In November 1980, James Callaghan retired as leader of the Labour Party. He had been on the front line of British politics for many years and was the only person to hold all of the four great offices of state. However, his premiership is seen as a failure, the last gasp of Keynesian social democracy being smothered by the oncoming advent of Thatcherism. This book offers a timely reappraisal of Jim Callaghan's premiership and time as Leader of the Opposition in 1979–80.
`Callaghan is a symbol of our present age as well as our past, New Labour as well as Old. He links the age of Clem Attlee and that of Tony Blair.' Kenneth Morgan 'This is a classic political life, critical, well-balanced, compellingly written' Brian Brivati, The Times 'It is hard to see how the book could have been better done' Alan Watkins, The Spectator 'A superb portrait and a fascinating work of historical scholarship that will become a classic text' Ben Pimlott, The Guardian 'Callaghan was regarded as the epitome of the Labour Party's right-wing establishment. Yet Kenneth Morgan's biography reveals him to be far more interesting and far more complex than that.' Gerald Kaufman, Daily Telegraph This fascinating biography, written by leading historian Kenneth Morgan, tells the story of a man who had a unique political career. Starting in humble circumstances, James Callaghan went on to hold all the major offices of state: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and,for three tumultuous years, from 1976 to 1979, Prime Minister. This meticulously researched study takes the reader from the age of Attlee to the days of New Labour under Blair.
This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students.
During the course of the Twentieth Century, nineteen men and one woman - from Robert Cecil, Third Marquis of Salisbury to Tony Blair - have occupied the post of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
In this authoritative and gripping book--the first full account of the 1976 International Monetary Fund crisis--Kathleen Burk and Alec Cairncross peel back the surface of the most searing economic crisis of postwar Britain to reveal its historical roots and contemporary context. During the spring of 1976, the plummeting value of the British pound against the U.S. dollar triggered a traumatic economic and political crisis. International confidence in the pound collapsed; an article in the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Good-bye, Great Britain," urged investors to get out of sterling. Refused aid by the London and New York markets, the Labour Government under Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to turn for help to the IMF--a highly unusual move for a developed Western economy. Fearing that the economic crisis would drive Britain into a left-wing siege economy which would endanger NATO and the EEC, the United States and Germany used the IMF loan as a means to force Britain to make major domestic policy changes; when the IMF mission arrived in London in November 1976, it was announced that the price for the loan included deep cuts in domestic spending. Burk and Cairncross uncover the maneuvers of the Labour Government to evade IMF conditions. They also examine underlying economic factors, the political agenda, the rise of monetarist ideas, and the Keynesian response. Juxtaposing narrative with analysis, they provide surprising answers to critical questions and reveal how the breakdown of the post-war consensus on the macroeconomic management paved the way for the triumph of Thatcherism.
This book provides a unique insight into the use of intranets and extranets. Corporate intranets and the use of internet technology are relatively recent phenomena and the development of these technologies is now fuelling the most significant changes in corporate infrastructure since the development of the PC. The impact is likely to be even greater and is heralding radical changes in the way organizations operate.
This comprehensive study describes the major political events of the Twentieth-century in Britain in a cogent, lucid way. William D. Rubinstein presents the history, key personnel, problems and achievements of Britain's administrations, from Lord Salisbury's government in 1900 to Tony Blair's 'Cool Britannia'. Ideal for both students and general readers, Rubinstein's book provides a detailed examination of Britain's political evolution in the Twentieth-century.
The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time in office. Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations looks at Schmidt's personal experience to explore how and why Britain and Germany rarely saw eye to eye over European integration, uncovering the two countries' deeply competing visions and incompatible strategies for post-war Europe. But it also zooms out to reveal the remarkable extent of simultaneous British-German cooperation in fostering joint European interests on the wider international stage, not least within the transatlantic alliance against the background of a worsening superpower relationship. By connecting these two key areas of bilateral cooperation, Mathias Haeussler offers a major reinterpretation of the bilateral relationship under Schmidt, relevant to anybody interested in British-German relations, European integration, and the Cold War.
C.M.A.C., A Vietnam Era Trilogy, contains three sagas that describe the late 1960s, Vietnam era, U.S. Army life of James A. Callaghan. Saga of a Student Warrior-The first story follows the military training of Callaghan who, during his draft induction, was christened "Hallaghan" due to a bureaucratic error. It describes how he dealt with his new and strange environment, and his first assignment as a post radio officer. Saga of a Saigon Warrior-The Capital Military Assistance Command (C.M.A.C.), Saigon, and the surrounding districts were Callaghan's home in Vietnam during 1969. He met his match when he tangled with General Gottard, the personification of the cartoon character 'Yosemite Sam', until a year later when Callaghan suffered an untimely accident while clearing post. Saga of a Garrison Warrior-Returned from near death by a C.M.A.C. medic, Callaghan was quickly moved to Third Field Force hospital near Tan Son Nhut air base, where, after a lengthy operation, he was transferred to Guam to convalesce and regain his real name. Healed, the recently promoted Captain Callaghan then commanded a signal company, where the trials and tribulations of a garrison environment tested his perseverance. Visit the book's website: www.SaigonWarrior.com
