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“... In office, but not in power’. It seemed unlikely that anything ever said by Norman Lamont would make history, but this phrase from his resignation speech struck a chord. A common charge against Labour governments throughout the century has been that they have been at the mercy of other people’s power; that the combined influence of hostile bankers, businessmen, judges and media moguls ‘blew them off course’, as Harold Wilson put it ...”

“... Labour’s Scottish stronghold. It was unseemly, however, to express such sentiments in the raw. Home Rule was a momentous constitutional reform, and New Labour’s radicalism in this area was to be properly celebrated as such (not least because this drew attention away from the new government’s timid adherence to Conservative spending limits). Nor was ...”

“... had not a trace. Only vanity. But in the Congo it was not visible yet. Roger Casement was born in Ireland in 1864, of a prosperous Protestant family. He was brought up mainly in Northern Ireland. At the age of 20 he went to Africa, where he worked with various commercial interests in the Congo and then in what later ...”

“... and high taxes, but never sent Congress a balanced budget. His greatest achievement was to leave office before the balancing act became too difficult, and he died an American hero.Successful governments use a national pulpit to proclaim an uplifting narrative which explains the policy needs of the moment while at the same ...”

“... as a books mule. It reminded her, she says, of crossing the border after visiting relatives in Northern Ireland as a child. Her mother had risked a contraband packet of tea, which the customs man found at first touch. ‘How well I put my hand on it!’ he said, though he let them keep it: a poor widow and her daughter, who would grow up so honest she ...”

“... which had been reluctantly set up in 1954 by Lord Kilmuir in his previous incarnation as the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. He had assumed that the Report would silence those calling for reform and to that end appointed the ultra-respectable public school headmaster Sir John Wolfenden to chair it. When Wolfenden recommended that homosexual acts ...”

“... period saw the emergence of ideas of nationhood in England, Scotland, Wales and (more patchily) Ireland which were probably encouraged and definitely complicated by the construction of a British state – a state which failed to achieve lasting stability, and which, even after the secession of most of Ireland in 1922, has ...”

“... In a few weeks from now, Labour will have been in office for eight years, and we will be in the middle of an election campaign which seems certain to win it at least four more. The party’s record in government evokes a range of responses on the left – from mild gloom to clinical depression, from irritation to rage, from apathy to horror – but one of the most consistent things it provokes is disorientation ...”

“... while their appeals were pending, and exercised his pardon power a few days before leaving office on behalf of ten individuals, including the owner of the New York Yankees, convicted of illegally funnelling $100,000 to Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. He did not pardon those convicted of or charged with ...”

“... part in the brutal suppression of the rebels in 1857, leaving a graphic account in his letters home of killings and public hangings, which, the paper pointed out, would be seen as war crimes today. Cameron’s press office declined to comment. After all, the PM is apparently also ...”

“... in the dark about the part played by our intelligence services, and in turn by our Foreign Office and our Home Office and our ministers. There are no dramatic images to jolt us into comprehension and there is no release whatsoever of the ...”

“... synagogue, and now, with the addition of a shiny minaret to its Georgian façade, it is spiritual home to the Bangladeshi Muslims of East London. Today hardly any British politicians have the courage to admit that immigration is essential to a successful society, but late 17th-century England experienced an uncharacteristic moment of generosity towards the ...”

“... his host replies: ‘100 per cent.’ Living in Italy (No. 63), and coming from Ireland (a surprisingly healthy 14th place), I had my own stories. I even have some scandalous tales about the Netherlands (No. 6), which has long been regarded as a model of good governance, but where the large sums of public money available for building roads ...”

“... Special Branch, which Ewing and Gearty describe as ‘the private political police force of the Home Secretary’, didn’t give it a stir, just in case. After one raid a senior police witness was asked what was seditious about Darwin’s Origin of Species, which he had taken away. He replied that he didn’t know. A pamphlet was then handed to him ‘with ...”

“... used to refer to the UK. In the summer of 1942, grandpa set sail from New York harbour for Northern Ireland. He arrived in early July and stayed for the next two years, first in Ireland and then in Wiltshire, before crossing to France on D-Day. He was part of what Wendy Webster terms ‘the great ...”