Jeremy Black, 2007
ISBN 978 1 904863 22 9
£10

The slave trade was vile. Everybody can agree on that. But was it unambiguously the fault of the Western powers of the time? Was it something for which we should today apologize? The Anglican Church seems to think so, and so do elements of the British government. Does the modern mania for apology and breast-beating, however, not perhaps lead to an oversimplification of matters? In this timely book, published to mark 200 years since Britain took the historic step of abolishing the slave trade, Professor Black grasps the nettle of political correctness. He deftly points out the contradictions and ambiguities of the slave trade: the inconvenient fact that the Arab world played at least as large a part in the slave trade as any Western power, for instance; or the uncomfortable truth that African chieftains were all too willing to sell other Africans to Western and Arab slave dealers. In the light of this, what are we to make of allegations that 'racism' lay at the heart of the slave trade? To whom should the West apologize? Professor Black underlines the degree to which both slavery and the slave trade fulfilled labour requirements in a world in which labour was frequently coerced. Rather than thinking of slavery as uniquely evil, he points out the need to consider it alongside other systems of labour control, such as serfdom. In this fascinating volume, we trace the evolution of the slave trade through the centuries, pausing to examine some of the shifting variables: How did the supply of slaves change as the various cash crops rose or declined in importance? What happened when European manufactured goods entered the African marketplace? Though slim, this is a thought-provoking and fearless book by one of the UK's leading historians. Dealing as it does with slavery around the world, it deserves to be widely read both in Britain and abroad.

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Richard D. North, 2007
ISBN 978 1 904863 20 5
£15.95

Broadcasters are corseted and cosseted - it's time to set them free. We need to scrap the TV licence and give broadcast journalists the same freedoms their print colleagues enjoy, argues Richard D. North. It made sense 80 years ago to treat broadcasters as special - but not now. "Scrap The BBC!" is a manifesto for the future of broadcasting. North suggests that broadcasters are crippled by the requirement to be impartial. Instead of being neutered but perpetually dissident, they need the freedom to be partisan and even positive.

"A very stimulating work with some palpable hits at the BBC and how it has cleverly survived in the bearpit of media politics." Professor Sir Alan Peacock, Chairman of the Government Committee of Inquiry into the financing of the BBC, 1986

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W. D. Rubinstein, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 12 4
£20

Who were the very rich in Britain during the past 200 years? Until recently, surprisingly little was known about them beyond anecdotes and stereotypes. Men of Property, the first book by an historian to examine and analyze who the very rich in Britain really were, first appeared in 1981 and has had a wide influence. It is credited with helping to shape the so-called "Gentlemanly Capitalism" school of economic historians, which has heavily affected our notions of economic growth in modern Britain. Men of Property now appears in a fully updated edition, with new chapters on the very rich in post-war Britain. William D. Rubinstein found that the plurality of the rich in Victorian Britain earned their fortunes in commerce and finance, especially in the City of London, rather than in manufacturing and industry. This study is largely based in a detailed, comprehensive analysis of the probate records of wealth at death, as well as income tax and other objective sources. From these, a full picture has been built up of the occupations, social origins, and career patterns of the very riche in Britain since the early nineteenth century, including both businessmen and the great landowners.

This fully updated edition includes extensive new chapters on the wealthy in the 1940-80 period - when, because of extraordinarily high rates of taxation and other factors, the number of very rich persons in Britain declined sharply - and on the wealthy in contemporary Britain. This last chapter focuses on the remarkable increase in the scale of riches in Britain during the past quarter-century, which occurred at the same time as an increase in general levels of affluence.

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Anthony Glees, Philip H. J. Davies, & John N. L. Morrison, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 16 7
£20

Britain's spies know very well how to keep their secrets secret. Only nine parliamentarians - the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee - have the continuing legal authority to pry into the most sensitive activities of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ and report back candidly to the Prime Minister on how well the country's intelligence Agencies are performing. Since the Committee was set up in 1994 it has also made sanitised copies of its reports available to Parliament and the public which - when the space between the lines is read by experts - can reveal a great deal.
But how well has the Committee done its job? The Open Side of Secrecy is the first in-depth analysis of the Intelligence and Security Committee's first ten years. It dissects the Committee's successes and failures and suggests ways in which it could become more effective in future. The Open Side of Secrecy is a ground-breaking analysis of Britain's most important intelligence oversight body.

Professor Anthony Glees is Director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies. He is one of the founding figures of the academic study of intelligence and security issues in the UK.

Dr Philip H. J. Davies is Deputy Director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies.

John N. L. Morrison progressed through Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) from desk analyst to Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence and Head of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff. He represented the MoD and DIS on the Joint Intelligence Committee and was UK representative to the NATO Intelligence Board. On his early retirement in 1999 he was selected by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee to be its first Investigator, a position he held until 2004.

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Manifesto of the Henry Jackson Society, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 15 9
£13.99

The British Moment is the foreign policy manifesto of a group of young academics based at Cambridge University, the Henry Jackson Society. "The British Moment" calls for a new way of thinking about British foreign policy in the twenty-first century and argues that the time is rife for Britain to play a leading and progressive role in promoting democracy and human rights across the globe. The British Moment's authors argue it is time for Britain to reclaim the noble tradition of liberal interventionism.

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Roger Howard, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 14 0
£11.99

On both sides of the Atlantic, the doctrine of "liberal interventionism" has, in recent years, been making inroads in policy making circles. The domestic affairs of one sovereign state, maintain its advocates, are a matter of direct concern to other states, which are therefore justified in actively interfering. "Neoconservatives" argue that the global diffusion of democratic values is in the West's best interests; meanwhile, many among the liberal-left argue that the Western world has a responsibility to uphold human rights in other countries. In What's Wrong with Liberal Interventionism, Roger Howard argues that the core principles of liberal interventionism are not only delusional, but also present clear dangers. He argues that not only are liberal interventionists particularly apt to wholly misjudge a foreign mindset, but they are also inadvertently responsible for fuelling mistrust with rival states - at the very time when this ought to be avoided.

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Jeremy Black, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 13 2
£13.99

Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq - Britain's armed forces are increasingly required to engage in 'power projection'. Yet for years, Britain's armed strength has been in decline. How can the military do more with less? Can Britain's Thin Red Line remain intact? Or is it already too late? Professor Jeremy Black - one of Britain’s leading historians - employs a number of perspectives as he casts a fresh eye over the main issues of defence: from the eighteenth century, through the Cold War and the double-edged 'peace dividend', to the new threat that is Al-Qa'ida. In this compelling book, Professor Black sounds a reveille - a wake-up call to the political elite and society at large urgently to address (and redress) the imbalance between what Britain's forces physically can do and what the country expects them to do.

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Jeremy Black, 2006
ISBN 1 904863 08 6
£16.99

In The European Question and the National Interest Jeremy Black – Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain’s leading historians - offers an alternative, historically grounded, Euro-sceptic account of Britain’s relationship to European integration. He takes the story from the “deep history” of the historical background to Britain’s relations with continental Europe to scenarios for Britain’s future relations with the EU.

The European Question and the National Interest argues that supporters of the European “project” have offered a dubious reading of history to support their assertions about the supposed inevitability - the supposed inherent “destiny” - of further European integration. Those advocating closer European integration have also failed to define - let alone advance - the national interest. He argues that this failure has been particularly acute during the Blair administration.

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Douglas Murray, 2005
ISBN 1 904863 05 1
£20

Neoconservatism: Why We Need It is a vigorous defence of the most controversial political philosophy of our age. In this timely book Douglas Murray explains what neoconservatism is, in theory and practise. He defends it against its critics and explains why – despite the noisy claims of its opponents - neoconservatism is good.

Murray is the first person to make a sustained case for why neoconservatism is relevant to Britain. And neoconservatism, it is argued, is the future not just of the British Conservative party, but of any political party committed to the ideals of freedom at home and abroad.

This book calls for the introduction of neoconservative ideas into British politics, explaining why this is necessary and how it could be achieved.

The early chapters explain neoconservatism’s roots and forebears. A chapter on the Iraq war demonstrates the moral and political vacuum now gripping both left and right in Britain. Finally Murray details what British neoconservatism should look like and why the need for it is so urgent.

Born in 1979, Murray is a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford. His first book, Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, was published in 2000. Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, the book became a bestseller.

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Oliver Kamm, Foreword by Martin Bell, 2005
ISBN 1 904863 06 X
£13.99

Throughout the past century the Left has fractured over the issue of national security. In Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, Oliver Kamm plots a course for progressive politics by drawing on four pivotal historical debates on the British Left. These episodes comprise: collective security in the 1930s; opposition to Communist expansionism after World War II; the Labour Party’s rejection in the 1980s of its earlier anti-Communism; and President Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

Kamm identifies, running through these debates, an authentic left-wing tradition of militant anti-totalitarianism. Against it, however, there has been a recurring temptation for progressives, critical of their own societies’ failings, to extenuate or even romanticise the ideological opponents of Western liberal democracies.

Kamm criticises left-wingers who instinctively oppose the use of force by the Western democracies. He demonstrates the affinity between their supposedly progressive anti-interventionism and a conservative ‘realism’ (which Kamm terms ‘amoral quietism’) that fails even in its own terms as a strategy for preserving vital interests. Kamm demonstrates that these issues are not new to British political debate, and that the Left is reprising familiar errors. The sole novel feature of left-wing opposition to the Blair-Bush strategy since 9/11 is that an alliance has emerged between different and previously hostile forms of totalitarianism.

Against self-styled realists, Kamm defends regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of an anti-totalitarian struggle with recognisable antecedents in twentieth-century Europe. He argues that the promotion of global democracy accords with the Left’s internationalist ideals of opposition to fascism and clerical reaction. Indeed, the much-maligned term neoconservatism should be seen as a modern variant of traditional liberal internationalism.

Interventionism has recently been a difficult cause to argue in British politics. Kamm expounds it, as Martin Bell notes in his foreword, “with style, dexterity and scholarship”.

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Anthony Glees & Philip H J Davies, 2004
ISBN 1 904863 01 9
£30

This book is about a major and dangerous failing of government and intelligence at a time of great national crisis. It is also about the failure of the BBC to properly fulfil its role as a public service broadcaster.

The inability to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction which members of the intelligence community firmly believed were being amassed in Iraq was Britain’s worst intelligence failure since the Second World War. It continues to haunt the corridors of power, raising grave questions about how intelligence feeds into policy-making in an increasingly fissile world.

Exploiting the unique resource of the published evidence marshalled by the Hutton Inquiry Anthony Glees and Philip H J Davies show how:

• Tony Blair’s government and Britain’s intelligence community systematically mishandled the use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war;


• The BBC systematically misreported and mishandled the story of Dr David Kelly, one of Britain’s best weapon experts.

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Compiled by Digby Anderson, 2000
ISBN 0 907631 93 2
150 pages, £5.95

With more than 50 contributors assesses recent cultural change through the change in use of some 200 words, including gentleman, fortitude, patriotism, manliness, marriage, inclusiveness, partner and precautionary.

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Michael Mosbacher, 2002
ISBN 0 907631 95 9
£9.95

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, capitalism was acknowledged as the only way of organising a sucessful econony, at least for a brief time. But today capitalism finds itself surrounded by a host of new critics. At least these critics appear to be doing something new. They focus on cases of abuse, cases which result allegedly from the actions of particular global corporations: the abuse of the environment, the low pay of workers in the 'South', child labour, and the imposition of lifestyles through brands.

So, how seriously should these critics of capitalism be treated? Marketing The Revolution finds that a good number of the new critics are doing little that is new. Even their emphasis on individual alleged abuses is, at least in part, not a new end but a means to galvanize support for their hatred of capitalism.

The new critics imply, by their recitation of particular abuses and attacks upon particular brands, that they are concerned with the specific abuses. Yet the leading chronicler of anti-branding, Naomi Klein, says:'For years, we in the movement have fed off our opponents' symbols - their brands, their office towers, their photo-opportunity summits. We have used them as rallying cries, as focal points, as popular education tools. But these symbols were never the real target: they were the levers, the handles.'

Even the tactics of the new critics are not original; they are borrowed from modern corporate PR. Take away the heartstring of 'abuse' cases and the second-hand PR and what is left is little more than a crude and entirely negative hatred of capitalism. There is no thoughtful analysis of the system they so loathe, no awareness of how they themselves are part of it, no carefully considered alternative for the betterment of the world.

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Digby Anderson, 2001
ISBN 0 907631 94 0
206 pages, £12.95

"One loyal friend is worth 10,000 relatives", said Euripides. Aristotle thought friendship the best thing in the world. Saint Augustine was devastated by the death of a friend, "All that we had done together was now a grim ordeal without him". For men as different as Dr Johnson, Coleridge and Cardinal Newman friendship was a great, moral love. For Cicero it was a foundation of social order. For Burke "good men [must] cultivate friendships". To try to lead a good life on one's own is arrogant and dangerous. In past ages business thrived on the trust of friends; armies won battles on the loyalty of men to their comrades and people were attracted to and schooled in medicine, law and academe by friendship. This friendship of the past was high friendship, a friendship of pleasure but also of shared moral life.

LOSING FRIENDS contrasts this high friendship with the "pathetic affairs" which pass for friendship today. Friendship is in trouble. An institution once as important as the family, has been "diluted to mere recreation...passing an odd evening together...sharing the odd confidence". It is being outsted from business through fear of cronyism and squeezed between the demands of work and the increasingly jealous family. Fathers neglect their obligations to their friends at the club or pub to bath their children. Many of us will have no friends in illness, in need or at our funerals. Bewildered letters to agony aunts ask how to make friends. Schools are absurdly introducing classes on how to do so. Our society has no public recognition of friendship and cannot even discuss it articulately. When it does it sentimentalizes it. Modern society is wealthy, healthy and long lived. Aristotle would ask what the point of such a life is if lived without friends.

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Adrian Furnham, 2000
ISBN 0 907631 92 4
64 pages, £7.50

A survey of over 20 significant studies published between 1967 and 1999 on children as consumers and finds that notions which are still popular in the press, such as ‘pester power’, have long lost any academic credence.

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Edited by Digby Anderson, 2000
ISBN 0 907631 91 6
64 pages, £7.50

Finds areas of spending in the NHS, other than bureaucracy, which are wasteful or of very limited medical efficacy.

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Digby Anderson, 2000
ISBN 0 90763190 8
28 pages, £6

Examines corporate mission statements and finds many wanting. Too often they ignore the shareholders and speak of the companies ‘obligations’ to myriad stakeholders, often in vacuous and grandiloquent language. Corporations should be honest about their purpose, and extol the very real benefits corporate capitalism has brought.

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Jan Davies, 2000
ISBN 0 907631 89 4
28 pages, £6

Examines the recent reforms and finds that they undermine the independence of the legal profession and could lead to the de facto nationalisation of the criminal law. It puts these moves into the wider context of current criticisms of the professions for their alleged elitism and unaccountability. Such criticisms illustrate a failure to understand the nature of the professions and mistake accountability for bureaucratic box ticking.

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Joseph F Johnston, 2000
ISBN 0 907631 88 6
44 pages, £6

Finds that the Anglo-American model of corporate governance is making inroads into Europe. Regulators and corporations in Europe have been forced to accept the greater efficacy of the Anglo-Saxon model both for the firm and for the economy as a whole. The imposition of stakeholder nostrums, either by Brussels or by national governments, would however, reverse this development and have a detrimental effect on the economies of Europe.

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Richard D. North & Digby Anderson, 1999
ISBN: 0 907631851
41 pages, £6

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Simon Green, Robert Davies & Michael Mosbacher 1999,
ISBN: 0 90763186X
40 pages, £6

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Deepak Lal, 1999
ISBN 0 907631 87 8
28 pages, £6

Examines the demands made upon the Third World by Western activist groups, and argues that these organisations, not the multinationals, are the real threat to the Third World and its development.

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Ian Crowe, 1997
ISBN 0 907631 71 1
26 pages, £6.00

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Kenneth Minogue, 1997
ISBN 0 907631 71 8
73 pages, £7.50

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Edited by Digby Anderson & Michael Mosbacher, 1997
ISBN 0 907631 74 6
88 pages, £7.50

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Patricia Morgan, 1992
ISBN 0 907631 48 7
21 pages, £5.00

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Antony Flew, 1992
ISBN 0 907631 46 0
37 pages, £5.00

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