In this definitive new account of the emergence of human rights activism in post-war Britain, Tom Buchanan shows how disparate individuals, organisations and causes gradually came to acquire a common identity as 'human rights activists'. This was a slow process whereby a coalition of activists, working on causes ranging from anti-fascism, anti-apartheid and decolonisation to civil liberties and the peace movement, began to come together under the banner of human rights. The launch of Amnesty International in 1961, and its landmark winning of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 provided a model and inspiration to many new activist movements in 'the field of human rights', and helped to affect major changes towards public and political attitudes towards human rights issues across the globe.

"In this definitive new account of the emergence of human rights activism in post-war Britain, Tom Buchanan shows how disparate individuals, organisations and causes gradually came to acquire a common identity as "human rights activists". This was a slow process whereby a coalition of activists, working on causes ranging from anti-fascism, anti-apartheid and decolonisation to civil liberties and the peace movement, began to come together under the banner of human rights. The launch of Amnesty International in 1961, and its landmark winning of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 provided a model and inspiration to many new activist movements in "the field of human rights", and helped to affect major changes towards public and political attitudes towards human rights issues across the globe"--

Demonstrates how activists worked together during the post-war decades to transform public attitudes towards violations of human rights.

Examines this organization's work on behalf of political prisoners in Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, West Germany, China, Central African Republic, Tanzania, U.S.S.R., etc.

This is the first book to examine the shifting relationship between humanitarianism and the expansion, consolidation and postcolonial transformation of the Anglophone world across three centuries, from the antislavery campaign of the late eighteenth century to the role of NGOs balancing humanitarianism and human rights in the late twentieth century. Contributors explore the trade-offs between humane concern and the altered context of colonial and postcolonial realpolitik. They also showcase an array of methodologies and sources with which to explore the relationship between humanitarianism and colonialism. These range from the biography of material objects to interviews as well as more conventional archival enquiry. They also include work with and for Indigenous people whose family histories have been defined in large part by ‘humanitarian’ interventions.

Although the evolution of human rights diplomacy during the second half of the 20th century has been the subject of a wealth of scholarship in recent years, British foreign policy perspectives remain largely underappreciated. Focusing on former Foreign Secretary David Owen's sustained engagement with the related concepts of human rights and humanitarianism, David Owen, Human Rights and the Remaking of British Foreign Policy addresses this striking omission by exploring the relationship between international human rights promotion and British foreign policy between c.1956-1997. In doing so, this book uncovers how human rights concerns have shaped national responses to foreign policy dilemmas at the intersections of civil society, media, and policymaking; how economic and geopolitical interests have defined the parameters within which human rights concerns influence policy; how human rights considerations have influenced British interventions in overseas conflicts; and how activism on normative issues such as human rights has been shaped by concepts of national identity. Furthermore, by bringing these issues and debates into focus through the lens of Owen's human rights advocacy, analysis provides a reappraisal of one of the most recognisable, albeit enigmatic, parliamentarians in recent British history. Both within the confines of Whitehall and without, Owen's human rights advocacy served to alter the course of British foreign policy at key junctures during the late Cold War and post-Cold War periods, and provides a unique prism through which to interrogate the intersections between Britain's enduring search for a distinctive 'role' in the world and the development of the international human rights regime during the period in question.

The Spanish Civil War has had a profound and lasting impact on Britain. At least 2,400 Britons volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic (of whom more than 500 died), while others provided medical assistance, visited Spain in delegations, or covered the Civil War as journalists. In this collection of three of his published articles and seven new essays, all based on primary research, Tom Buchanan sheds light on many facets of this complex relationship. The book's central themes are the impact of loss on families and communities, and the importance of Spain itself - its history and culture - in the way that this Civil War was understood in Britain. The book examines individuals involved in the war, such as the writer John Langdon-Davies, the artist Felicia Browne, and the journalist G.L. Steer. It also pursues somewhat neglected themes, such as the response of British artists to the war or the role played by British medical personnel. The final two chapters focus on the long-term impact of the conflict on British politics and on Britain's relations with Spain since 1939. Presenting a chronological progression from the Spanish Civil War to the post-war Franco era, this book has been published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the war.

The lethality of conflicts between insurgent groups and counter-insurgent security forces has risen markedly since the Second World War just as those of conventional, or inter-state wars have declined. For several decades, conflicts within states rather than between them have been the prevalent form of organised political violence worldwide. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have fired interest in colonial experiences of rebellion, while current western interventions in sub-Saharan Africa have prompted accusations of 'militarist humanitarianism'. Yet, despite mounting interest in counter-insurgency and empire, comparative investigation of colonial responses to insurrection and civil disorder is sparse. Some scholars have written of a 'golden age of counter-insurgency', which began with Britain's declaration of a Malayan Emergency in 1948 and ended with the withdrawal of US ground troops from Vietnam in 1973. It is with this period, if not with any presumed 'golden age' that this volume is concerned. This Handbook connects ideas about contested decolonization and the insurgencies that inspired it with an analysis of patterns and singularities in the conflicts that precipitated the collapse of overseas empires. It attempts a systematic study of the global effects of organized anti-colonial violence in Asia and Africa. The objective is to reconceptualize late colonial violence in the European overseas empires by exploring its distinctive character and the globalizing processes underpinning it.

The histories of European unification and of West European democracy during the second half of the twentieth century have often been considered as separate or even antagonistic processes with the institutions of European integration being regarded as bastions of bureaucratic rule. A More Democratic Community challenges this assumption and argues that European integration benefited from the democratic accountability of member states while contributing to the validation of national democratic institutions. However, it also unveils a paradox: as integration deepened, it diminished the power of national parliaments, sparking a democratic accountability crisis within the Community. This insightful volume sheds light on pivotal reforms addressing Europe's perceived democratic deficit.

In Empire's Violent End, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, along with expert contributors, present comparative research focused specifically on excessive violence in Indonesia, Algeria, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, and other areas during the wars of decolonization. In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and rape in the margins. The editors describe how such comparisons mostly focus on the differences by engaging in "guilt ranking." Moreover, the dramas that have unfolded in Algeria and Kenya tend to overshadow similar violent events in Indonesia, the very first nation to declare independence directly after World War II. Empire's Violent End is the first book to place the Dutch-Indonesian case at the heart of a comparison with focused, thematic analysis on a diverse range of topics to demonstrate that despite variation in scale, combat intensity, and international dynamics, there were more similarities than differences in the ways colonial powers used extreme forms of violence. By delving into the causes and nature of the abuse, Brocades Zaalberg and Luttikhuis conclude that all cases involved some form of institutionalized impunity, which enabled the type of situation in which the forces in the service of the colonial rulers were able to use extreme violence.