Explores the efforts of two left labor leaders, Arthur Scargill of the British National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Richard Trumka of the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA), to address the crisis of deindustrialization in 1980s. Role of leadership in determining industrial and political outcomes; Impact of the development of alternative sources of energy on British and U.S. coalfields; Background on the development of the UMWA and the NUM. (EBSCO)

Discussions of the British extreme right, both in its pre-war and post-war manifestations, have tended to ignore the question of gender. A number of writers, however, have argued that, by definition, the extreme right should be seen as a highly patriarchal force. Closer examination casts doubt on this supposition, and suggests instead that for a movement organised around ultra-nationalism and resistance to the racial 'Other', but not around anti-feminism, gender has proved to be a matter of considerable debate.

The idea that conflicts cannot be resolved until they are 'ripe' has been influential in conflict resolution literature in recent years. This article critiques the theoretical underpinnings of ripeness using the Northern Ireland peace process as a case study. It highlights the problems that results from the subjectiveness of both the theory itself and the information needed to apply it. By critically examining William Zartman's six 'propositions' of ripeness, the inadequacy of the approach is highlighted and claims that the theory can help predict when conflicts are ripe for resolution are shown to be unsustainable. It advocates a more dynamic approach to conflict resolution than ripeness suggests that parties and mediators adopt. (Informaworld)

"George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq has brought new life to an old argument - that America is imperialist. As Chomsky ... has recently demonstrated, this is an argument associated with the left. But it does not always come from that section of the political spectrum. The claim that America is an empire has also been made from within the American right, and in two sharply different ways. For some, America is imperialist and must be stopped from being so. For others, however, it is imperialist and this is something to be applauded."

In the years following metapolitefsi (the 1974 transition from dictatorship to multi-party democracy) a plethora of groups from the far left appeared on the Greek post-junta political scene. Obsessed with the dynamics of the Athens Polytechnic revolt of November 1973, these marginal but vocal and persistent groups viewed the process of constitutional change and democratic consolidation with deep scepticism. Many of them did not accept the legitimacy of the transfer of power and used confrontational anti-regime rhetoric and radical forms of action to denounce constitutional structures and attack the regime’s legality, conservative ethos and lack of structured political solutions. The purpose of this article is to describe the emergence and evolution of the major extra-parliamentary groups of the left and to examine their analyses and interpretations of Greek political circumstances in the late 1970s. (Sage Publications)

The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) was one of the major achievements of Anglo-Irish diplomacy during the course of the Troubles. Yet its importance has been misunderstood and often ignored in subsequent histories of the development of the conflict and the peace process. This article seeks to re-evaluate the AIA. It examines the purposes of the agreement, taking issue with a number of the existing explanations. It is argued that London and Dublin had conflicting analyses of what the AIA was designed to do, which led to disappointment in both states with its impact. These differences also made it difficult for academics to accurately characterize the accord. However, the AIA played a profound and imperative role in shaping the subsequent peace process, but this arose out of consequences of the Agreement that were, despite recent claims to the contrary, unanticipated, and indeed unintended, by those who drew up the document. (Palgrave Macmillan)

This article examines the arguments and claims of the two groups which have been most active in the campaign for an apology from the Japanese for wartime atrocities and the group which believes that an apology would be counter to its advocacy of reconciliation. The claims and arguments made by the groups are used as a basis to explore further the role of apology within international politics and to develop the criteria for its use.

The Independent Labour Party (ILP) has long enjoyed a reputation as the pre-First World War political party most sympathetic both to feminism in general, and to the suffrage movement in particular. Indeed, it is only recently that such a reputation has been placed under scrutiny. Ironically, considering the amount of attention devoted to it by Edwardian ILPers, the party's relationship with suffrage militancy is also an area that has as yet received little close attention, and it is on this relationship that the present article focuses. More specifically, this article concentrates on male ILP members, in order to shed light both on their attitudes towards women's role in society and in politics, and on their own identities as socialists and as men, providing an important insight into male ILPer's gendered politics. Suffrage militancy's role in jolting ILP men out of a purely formal advocacy of suffrage, forcing them to question the nature of their socialist beliefs and the place of women's enfranchisement in their practical programme, is explored. Further, the article considers how ideas about women's role in politics had to be re-thought as militancy developed and changed in the decade before the outbreak of the First World War. It questions how far ILP men were able to adapt their ideas of 'political womanhood' to accommodate women who not only made an uncompromising entrance into the political arena, but also undertook both illegal and violent activities. Underlying the whole discussion, finally, is the question of how far the suffrage movement in general and militancy in particular forced ILP men to re-think their own masculine identities, and to make changes to their own personal relationships with women. And perhaps more fundamentally, the article questions how far notions of socialist manliness based on chivalrousness and protectiveness towards women were modified, in the light of militants' growing determination to do without male protection and patronage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] (Ebsco)