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When the Wind Blows: Planning for Nuclear War in the 1980s
Read more: When the Wind Blows: Planning for Nuclear War in the 1980sJim Gledhill on the organisation of civil defence in Scotland amidst Cold War tensions.
Finding offence
How are we to assess the impact of activities (e.g. words, songs or gestures) associated with sectarianism in contemporary Scotland? In the increasing absence of easily attributable effects such as crimes or disorder, or blatant forms of discrimination in the…
Community Experiences of Sectarianism
In the August 2015 issue of Scottish Affairs, a team of researchers explore the findings of a study they carried out for the Scottish government on community experiences of sectarianism. Here, one of the authors, Kay Goodall, sets out some…
The New Islamic Presence in Europe: Perspectives from Ireland
Western Europe experienced the immigration of people from a Muslim background after World War II who settled in countries like France, Britain or Germany to fill the labour shortage and made important contributions to the economic recovery of Western European…
Dai Vaughan, John Berger, and disciplinary boundaries
Three years ago, Richard Macdonald and I compared Dai Vaughan (1933-2012) with two other ‘outstanding figures of his generation’, Robin Wood (1931-2009) and V F Perkins (1936-). The comparison is worth extending. Wood and Perkins are now regarded as key figures…
The Post-Mortem of Labour Scotland
Three years ago, Gerry Hassan and I published a book entitled ‘The Strange Death of Labour Scotland’. We envisaged that, unless radical steps were taken, Labour’s influence in Scotland would steadily decline. Speaking personally, I did not envisage a total…
Austerity Bites: Two 1980s British Road Movies
By Ieuan Franklin Where are the films being made today about ‘Austerity Britain’ that combine social realism and humour, as in The Full Monty (1997)? In my article for the Journal of British Cinema and Television last year I looked…
Guest Blog Post – Socrates: Mark Morris on Death and Dying
In 1917, Erik Satie faced a spiritual dilemma—the challenge of giving voice to death, to nothingness. The composer had begun setting fragments of Plato’s narrative account of Socrates’s final days and death. Satie wanted the music to be ‘as white…
The Absence of God and Its Contextual Significance for Hume
In our featured article this week, “The Absence of God and Its Contextual Significance for Hume”, David Fergusson of the University of Edinburgh sets Hume’s thoroughgoing religious scepticism within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. Much of Hume scholarship today…
‘Don’t pump up the emotion’: The creation and authorship of a sound world in The Wire
The HBO TV series, The Wire, is well known for capturing a realistic slice of Baltimore life in and around the city’s drug trade. The show is considered to be more in touch with the world it portrays than previous…