Andy Croll

Starving Strikers and the Limits of the “Humanitarian Discovery of Hunger” in Late Victorian Britain

By the late nineteenth century, the hungry increasingly found themselves constructed as objects of compassion. However, there were real limits to the “humanitarian discovery of hunger”. Not every famished body was understood as deserving of sympathy. Compassionate citizens were particularly troubled by the mass distress that often accompanied lengthy strikes. How should they respond to such hunger? A study of newspaper representations of strike-induced hunger reveals that a gendered discourse evolved which repeatedly concentrated attention on the starving “innocents”: the wives and children of male strikers. The discourse was apparently apolitical but, in truth, it was nothing of the sort. It adjudged the “innocents” worthy recipients of food aid, whilst frequently ignoring the hunger of the striking male and denying him support. Labour leaders had to choose their words carefully if they were to get his suffering recognized.

Review Article: Holding onto History: Modern Welsh Historians and the Challenge of Postmodernism

Deirdre Beddoe, Out of the Shadows: A History of Women in TwentiethCentury Wales, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000; pp. xiv + 201; ISBN 0 7083 1591 7 D. Gareth Evans, A History of Wales, 1906–2000, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000; pp. xiv + 303; ISBN 0 7083 1594 1 Geraint Jenkins and Mari Williams (eds), ‘Let’s Do Our Best for the Ancient Tongue’: The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000; pp. xvi + 700; ISBN 0 7083 1658 1 Aled Jones and Bill Jones, Welsh Reflections: Y Drych and America, 1851–2001, Llandysul, Gomer, 2001; pp. xiv + 198; ISBN 1 8423 021 6 Emrys Jones (ed.), The Welsh in London, 1500–2000, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2001; pp. xiv + 273; ISBN 0 7083 1697 2 Duncan Tanner, Chris Williams and Deian Hopkin (eds), The Labour Party in Wales, 1900–2000, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000; pp. xxi + 324; ISBN 0 7083 1586 0

Communing with ‘the laity’: exceptionalism, postmodernism and the urban biography

For as historians are compelled to grind out their specified quota of specialized articles and inaccessible monographs, which are at best read only by a handful of professional colleagues, and are at worst almost completely ignored, this makes them less and less able to fulfil that essential public function which remains their real and abiding justification: satisfying the interest and furthering the comprehension of that broader, non-professional audience memorably described by Hugh Trevor-Roper as ‘the laity’ (David Cannadine, 1999).