Suchergebnisse

This thesis examines the debate on the future of voluntary social service following the establishment of the post-war welfare state, commonly regarded as a painful period of adjustment for voluntary organisations, and argues that this debate sheds light on the later resurgence of the voluntary sector. It assesses the policy instruments available to governments in managing the voluntary sector in the 1940s, and the influence of this regulatory framework on the institutional forms available to voluntary organisations. It explores the legal and ethical distinction between endowed charities and voluntary organisations which Labour inherited from the Liberal political tradition, and how this interacted with the conceptual framework articulated by leading proponents of voluntary social service. The nature of voluntary organisations meant that traditional theories of voluntarism were often at odds with the routine maintenance of extended organisational structures, especially with the methods required to finance voluntary organisations. A consensus on proposals to resolve this conflict emerged in the late 1940s and this reflected structural changes within the voluntary sector which had given rise to a class of professional managers whose views increasingly converged with those of Labour policy makers. The proposals included the creation of autonomous funding bodies to be financed partly from the assets of defunct charitable endowments, providing financial stability for voluntary organisations, satisfying the requirements of accountability without compromising the independenceo f voluntary organisations. The new funding bodies were not created, but a new framework of corporate governance for voluntary organisations was implemented in the 1960 Charities Act, which brought voluntary organisations within the regulatory regime governing charitable trusts. The assimilation of voluntarism to charity ensured that the Idealism that inspired voluntary social service organisations was tied to compliance with institutional and legal forms which impaired their capacity to express social criticism.

Let us briefly remind ourselves of the current policy-context of this issue in Britain. The need to raise children's schooling attainments to a very substantial extent has become widely accepted in the past fifteen years following international comparisons (many based on research at this Institute) of workforce vocational qualifications and school-leaving standards. The consequences are expressed today in interventionist public policy in terms of a National Curriculum laid down for all school-ages (adopted ten years ago), together with more recent detailed syllabuses in the core subjects of language and mathematics embodied in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies for primary schools (adopted in the past two years). Much of the need for such reforms in Britain can be traced to worries as to whether teaching time was well spent, particularly in primary schools using 'modern' teaching methods which required children within each classroom to be divided into small groups, each group sitting around its own small table, many children not facing the wall-board (many classrooms even having their wall-board removed) so as to promote less 'didactic' teaching and more 'discovery' learning by pupils. The frequently ensuing difficulties of teachers in dividing their time effectively among those groups, the consequential frustration of those children who awaited the teacher's attention, the slower general pace of learning, and the particular disadvantages suffered by slower-developing children, need not be spelled out here; they have been closely examined in research involving timed classroom observation, such as the 'Oracle' project of Professor Maurice Galton and his colleagues.

ALTHOUGH OFTEN CITED AS "THE PROVING GROUND FOR WORLD WAR II," THE LESSONS OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR HAVE BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD. THIS ACCOUNT, THE FIRST TO USE AN EXTENSIVE COLLECTION OF RECENTLY RELEASED SOVIET MILITARY ARCHIVAL MATERIAL, EXAMINES THE USE OF TANKS BY THE SOVIET-BACKED REPUBLICAN FORCES. IT ARGUES THAT THE CONFLICT DID HAVE MANY IMPORTANT LESSONS IN TANK TECHNOLOGY AND TACTICS FOR THE RED ARMY, BUT THAT MANY OF THE LESSONS WERE DISTORTED AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PURGES, OR IGNORED DUE TO DEEP-SEATED SHORTCOMINGS.

GROUND LAUNCH CRUISE MISSILES (GLCM) ARE THE MOST OBSCURE OF THE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS OF THE FORMER SOVIET AIR FORCE. DEPLOYED IN SMALL NUMBERS, THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED BY THE ARMY'S TACTICAL BALLISTIC MISSILES. YET THEY PRESENT AN INTRIGUING MYSTERY, AS THEY REPRESENTED THE MOST NUMEROUS NUCLEAR WEAPON DEPLOYED ON CUBA DURING THE 1962 MISSILE CRISIS. THEIR PRESENCE ON CUBA WAS NOT RECOGNIZED BY U.S. INTELLIGENCE AT THE TIME, NOR IN MOST ACCOUNTS OF THE CRISIS SINCE. THIS ARTICLE PROVIDES THE FIRST DETAILED ACCOUNT IN ENGLISH OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT.