A sensitive analysis of the thought and intellectual development of G. D. H. Cole (1889-1959) the distinguished Labour historian. Cole's career is traced from his earliest days in the Labour movement to his final years as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Thought at Oxford. Professor Carpenter examines Cole's role in the creation of Guild Socialism; his work in the early 1920s when after the decline of Guild Socialism, he turned towards the analysis of policies, research through the New Statesman and the New Fabian Research Bureau and teaching at Oxford; his attempts to provide a policy for the Left in the 1930s, the idea of economic planning and the Popular Front; his activities during the Second World War; and his place in the debates over the Labour movement's cause after the 1945 government. Finally Professor Carpenter discusses Cole's courageous recognition, towards the end of his life, that Socialism had not come and his attempts to start a new cycle of research in one of the first efforts to create a New Left.

Today we can hardly imagine life in Europe without roads and theautomobiles that move people and goods around. In fact, the vastmajority of movement in Europe takes place on the road. Travelersuse the car to explore parts of the continent on their holidays,and goods travel large distances to reach consumers. Indeed, thetwentieth century has deservedly been characteried as the centuryof the car. The situation looked very different around 1900.People crossing national borders by car encountered multiplehurdles on their way. Technically, they imported their vehicleinto a neighboring country and had to pay astronomic importduties. Often they needed to pass a driving test in each countrythey visited. Early on, automobile and touring clubs sought tomake life easier for traveling motorists.International negotiations tackled the problems arising fromdiffering regulations. The resulting volume describes everythingfrom the standardied traffic signs that saved human lives on theroad to the Europabus taking tourists from Stockholm to Romein the 1950s. Driving Europe offers a highly original portrait of aEurope built on roads in the course of the twentieth century.

Helena Gutteridge was born in England in 1879. A militant suffragist, tutored by the Pankhursts, she learned the politics of confrontation early. Emigrating to Vancouver in 1911, she found the suffrage movement there too polite and organized the B.C. Woman's Suffrage League to help working women fight for the vote. And she kept on organizing. As a journeyman tailor she was a power in her union local, and as the only woman on the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council -- their 'rebel girl' -- she championed the rights of workers and organized women to fight for themselves. In the 1930s, as a member of the feisty new political movement, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, she joined in the struggles of the unemployed for work and wages. Then, in 1937, as the first woman ever elected to Vancouver City Council, she led the fight for low-income housing. Irene Howard made it her task, over a period of years, to search out and assemble details of Helena's life and career, and to interview old comrades who knew Helena and the turbulent times in which she lived. Herself a miner's daughter, the author brings to her subject an affectionate regard and sympathy qualified by the larger view of the scholar and researcher. The result is a lively biography, shot through with humour and pathos, that pays homage to Helena Gutteridge and to many of the people who have been inspired by a cause and who have taught us about the politics of caring.

The texts in this collection of 10 volumes demonstrate both the diversity and continuity in British theories of democratic socialism. The selection encompasses the Ricardian socialists, the Christian socialists, and the Fabian socialists. Volume 7 includes ‘Principles of Economic Planning’ by G.D.H.Cole.

Socialists are united far more by their shared opposition to anomic individualism than by their commitment to any single interpretative scheme or body of beliefs. However, the 42 texts by the 27 socialists represented in this collection show that, in spite of the striking differences, there are certain crucial similarities and points of convergence. These volumes show that in Britain, at least in the years from 1825-1952, the democrats who called themselves socialists tended to concentrate their discussion around four common themes that served as the core of their common cause: quest for community, the institution of equality, the rehabilitation of the state, and transition by consent. The classic texts contained in these ten volumes, which encompass the Ricardian socialists, the Christian socialists, and the Fabian socialists, seek to make human interaction and social responsibility the centrepiece of economic debate from a variety of ideological perspectives. These key contributions to British thought between 1825 and 1952 are still a source of stimulus to students of political economy even as they have acquired the status of great historical works.

Graham Greene remarked that 'politics are in the air we breathe, like the presence or absence of a God' (The Other Man). This study is the first to provide a detailed consideration of the impact of his political thought and involvements on his writings both fictional and factual. It also offers the first detailed consideration of Greene's involvements in espionage and British intelligence from the 1920s until the late-1980s. It incorporates material not only from his major fictions but also from his prolific journalism, letters to the press, private correspondence, diaries and working manuscripts and typescripts, as well as consideration of the diverse political involvements and writings of his extended family network. It shows how the full range of Greene's writings was inspired and underpinned by his fascination with the essential human duality of political action and religious belief, coupled with an insistent need as a writer to keep the political personal.

An exploration of Labour's 1931 pledge to create a planned socialist economy and the reasons for its failure to do so. In the general election of 1931, the Labour Party campaigned on the slogan "Plan or Perish". The party's pledge to create a planned socialist economy was a novelty, and marked the rejection of the gradualist, evolutionary socialism to which Labour had adhered under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. Although heavily defeated in that election, Labour stuck to its commitment. The Attlee government came to power in 1945 determined to plan comprehensively. Yet, the aspiration to create a fully planned economy was not met. This book explores the origins and evolution of the promise, in order to explain why it was not fulfilled. RICHARD TOYE lectures in history at Homerton College, Cambridge.

The Politics of Crisis is an interpretation of the most dramatic periods of modern British political history - the decade and a half between 1931 and 1945. Formed to sustain the British economy in the midst of the Great Depression, the National Governments of the 1930s achieved this and more, and electoral popularity unmatched since. Yet the conventional wisdom about those Governments is full of the unemployment that they inherited, as it is of the image of Neville Chamberlain trying and failing to buy peace from Hitler at Munich. For then comes the Second World War and Winston Churchill and victory of a kind for Britain, and a curious form of domestic politics that, with peace restored, witnesses the victor turned out of office. The Politics of Crisis clinically assesses the evidence and these events and provides a challenging and new interpretation of them.