Norman Pratt

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John. Many thanks. I was planning to spend a great deal of time over the next few months developing the website, and apart from anything else this makes an encouraging start. Norman.

Christians in the USA are generally more willing to apply their private religious beliefs to public life than happens in Britain. The Reverend Jim Wallis in 'God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It' (2004) has questioned whether Christians in the USA should always subscribe to a Right Wing agenda, and to some extent also questioned whether in fact they do so. However, although applying private religious belief to politics is often frowned upon in the UK, it needs to be said that it is not necessarily a bad thing per se. The idea that faith and politics should be kept in different compartments was held even more strongly in Germany in the 1930's, with tragic results. Ideas from the Christian Right in the United States, funded by people with a political rather than a religious agenda, are having an increasing impact on Christian churches in the United Kingdom. One example is the spread of the idea of 'Intelligent Design' in Britain - where Darwinism had, generally speaking, been accepted by Christians without a fuss. The acceptability of Intelligent Design in the UK has now reached the point where I suspect science teachers will be obliged to encourage discussion on it whether they really wish to or not. Another example of apparently changing British attitudes was shown on a recent TV programme about Faith Schools: a Mathematics textbook that children were using gave '6000 years' as the correct answer to to the question 'How old is the earth?' Christian beliefs about the future have multiplied exponentially since the Reformation made the Bible more available, ideas concerning Israel and Armageddon among them. Churches actually split on this issue at the end of the 19th Century, notably the Baptists. Since then theologians have begun to come to the rescue. (When I was at university I did sometimes wonder what they did all day.) Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, has written about how Christians should think about the future in a book called 'Surprised by hope'. Unsurprisingly there's nothing in it about undertaking military training in preparation for the Last Battle, and there is a good deal about building a better world now. More specifically Richard Bauckham (a leading expert on the Book of Revelation whom I have heard give a lecture recently) has demolished any notion that either the Book of Revelation or the Book of Daniel have anything specific to say about the future of the modern state of Israel or wars that will happen there. So, where common sense has apparently not alerted certain Christians to the idea that looking forward to a nuclear war in the Middle East is not a good thing, modern theology might. Richard Bauckham has also suggested that the blame for spreading muddled Christian thinking about the future should be placed on the television series 'Taken'.

B: H 14

Thank you. I will.

I originally hoped to publish my Inca Empire material as a book. One reason for this was that I had come to the conclusion, from the experience of my own school, that History departments would not take on a world history topic unless they had a 'proper' book. The editor at Heinmann clearly wasn't going to risk publishing one, so making the material available for free, with the idea that teachers could produce their own printed version, seemed the next best thing, and the only compatible format my PagePlus dtp was at that time capable of producing was pdf. It then became obvious, observing what History teachers were saying, that the world history unit in KS3 was being largely ignored. I made the conscious, probably incorrect, decision not to pursue investigating more interactive and accessible methods of presentation, because the primary problem seemed to be to convince History teachers that world history was 'proper history'. I dropped my idea of writing a history book and switched to being an advocate of world history. (I'm too ancient to happily write for other people anyway.) I think a lot of schools took on 'Black Peoples of America' as a world history topic, then tended to teach this as 'The Slave Trade', and finally, as history periods per week dropped, tended to do the slave trade as part of 'Britain 1750-1900'. It seemed to be a case of the globe falling off the map! I even read a comment by one Head of Department that she had been told off for teaching about Islamic Empires because it was 'irrelevant'. Since then Christine Counsell published her book on that particular topic and things have gradually changed for the better. Above all, History teachers are beginning to be confident they can devise their own schemes of work without interference. Having looked at some of these schemes of work, it would seem that world history is now making a come-back (and not before time.) When I read, earlier in the week, about a department needing materials on pre-colonial West Africa I decided that Christmas had come early this year! (I had begun the year by doing some homework on that topic. which I have been thinking of writing about for 40 years!) My only problem is that up till now I have done absolutely nothing about finding a suitable way of presenting my materials. Any pointers would be very welcome, John.

The government's decision to build New Towns rather than restore cities also resulted in Glenrothes in Scotland (another holiday destination.) The houses are identical to Basildon's. I must be careful what I say because my wife came from Basildon: she still takes Sharon and Tracey shopping there.

John. I agree with your judgement on Wikipedia as a dangerous research tool for students to use without supervision. It could quickly give 'project work' a bad name once more, as the majority of students would not have the skill to use it as a starting point and then to check it out. However, this is Schools Wikipedia, and it looks to me as though it has been very carefully edited. It probably still falls short of the rigorous demands of historical scholarship - and Professor Elton might be turning in his grave - and as you have pointed out to me elsewhere historical material of this kind should really include a comprehensive CV of the editors. But surely explaining to students why this version of Wikipedia is a useful research tool for them to use, while the general Wikipedia isn't, strikes me as the opportunity for a brilliant lesson on how to approach sources, and particularly sources available on the internet. History teaching, particularly in KS3, has progressively focussed on fewer topics, and our focus on 'thinking' History has not, in my opinion, been accompanied by a wider historical vision. Having myself worked for a couple of years trying to restore the Incas to middle school teaching I am struck by the accuracy of the Schools Wikipedia version of the topic - a topic full of pit-falls, and one particularly easy to get wrong. Historical maps, for example, can be a nightmare, and I've lost count of the number of inaccurate ones I've seen exam boards produce for exams. The original Wikipedia article on the Incas carried a map of the Inca Empire which incorrectly (according to the majority of chroniclers anyway) ascribed an area of conquest to the wrong Inca Emperor. Once a map mistake appears it has a curious habit of popping up everywhere - all over the World Wide Web for example - which it did at one stage! As well as the map being correct, quite complicated problems regarding the use of Spanish and Quechua orthography, and their English equivalents, have been dealt with concisely. This seems to me a good tool, particularly for Middle School use. Or am I missing something?

Hi Andrew. The announcement that the government intends to abolish SATs at the end of Key Stage 3 will also have an impact on the History Curriculum. It is yet another sign that the government is at last backing out of years of interference in the Curriculum generally, an interference that has narrowed the range of History being taught. An Advanced Level History student complained to me yesterday (unprompted!) that she felt that in her school the History she had been taught had been mainly British, and she had missed out on the big picture. Because this problem has developed over 30 years, there is very little material available on World History, schools got into the habit of either ignoring the subject altogether or treating it as British Imperial History, and publishers are only just beginning to produce KS3 materials on topics like the Arab Empires and China. However, I have seen some examples, within the last year, of schools opening up the geographical scope of their KS3 History teaching, so I would hope your resources will get some custom! However, it might be worth bearing in mind that the new KS3 History Curriculum encourages themes such as 'Empire', so that material that allows comparison with the Roman and British Empires (which most schools do) would be particularly welcome.

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Having recently had to prepare a student for the Edexcel A2 unit on the Nazi state, I have had to re-think this one afresh. 'Nazis - a warning from History' says what it's about on the tin and represents a very different idea about History from the idea one often hears that History should always be taught with professional detachment, even when the topic is the Nazis. Were I still teaching 14 year olds I would have no compunction about showing them extracts, and underlining the moral ambiguities of the various talking heads on the video if by any chance they didn't spot them for themselves. However, I would be wary of using, say, posters for the film 'The Eternal Jew' as one of my main sources (although I am quite happy to discuss them with my tutee, who will cope with them very well.) Edexcel labelled another Nazi Unit 'The seeds of evil', although no doubt this was partly motivated by the need to demonstrate they were not focussing on Hitler for the wrong reasons. What will be more interesting is when I manage to talk a little more to a friend of mine who is German by birth. As I understand it, three members of the German side of the family fought in the Stalingrad campaign, survived, and walked all the way home. He has told me, without a note of irony, that they were fighting communism. I was also somewhat taken aback when he told me he came from a Junker family, a reaction that reflects on my British stereotypical thinking about Germans. To my mind this is a more serious problem because it gets talked about , and apparently considered, far less than the problem of how to teach about the Nazis. In fact it was not till a departing German ambassador criticised British teaching for focussing on the Hitler years and neglecting the Federal Republic that the matter was highlighted at all. An example of the problem might be illustrated by a television news item a couple of years ago when a school was praised for getting children to use a flight simulator programme to re-enact the Dambusters Raid. As a flight simulation fan my first reaction was this is a good way to capture the imagination, of boys anyway. However, unless this is regarded as a 'Starter', and the main aim becomes to analyse myth and reality regarding WWll, it is just pandering to the very worst of our 'triumphalist' History.

While I think there are good reasons to hesitate before setting up a History website I think there are some bad ones too. One bad reason is giving up at the first step. Here I found http://www.effectiveict.co.uk/forum/index.php?act=idx particularly useful. My own website about the Incas is desperately in need of updating, but from the point of view of how helpful people can be when you're setting one up in the first place I would cite my own experience - http://www.effectiveict.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=1490

This is a fascinating narrative, John. My own recollections of teaching History in an Essex New Town in the 1970's evoke the perfume of Banda fluid more than Roneo correction fluid! Bandered materials always looked particularly awful, especially as I lacked the Geography teacher skill of being able to produce them in several colours. After I moved schools, Tressell materials became an occasional luxury alongside traditional history textbooks. I agree with you, in theory, that all History teachers should have their own websites, but I don't think all have the necessary time, talent and technology. The best sites are very good. I particularly like http://www.mrdonn.org/index.html , especially for its World History focus. But I fear 'cottage industry' History websites would result in too many materials appearing not much better than 'bandered' material. I would also hesitate to put yet another burden on today's History teachers in England, as they struggle with issues such as less teaching time and how to fit Key Stage 3 into two years rather than three. My school's feeder Primary Schools once did a project on the local 1851 Census, which my Secondary School then turned into a database. When the children joined our school they were particularly fascinated that they were able to use the database that they'd played a part in creating. However, a vast amount of good work was lost when the BBC Acorn Computers were thrown out (including my 'What should Henry ll do next?' adventure game 'book' with Teletext graphics!) The biggest problem here is guessing which technology will last. A book of computer History programmes for typing in for classroom use was thrown away long before the BBC Acorn Computers were, when good History computer programmes (produced by teachers) began to appear. On the other hand the 'QWERTY technology' I am using to write this hasn't changed since the 19th Century. When I began teaching in the mid 1970's something called IDE was all the rage. (Unfortunately I have forgotten what the acronym stands for!) However it was resource-based and multi-discipline learning - the resources being rapidly deteriorating books, newspaper cuttings etc - to be retrieved with the help of a system of cards and knitting needles. Team teaching worked the children into a state of excitement about doing their own individual projects. My point is that as computer technology develops the team teaching, the cards and knitting needles, and even the tatty library materials have all become redundant. Instead, History teachers need to concentrate their efforts on pointing children towards good websites (whatever their provenance) and giving them the critical tools to make sense of them. At some point I formed part of a select ICT advisory group for Essex County Council (that met for one day). The other members of the group were two elderly Primary School teachers. We all agreed that the best idea was to develop the use of computers by children rather than by teachers. For some reason I don't think they implemented our recommendations.

One important hope for the future is a growing demand among Africans to see their countries better governed. The Ibrahmin Index of African Governance http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/index/index2.asp is an interesting example.

Zimbabwe has its full share of all the problems that have stunted political development in the rest of Africa south of the Sahara. They are familiar and depressing. Many Africans regard Mugabe as a great hero in the fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism, and up till now so have Zimbabwe's neighbouring governments. A good Zimbabwean I know was still saying good things about him weeks before the election. He did after all fight a successful guerrilla war. You will hear African politicians saying they must stop blaming everything on colonialism. They are probably right, psychologically speaking, to say that, but not in terms of a historical judgement. Colonialism, and various kinds of exploitation that preceded it, set the scene for today. In the 1880's Africa had, despite four hundred years of European bullying, some strong states that were beginning to adjust to industrialisation. Their fate was sealed when the continent was divided up at the Congress of Berlin in 1884, and the whole of Africa was given over to European interests. I think the present Zimbabwean problems stem from the particularly brutal British invasion in the 1890's, carried out by a British company. 'Rape' is the most accurate description of what happened both politically and humanly. The laws of Southern Rhodesia then 'legitimised' the dominance of one people over another, and vast areas of agricultural land were taken away from Africans and given to Europeans. Towards the end of colonial rule all sorts of 'democratic' devices were brought to bear on the problem of creating a viable state, including the idea of the Central African Federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. None of these democratic solutions had much to do with one-person-one vote. Neither at this point, nor in the negotiations that brought Independence in 1981, was the British colonial legacy of the land problem tackled in a way that related to the original 'land-grab' of the 1890's. Where world governments could do more, to solve this problem and others, is to be prepared to intervene in an appropriate way. Africa for example can provide good peace-keeping forces if other countries can supply the logistics. We need, more urgently than ever, to have an effective UN Security Council. O.K., perhaps that's a lost cause, but simply getting Britain and France to work together on an African policy would help (and might have helped avoid what happened in Rwanda.) The second thing we can do is learn about the culture. I am reminded of the story of the British officer in British Somaliland in early colonial days who had taken the trouble to learn the Somali language. His African troops seemed to appreciate the effort he had taken, but they would smile and laugh in a rather disturbing way when he gave orders. It turned out that he had learned the language through a young Somali lady with whom he had an arrangement, and he had learned the language spoken by Somali women, which was apparently noticeably different from that used by men. More seriously, most Westerners see Africa through thick cultural lenses - Some Americans for example seeing Somalia in terms of 'Black Hawk Down', and some British people still believing Africa needs another 200 years of colonial rule. Thirdly, I would like to see countries which have an obsessively nationistic approach to History, such as Britain and Serbia, begin to teach more world history. However, going back to Evan's original point, I think that politics, like history, has tended to be a male-dominated subject, where power is more important than humanity. Looking at it this way, Africa becomes the slum area of the global village, which only makes the news when one of the gang leaders pulls off a particularly nasty murder (or pedals a particularly valuable commodity.) When I was teaching 20th Century World History to teenagers, I did one summer holiday get so fed up with teaching the subject, that I thought I would read a book about the obscurist people I could find. I found a book about the Falashas, a tiny African tribe in Ethiopia who practised a pre-Temple version of the Jewish faith, and claimed descent from a Jewish garrison planted by the Pharoahs to guard their Southern border. I was about half-way through the book, when I looked up at the TV to see them being airlifted out of Ethiopia to Israel. So much for my idea of finding an obscure people.

Hi John. Sorry for my apparent lack of concentration. This has not unfortunately been thinking time, but how-can-I-get-Vista-to-work-with-all-my-programmes time. Mmmm. However, I still feel surrounded: Black D-12.

David, you shouldn't believe what those Inland Revenue people say. The answer to most of these questions is Essex, in this case Maldon, Essex. In 991 the Vikings defeated the Saxon army at Maldon, and as a result the English government, very wisely in my opinion, decided to pay the clearly militarily superior vikings off with taxpayers' money. Trying to settle the debate on human origins, again Essex is the answer. I was conscious that my own knowledge of 'Clacton Man' is based on visits I made years ago to the Natural History Museum. So I looked up 'Clacton Man' in Google, only to discover he's been charged with attempted murder. However, the fact that it was reported as only 'attempted' highlights one important problem - humanity's bumbling inefficiency. This doesn't bode well for introducing socialism and curbing population and consumption all at the same time. I think most of the problems and solutions have already been aired. But here are a few more. Viewing the issues from a historical perspective it would seem that the original Clacton man would have used his wooden spear in co-operation with others, and that community was then fundamental to human life. This eon-long social experience would suggest that we are social animals, not individuals, possessive or otherwise, and we are actually kidding ourselves if we think otherwise. The Industrial Revolution has fragmented and distorted not just communities but the whole idea of community. Village life, which to some extent continued the prehistoric human experience of sharing with a hundred or so other people, is rapidly disappearing on a global scale, to be replaced by megacities and global mobility. Modern consumerism, fed by advertising, distorts our lives. (Shortly after ending my brief career as a copywriter I saw my first 'My Little Pony' commercial, and my heart sank, rightly as it turned out.) Our world, quite apart from plundering world resources, fragments humanity. The modern popularity of researching our family trees highlights, in my view, a massive tragedy of the Industrial Revolution, that millions of families broke up and lost touch with each other. A missionary friend I know who devised the orthography for a small Kenyan language, had difficulty establishing his credibility with the tribe concerned because he didn't know the name of one of his maternal great grandmothers. In fact Kenya is a good example of people generally in black Africa who, after four hundred years of being on the receiving end of industrialisation and zero population growth, cannot see any good reason to limit their families, with increasingly disastrous results. For the benefit of some American sensibilities, I would prefer to redefine socialism as the strengthening or re-introduction of community. The rising price of fuel may eventually bring this about, even in the U.S.A. I also think it may be helpful to regard democracy as something which flows from socialism and community, not the other way round. Various factors in reorganising humanity within a short timescale are 'given', including in my opinion the non-appearance of the world-wide socialist revolution which Marx saw as inevitable. We missed the 1914 and the 1918 bus, and I don't see another one coming along soon. A dictatorship of the proletariat would speed things up, but they mostly seem to follow the example of the French Revolution and producing one military-backed dictator. One of the tragic episodes in recent African History was the attempt in Ethiopia to work out that particular dream, with all the trappings and mechanisms of European Marxist-Leninism and Maoism. On the bright side we do have socialists, socialist parties, and one or two remarkably successful socialist governments, which is important, among other reasons, because they have a lot of mistakes to learn from, which will be particularly useful for the next few generations who will have, I should have thought, to adapt to a degree of privation and regimentation. The marxist approach to history remains, in my view, the simplest way to understand the past and to some extent to predict the future. Another given are national governments. These, and the nationalism that feeds them, need to wither away as quickly as possible. The world is too small to cope with them any more. There are encouraging signs that the United Kingdom, one of the leading military powers in the world, is breaking up. I would respectfully suggest to any German readers that you were better off with the 2000 or so governments you had in the 18th Century than the single governments you had in the 20th Century, Weimar excepted. It is remarkable how the relative sizes of the populations of Britain and Germany have reversed since 1914, the result of two 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' wars, whichever way you wish to look at it. The institutions of the global community need massive strengthening. In Europe we are only just beginning to appreciate the advantages of federalism which the U.S.A. discovered in 1789. Probably the most important leap of imagination needed in the U.S.A. is the thought that federalism needs to be applied on a global scale: it always strikes me as odd when American education acknowledges the subject of world history when many other countries don't. With regard to military establishments, we need to have a rapid race to demilitarise, in order to bring about greater world security. This has to happen at a personal, as well as a national level. Brought up in a household where the Spitfire was regarded as man's greatest invention, I appreciate the difficulties. I also appreciate that George lll left Americans with an awful legacy in this regard. My brother, a particular fan of the Spitfire nevertheless fairly recently wrote to his son who now lives in Florida, urging him not to buy a 45 pistol: 'I cannot conceive of any circumstances where I would want to blow someone's head off'. My nephew's wife, an American brought up in a different tradition, evidently could, and in the end won the argument. One of the most intractable problems that some see, and one likely to be with us during a period of rapid social change, is religion. It is as likely to cause global conflicts as the national interests mentioned above. Socialists have, historically, good reason to see organised religion as a barrier to progress. This is an area where we all have to learn tolerance. A recent example in Britain was a speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to a group of lawyers. He chose to speak to them on the subject of Sharia law, and to talk about what he had said on Radio 4, a fairly serious radio station. He made the suggestion that English law needed to make some sort of accommodation with Sharia law. I have since found out from a human rights lawyer that Sharia law is very much a fact of life. This apparently was something apparently unknown to the entire media, who proceeded to attack the archbishop for wanting to chop people's hands off, for wanting to give the Muslim community a privileged position, for being totally naive about how people would react, and (in the most intelligent newspaper) being vague, imprecise, and scholarly - the later one of the worst crimes that can be committed in public debate in Britain. Democracy emerged in Britain directly from religious conflict in the early 17th Century: it seems we, and most countries in the world, have to learn tolerance, and its implications, all over again, and quick: early moslem Spain and the early Ottoman Empire provide good examples. At this point I find myself defending organised religion as one of the possible engines of rapid change and not - as it is sometimes seen - part of the problem. As a Lay Reader in the Church of England I would say organised religion would be a very good idea. In the countryside, churches, especially my denomination, tend to be very disorganised and up till now resistant to change. But in cities and towns Christian churches, particularly the new churches, are becoming organised as far as I can see in a good way - and putting into practice ideals of community which somehow got forgotten. Changing to a sustainable lifestyle is very much part of this agenda. Another religious factor relevant to this discussion is that of hope. The Church has often had very different ideas about what the Christian hope was, and took over a thousand years to take on board Aristotelian ideas about politics being a good thing. The Church was not very positive towards politics, and in some ways towards life on this planet generally, and I'll leave to others to spell out how they nevertheless accommodated themselves to the powers-that-be. The Christian hope was widely seen as 'up there' in heaven. Significantly it's only in very recent years that 'Christian Aid', the joint church charities organisation, has come up with the slogan 'We believe in life before death.' In the USA, and to a lesser extent in the UK, there is a belief that the Bible, particularly in the book of Revelation in the New Testament, and the book of Daniel in the Old - sorry, this is important, because it affects the way people behave now - sets out a clear narrative of the 'End Times', and that the 'End Times' are about to happen now - really this time, a bit like global warming! Having this belief, even at the back of the mind, raises the question why bother to save the planet if God is going to wrap it up soon anyway? (Someone actually asked me this question yesterday.) The first answer to this, but one which not all Christians, especially in the USA, would agree with, is that the New Testament never sets out a timescale on these matters, and Jesus Christ specifically ruled out any idea of a timescale. The second answer is a new one on me, and may be to others. In his book 'Surprised by Hope' SPCK 2007 the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, looks at the question of the End Times in terms of what the Christian Scriptures actually said, and what the early Christians believed they said. They believed without any reservation in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, they believed in their own transformation in this life and their eventual physical resurrection; they believed also that heaven would one day come down to earth, and God would restore the earth (a very different scenario from destroying it.) He says the view of the End-Times popularised by 'Taken' is therefore unbiblical in the sense that it is quite clearly not what the early Christians believed . There is one final area where the Christian religion, organised or not, is beginning to contribute to the solution. The Bible Society in London has just published a version of the Bible with the more obvious social, economic and 'justice' passages highlighted. It becomes obvious, if it wasn't already, that social equality is at the heart of its message. It consistently condemns those who would appropriate more than their fair share (e.g. what they reasonably need) of the planet's resources. Far from being the invention of Liberation Theology marxists in South America, this is increasingly becoming mainstream Christianity.

I believe that Teddy Bear worship in the United Kingdom was an under-rated factor in recent Anglo-Sudanese negotiations. Worship is characterised by the 'Ahhhh' sound among its followers, who tend to be female. As I imagine you have people of that gender at your college, Andy, I think you may be playing a very dangerous game.

Having played Fourth Shepherd, some years ago, I feel strongly about this one. It is very sad that children are deprived of the experience of performing, and parents of the experience of cheering them on. However, I name the particular beast in this instance as THE EDUCATION SYSTEM: Primary School teachers are so exhausted pouring over and accounting for their SATS results that they haven't got the time to put up tinsel and Christmas cards in their classrooms, let alone organise a Natvity Play. (Supply teachers make a very nice living at this time of year.) In Secondary Schools, there is now a new style of Religious Education which engages young people in the spiritual and encourages them to think and to recognise when ideas need to be challenged. It caters for the vast majority - agnostics - as well as children brought up in a firmly religious or atheistic background. This is by no means the only type of R.E. being taught, because in the UK every single local authority has the job of making its own policy and syllabus. However, this peculiar example of British federalism allows a subject to exist which is fairly free of government interference. Good R.E. teachers have a freedom to encourage young people to think for themselves in a way that has been regulated out of all other subjects.

Black: C - 13

Thanks for the book information, Evan, and usefully timed since it's getting near Christmas! I worked for a couple of months at Vickers in Weybridge, in the despatch department. Most of what I despatched were drawings for Warton (English Electric), and I was duly thrilled to see one drawing I could actually understand - what the TSR2 looked like - before the information became public. However, the fact that English Electric wasn't the main contractor was, according to the commentary on the video, another of the many things that went wrong with the project. In the video the chief test pilot also blames Mountbatten for undermining the sale of the TSR2. He claims that while talking to the Australian Minister of Defence Mountbatten produced from a bag 5 model Buccaneers and 1 model TSR2, and said 'Why do you want one of these when you can have 5 of these?' How he knew this is what Mountbatten said is not clear. Also he refers to the Australian Minister of Defence as Sir Frederick Sherga, and I can't find a Minister of Defence of that name!?

An interesting introduction, for me, to Australian politics. I'm pleased that to some degree punishment has been meted out on those who began a War in Iraq in defiance of international opinion. However, about the TSR2... Someone wrote a book called "Who killed the TSR2?" But I don't think Duncan Sandys was ever a suspect. For one thing, his politics could have given rise to the expression 'well to the Right of Genghis Khan' - for example he was associated with a last-ditch defence of capital punishment. And in general the Conservative Party was in favour of big military hardware. The following information comes from a video 'TSR2 the untold story' published by 'DD Home Entertainment'. It was Harold Wilson's (Labour) government (1964-1970) who cancelled the TSR2 project. At any rate during an interview on the video Denis Healey says that the cancellation was announced during the Budget Speech in 1965, that the decision had been made earlier in the relevant Cabinet Committe, but the announcement was held back because Wilson was concerned that cancellation would be unpopular.

Christian radicals who regard the Biblical vision of Armageddon as a policy aim are particularly scary, especially when they have links with people who control nuclear weapons. (And the reading list kindly provided on this thread will therefore remain on hold till I've got through someone's 1000 page thesis on Christian Zionism!) However, other Christian radicals are, on the contrary, involved in peace-making. Islamic radicals made a name for themselves in North Africa after the Second World War because 'Western Civilization' appeared to offer very little to the poor, while some of the radical movements did. Radical muslim self-help and educational organisations sprang up, and brought about a certain degree of redistribution of wealth - something most governments failed to do. 'Western civilization', 'Democracy', and 'Islamic radicalism' are all terms capable of fairly wide interpretation and of conjuring up differing pictures. One such picture summed the question up for me. Any sort of religion which is enthusiastically supported looks scary to 'Guardian' readers in Britain, and I often wonder whether when that newspaper published a photograph showing a mass array of muslim men bowing down to the ground in a public park in a British city they were deliberately setting out to disturb their readers' sensibilities. Christianity in Britain, on the other hand, finds it difficult to recruit men, even as priests, and unlike Islam only functions one day a week. It has been suggested very reasonably, therefore, that Islam could replace Christianity as the main religion in Britain. Europe seemed to discover democracy in the 17th Century at around the same time as it developed capitalism, and both these concepts have gone global and appear to be here to stay irrespective of what happens to the spiritual landscape. Personally I would like to see all religions concentrating on the task of redistribution of wealth (towards the poor rather than the priesthood I suppose I have to add!) which is one thing global capitalism seems incapable of tackling. A key ingredient of democracy is tolerance. It is interesting that the historian of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee, cited the Ottoman Empire as an example of tolerance existing as it did in a period in history when Europe was still struggling with the term.

It is good that these systems are reviewed from time to time: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7097101.stm

Black: C-14