Ed Waller

It was a big year, 1953.... England 3 Hungary 6 in November was THE wake-up call for English football (see this report for example). The skills of the Olympic Champions showed England (fans, journalists, the FA) just how far behind the 'cutting edge' the England team was. It's no surprise that by 1965 there had been much improvement. The West Ham of the Greenwood era was undeniably a good team, going on to form the backbone of the World Cup winning side. Greenwood would have been one of the new young managers who 'grew up' in the years after the defeat. His assistantship at Arsenal (still hard to type that word) in the late 1950s and appointment to West Ham in 1961 would have been very timely. His length of tenure at West Ham is testament to his skill. I, too, have a favourite match. Mine happens to be the 'Ricky Villa' FA Cup final. I freely 'confess' to owning a copy on DVD which I play occasionally, but especially after the present side do something really silly. It is in some ways similar in that a relatively young/new manager was trying to get his team to play football in the 'correct' way. Admittedly he had to import players to make the mix 'work'...

Before I make any comment here, can I just say that I use Ben's Ireland book and think it's an excellent work In some ways knowing that there are two (or more) views makes writing a textbook much more difficult. In the UK (a term I use deliberately here) there is a dominant view (and I want to avoid hegemony here at least for the moment, but no doubt Nick D ( ) will pick me up on this!) about the 'Irish Question'. To suggest there is another view, in itself challenges that dominant view. Therefore a textbook showing this alternative view lends itself to being described as 'subjective', or biased etc. So even when a textbook tries to be 'fair' or 'balanced' it can be seen to be unbalanced or ideological. What I think this suggests is agreement with Nick D: objectivity is impossible (and this is something more usually accepted by the Left rather than the Right). To take this a little further, if objectivity is impossible and some form of subjectivity inevitable would textbooks be better if written by two people (or as many as it takes) who would articulate each side? (And who would then be a series editor!!?) Ed

Are you sure Neil? Korea Vietnam Gulf War I and II Falklands Yugoslavia/Bosnia Somalia Hungary Czechoslovakia I guess it depends on definition of 'major'.

And what interest could that be to one who elsewhere admits to being an 'irons' man? [i speak as a 38-year-long sufferer of Spurs' exploits....]

Hi, I'd have to agree with a lot of what John S said. When you begin a process of editing, you inevitably include the things you think are important, and leave out others. The same is true when developing schemes of work in school. I can't speak as an author of history textbooks, but can as a 'user'. All books provide a version of history. Even when (as John's books do) they put different versions, they are selecting (normally two) different versions from several. In this way they can never be objective in a strict sense of the word. However, does this matter in textbooks? What is the aim of a textbook? I would suggest in most cases it is an introduction, either to history (in the case of UK up to age 16) or to a topic within history. In these cases provided that they are factually accurate (dates, places, people) the explanations they offer should be sufficient for the purposes of a school classroom. As a teacher, you don't necessarily have to agree with the explanation to use it as a textbook (if we did, I'd have had to resign long ago). So I guess reliability is the key. Again in the school context the tests one might apply as a historian don't apply as strictly. More the question one might ask is 'is it reasonable?' At the higher age ranges in schools/colleges one might expect a student to use two or three textbooks minimum, and in this case careful selection of texts should enable overall a 'reliable' performance by the student. As regards usefulness, I would argue that all are useful, however 'good', 'bad' etc. However, not all are useful in the way their author may have intended. Hope this is helpful... I will try to come back to this topic in the near future... Ed

Yes please, John. Sounds like an interesting project... Ed

Of course all of this shows that historians/armchair experts make fairly poor predictors of future outcomes. Shame really! I was at an indoor hockey tournament last Sunday, and I can tell you that the event of the morning at Edgbaston practically brought the tournament to a halt! A most enjoyable series thus far, at just over half way through... Ed

This is certainly the case - Bevan didn't much time for Attlee, Morrison or Bevin. There's another link, although related to Morrison's desire to lead. His 'powerbase' came from his leadership of LCC, as I'm sure we all know. However, the LCC was at that time the single largest health authority in Britain (if one accepts the wartime EMS as a temporary phenomenon). It had developed a range of services that (compared to what existed elsewhere) were already well-renowned. It 'owned' a number of hosptials, largely as it had bailed out institutions in the 1930s whose voluntary donations had dried up, and could not hope to make sufficient from the 'additional benefits' of the insurance schemes then extant. Just as the BMA were deeply worried about the affects of the NHS on its members income and (effective) control of hospitals, so voluntary hospitals were concerned about 'nationalisation' of their assets. This was also a concern for Morrison. He was unsure that it was right or fair or proper for (i) non-Londoners to benefit from the hospitals of the LCC and (ii) that the government should take them over. It is likely that some 'deal' if there was one, had much to do with this aspect. I may have been in Bevan's mind that if the LCC get on board (pardon the pun, given where this thread began) it might have made the task of selling the NHS a little easier. Morrison may have been reassured that those people who ran the hospitals pre-1948 would still be in charge through Regional Hospital Boards and Hospital Management Committees. Teaching Hospitals (mainly in London) were left pretty much autonomous. All this is possibly involved in the meeting on the Massey. However much of this structure was in place in the 1946 NHS Act. Worth noting that 1947 was a very bad year for the Labour Party in office - the awful winter, criticisms of Shinwell over the lack of coal, desperate Balance of Payments problems. If there were to be a successful plot against Attlee, 1947 would have been the year to do it. Thus a secret meeting on an (LCC controlled??) fireboat would probably be a good place to do it. So in sum, whilst I can see there is potentially an NHS angle to the meeting, I doubt that by 1947 there was much to be debated with the LCC. It is more likely to have had a leadership of the Labour Party agenda.

Slightly off topic, but... I doubt either of these is factually correct! You may have become disillusioned with the way UK and/or US governments have become more autocratic/authoritarian/similar, but I would hope that in some other world that you would have the young (and I'm coming to that) create would surely be properly democratic. This may sound like a semantic nicety, but it's important to accept that democracy isn't what we are offered, and remains a good idea. Your comment on the young, and that we old codgers can do nothing... Some of the most brilliant speeches (motivating......) have been given by 'old codgers'. Those same old codgers were very active in the ANL of the late 1970s, the Poll Tax campaign.... I admit that there were thousands of young people there too, and that they did have an awful lot of energy. However, the young of today are not as apathetic as you suggest. They may be more fatalistic than we were in the 60s and 70s, and divert their energies in different ways. The Islamic militancy so apparent recently suggests this energy still exists. Perhaps the key difference between the 'active' and the 'fatalists' is that the active (as in earlier times) think they HAVE to change things, rather than discussing whether they can or cannot.

The figures John mentions are absolutely staggering. Cheney et al having hands in the cookie jar would be less of a surprise! This level of 'investment' in arms/defence should be a cause for concern for every US citizen. Not only is the potential corruption an issue. As Britain found to its cost in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, overcommitment to one (or a handful) of industries is likely to lead to economic difficulties. It begins with balance of payments problems, because the country has to import increasing amounts of newer or different technology and exports fall foul of competitors' strengths and developments. It ends with prolonged economic hardship (long term unemployment, underinvestment in social spending) that restructuring brings. It will not have escaped many that Britain has never really recovered from the difficulties that became most apparent in the years after WW1. The continued focus of investment (because that's where the best returns are) will deprive other areas of the US economy of investment, and leave the way open for others (Japan, China to name to most obvious in the short term) to replace US manufacturers. It is true that other 'western' countries are travelling a similar path, with likely similar consequences. Solutions that have worked in the recent past are to loan money (let's call it aid) and tie strings to it (in return: interest and defence contracts). It can be of little coincidence that following the victory in Iraq (sic) there were some in US circles who were most keen to secure contracts for US companies. It's not just about jobs and profits for friends and backers, but also about supporting the overall US economy. Ed

I have been involved in teaching History for 14 years, mainly at 2 universities (East Anglia and Portsmouth). In schools I have taught IB History, GCSE Modern World and SHP (Medicine, Germany, N Ireland and local study). Currently I am Head of History in a (very successful) state secondary school in Southampton, England. I have a PhD in History (The early years of the NHS), completed in 1996. My interest in the Russian Revolution and the years that followed stem largely from an interest in politics. Having researched it for political purposes, I have since used it in teaching IB and GCSE Modern World.

I realise I'm coming a little late to this party, so please bear with me if my reading of posts so far is not as well-remembered as one might like... Whilst I would not describe the US as a democracy, there are some aspects I quite like, in principle. In particular the election of local officials, and not just local legislative representatives. If this were to work democratically (see John S comment/definition) it might engage the electorate more. Perhaps those of you in the US could help me here and say if these elections have a higher turnout than the Presidential ballot. On voting systems, First Past the Post isn't perfect. The Electoral College idea seems frankly worse. I think that people's growing disengagement/disenchantment with voting comes from two sources (at least?). The first is the concept mentioned above a few times, that the electorate does not feel that an individual's single vote will make much difference (as the people of Florida might agree following Bush jnr 1st election). The second is the increasing hegemony of right wing ideas. Most European Soc Dem parties have dropped the "ist" from "Social", figuratively if not literally. From this side of the Atlantic, it appears that the 2 main US parties are stuck in a narrow field of acceptable politics because of "the Bible Belt Vote" or "Middle America" and a host of similar interest groups who it would not be possible to upset. They do, of course, go on to upset them. This focus on campaigning, and therefore on the media's image of the party/candidate is important. However it isn't that they object to upsetting this or that minority, but that they object to the media reaction to it. Which I suppose leads us back to the Plutocracy/Oligopoly angle of this discussion... Ed

I take it this is ironic.... I grew up on a council housing estate in SE London, my parents did the same in the East End, they were both manual workers before retirement. QED I grew up in the heartland of the Working Class (or lower socioeconomic class if you like). From my class in school, there have been 2 Uni lecturers (one still does, and is exceptionally well known in his field), I gave it up because I wanted more of a life, and now teach in school. There I'm referred to as Dr Waller! There is no necessary link between class and racism or class and intelligence. To prove that in another way, look to the Whitehouse... or in the UK the House of Lords... Ed

Just a small point, which may not help us in a quest to understand or resolve the Kennedy assassination, but... Isn't the bedrock of extreme racism rooted in economic self-interest? As I understand it, the greatest ill-feeling (apparent?) towards blacks in the South of US is among the lower income groups, whose economic self-interest was threatened by the ending of slavery and subsequently the Civil Rights movement. There are similarities in the UK in Ulster with the unionists feeling threatened by the NICRA agitation in the late 1960s early 1970s. The key issue is that the people who react fear that the new rights given to the (formerly???) oppressed will be at some supposed cost to themselves (jobs, income etc). This is then used by those with greater economic power (whether wittingly or otherwise) to deflect criticism of their own role in the paucity of lives the others have to endure. To link this (tenuously perhaps) to the Kennedy assassination, inasmuch as it may have suited 'oil interests', it would also be very welcome to raise the stakes against communists at home and abroad to lay the blame at their door via the media which their rich friends doubtless controlled even then. This would potentially deflect blame for the assassination away from them, if they were responsible, and away from the declining economic climate of the 1960s. Thus it would leave the door open for 'Korea 2' (ie Vietnam War) as a crusade to rid the world of an identified evil (plus ca change). Ed

Erm... I'm taking that as a compliment, right? Ed

Hi, I'm Ed Waller Currently I'm teaching History in a Southampton sec school, and am Head of Department for my sins!! In a former existance, I was a lecturer at Portsmouth Uni for 6 years (Economic History), and, yes, I am sad enough to have endured the whole PhD process. Nowadays I rty to get by on my Departmental budget and bring in new ideas (esp ICT) to the teaching of my colleagues (2 x SMT and 1 x HOY). Ed