Simon Tate
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719083716
- eISBN:
- 9781781706237
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719083716.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This book addresses the Anglo-American special relationship from the perspective of post-Second World War British governments. Drawing upon original research, it investigates how these governments ...
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This book addresses the Anglo-American special relationship from the perspective of post-Second World War British governments. Drawing upon original research, it investigates how these governments have perceived the special relationship and attempted to perform a foreign policy role within it. In so doing, the book explores how the British foreign policy making process has repeatedly challenged the dominant idea that Britain's ability to influence international affairs has been waning and that British governments have accepted a position of subservience to the hegemony of the US. The book also argues that, at key moments of post-War international crisis, successive British governments have attempted to re-play the same foreign policy role within the special relationship that Churchill's government defined in 1945. By setting contemporary British foreign policy into its historical context, it offers fresh insights into why Tony Blair's government felt it must participate in the Iraq war and questions anew why this decision was flawed. The book contends that the foreign policy failure that Blair experienced during the Iraq war was both inevitable the legacy of successive British governments’ inertia towards Britain's role in the special relationship. It concludes that these failings are likely to be re-played and demonstrates how and why the role of the special relationship in British foreign policy must be urgently rethought. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book will appeal to students, academics and a wider readership with an interest in politics, geopolitics, geography, international relations, British foreign policy and post-Second World War British history.Less
This book addresses the Anglo-American special relationship from the perspective of post-Second World War British governments. Drawing upon original research, it investigates how these governments have perceived the special relationship and attempted to perform a foreign policy role within it. In so doing, the book explores how the British foreign policy making process has repeatedly challenged the dominant idea that Britain's ability to influence international affairs has been waning and that British governments have accepted a position of subservience to the hegemony of the US. The book also argues that, at key moments of post-War international crisis, successive British governments have attempted to re-play the same foreign policy role within the special relationship that Churchill's government defined in 1945. By setting contemporary British foreign policy into its historical context, it offers fresh insights into why Tony Blair's government felt it must participate in the Iraq war and questions anew why this decision was flawed. The book contends that the foreign policy failure that Blair experienced during the Iraq war was both inevitable the legacy of successive British governments’ inertia towards Britain's role in the special relationship. It concludes that these failings are likely to be re-played and demonstrates how and why the role of the special relationship in British foreign policy must be urgently rethought. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book will appeal to students, academics and a wider readership with an interest in politics, geopolitics, geography, international relations, British foreign policy and post-Second World War British history.
Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199601639
- eISBN:
- 9780191756306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199601639.003.0005
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
This chapter traces the events that culminated in Cecil King’s Mirror Group assuming virtual monopoly control over British-owned magazines. During and after the Second World War Britain’s magazine ...
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This chapter traces the events that culminated in Cecil King’s Mirror Group assuming virtual monopoly control over British-owned magazines. During and after the Second World War Britain’s magazine industry had operated as a collusive oligopoly due largely to the requirements of paper rationing which lasted until 1950 (later for newspapers). Throughout the 1950s Amalgamated Press, Newnes, and Odhams exploited the buoyancy of demand for women’s weekly magazines, which saw Woman’s sales reach over 3 million. However, falling advertising revenues, linked to the introduction of commercial television, and rising costs, particularly of union-controlled labour, ultimately prompted a series of takeovers. Despite political concerns surrounding Odhams’ Daily Herald, which obliged Harold MacMillan’s government to appoint a second Royal Commission on the Press in 1961, King’s Mirror Group swallowed Amalgamated Press in 1958 and the recently combined Odhams and Newnes two years later, thereby thwarting Roy Thomson’s bid, to create the mammoth IPC.Less
This chapter traces the events that culminated in Cecil King’s Mirror Group assuming virtual monopoly control over British-owned magazines. During and after the Second World War Britain’s magazine industry had operated as a collusive oligopoly due largely to the requirements of paper rationing which lasted until 1950 (later for newspapers). Throughout the 1950s Amalgamated Press, Newnes, and Odhams exploited the buoyancy of demand for women’s weekly magazines, which saw Woman’s sales reach over 3 million. However, falling advertising revenues, linked to the introduction of commercial television, and rising costs, particularly of union-controlled labour, ultimately prompted a series of takeovers. Despite political concerns surrounding Odhams’ Daily Herald, which obliged Harold MacMillan’s government to appoint a second Royal Commission on the Press in 1961, King’s Mirror Group swallowed Amalgamated Press in 1958 and the recently combined Odhams and Newnes two years later, thereby thwarting Roy Thomson’s bid, to create the mammoth IPC.
