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Britain has never been a meritocracy. Despite the concept’s widely-evoked vision of a ‘fair’ or ‘just’ social order, one where individuals rise or fall according to their ‘talents’ or ‘efforts’, the rise of the meritocracy has continually been scuppered by the perseverance of inherited privilege or democratic pressure.
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In the spring of 1968, Enoch Powell gave his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (p 1). In the shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, locality and resistance explores its aftermath, successfully synthesising histories of Powell as a political figure, the local community of Wolverhampton, and, to a lesser extent, the nation.
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Bryce Evans has written an iconoclastic study of Seán Lemass (1900-71), who is often considered to be one of the most influential politicians in independent Ireland. Lemass fought in the 1916 Rising, participated in the War of Independence and Civil War (1918–23) and was a founder member of Fianna Fáil in 1926, which remained the largest political party from 1932 until 2011.
Writing in Macmillan’s Magazine a few years after the denouement of the Crimean War, Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s School Days, declared that this conflict’s ‘drama ...