1.5 ± 0.2 mmol/l) than in younger (−1.1 ± 0.1 mmol/l, P = 0.035) patients. Body weight was significantly lower at baseline in older (83.4 ± 1.0 kg) than in younger (92.0 ± 0.6 kg) patients. Weight decreased significantly in the older subgroup (AMΔ −0.9 ± 0.3 kg, P = 0.007), whereas smaller, nonsignificant decreases occurred in younger patients (AMΔ −0.2 ± 0.1 kg). Adverse event rates were slightly higher in older than in younger subgroups but were lower among older, vildagliptin-treated subjects (63.6%) than in the pooled active comparator group (68.1%). Vildagliptin treatment did not increase adverse events among older patients with mild renal impairment (62.0%). Hypoglycemia was rare (0.8%) in the elderly patients, and no severe events occurred.

CONCLUSIONS—Vildagliptin monotherapy was effective and well tolerated in treatment-naive elderly patients.
Matching With Multiple Control Groups With Adjustment for Group Differences
Authors: Stuart Elizabeth A. , Rubin Donald B.
Published: November 2007

When estimating causal effects from observational data, it is desirable to approximate a randomized experiment as closely as possible. This goal can often be achieved by choosing a subsample from the original control group that matches the treatment group on the distribution of the observed covariates. However, sometimes the original control group cannot provide adequate matches for the treatment group. This article presents a method to obtain matches from multiple control groups. In addition to adjusting for differences in observed covariates between the groups, the method adjusts for a group effect that distinguishes between the control groups. This group effect captures the additional otherwise unobserved differences between the control groups, beyond that accounted for by the observed covariates. The method is illustrated and evaluated using data from an evaluation of a school drop-out prevention program that uses matches from both local and nonlocal control groups.
A Mixed Effects Randomized Item Response Model
Authors: Fox J.-P. , Wyrick Cheryl
Published: November 2007

The randomized response technique ensures that individual item responses, denoted as true item responses, are randomized before observing them and so-called randomized item responses are observed. A relationship is specified between randomized item response data and true item response data. True item response data are modeled with a (non)linear mixed effects and/or item response theory model. Although the individual true item responses are masked through randomizing the responses, the model extension enables the computation of individual true item response probabilities and estimates of individuals’ sensitive behavior/attitude and their relationships with background variables taking into account any clustering of respondents. Results are presented from a College Alcohol Problem Scale (CAPS) where students were interviewed via direct questioning or via a randomized response technique. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm is given for estimating simultaneously all model parameters given hierarchical structured binary or polytomous randomized item response data and background variables.
The Concentrations of Ceftazidime and Thiopental in Maternal Plasma, Placental Tissue and Amniotic Fluid in Early Pregnancy
Authors: Jørgensen N. P. , Walstad R. A. , Molne K.
Published: November 2007

Studies on the transfer of drugs from mother to fetus in the first trimester of pregnancy are important because of the possible teratogenic effect on the fetus as well as possible therapeutic effect on both sides of the feto‐maternal barrier. The purpose of this study was to measure drug concentrations in maternal plasma, placental tissue and amniotic fluid in a group of first‐trimester abortion patients. Ceftazidime and thiopental were chosen as experimental drugs. The analyses were done with high pressure liquid chromatography. The penetration of ceftacidime into placental tissue and amniotic fluid was 20.6 and 2.2% from 1 to 4 h after drug administration. The corresponding values for thiopental were 54.3–71 and 1.5–7.4% from 5 to 15 min after drug administration, indicating a rapid transfer of both drugs across the feto‐maternal barrier during this period in pregnancy.
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin and Alpha‐Fetoprotein in Sera and Tumor Cells of a Patient with Pure Dysgerminoma of the Ovary: A case report with radio‐immunoassay and immunoperoxidase
Authors: Sekiya S. , Inaba N. , Takamizawa H. , Nagao K.
Published: November 2007

On of 7 patients with pure dysgerminoma had slightly elevated serum human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) and α‐fetoprotein (AFP) levels as determined by radio‐immunoassay before operation. The values returned to the normal range after the removal of the tumor. The cells that produced the HCG or AFP were identified by immunohistochemical staining of the tumor tissues. HCG proved positive both in the multinucleated giant cells with eosinophilic cytoplasm and in the spindle‐shaped cells with a hyperchromatic nucleus. AFP was positively stained in the round cells. These results suggest that HCG and AFP are produced by the cells which constitute pure dysgerminoma.
International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Birthweight; Plurality; And Perinatal And Infant Mortality: II: Comparisons Between Birthweight Distributions Of Births In Member Countries From 1970 To 1984
Authors: Evans Stephen , Alberman Eva
Published: November 2007

Member states of the International and Collaborative Effort (ICE) are the United States of America, England and Wales, Denmark, Bavaria and North Rhine‐Westphalia of the Federal Republic of Germany, Israel, Japan, Norway, Scotland and Sweden. The group has collected, analysed and compared distributions of birthweight for member countries, where available from 1970 onwards, for singleton and all livebirths, stillbirths, early and late neonatal and postneonatal deaths. The present paper is an account of the differences in birthweight distributions, and trends over time seen between and within countries, for livebirths and stillbirths. The major findings are the relative robustness over time of the parameters which characterize the distribution of birthweight within countries, and the marked and consistent differences between these distributions in different countries.