British Democracy Began in 1884,
The country was not even loosely democratic until the 1880s. Excluded all woman and some men until 1918.
The USA was not much better, maintaining racism into the 1960s.
Race & Reformist Rioting – Brixton 1987.
The Brixton Riots of 1987 caused panic at the time. Was Britain’s traditional niceness about to be lost? Were we seeing the start of a race war?
I said then it was a “reformist riot”, a protest by people who wanted a better spot in the existing system. My comments have stood the test of time.
Arkwright and the rise of the factory system. It has no single beginning, but Richard Arkwright was a major contributor to a system in which a few people controlled the work of many. He was hard-working and clever, but also a man who stole other people’s ideas. A man who turned the work of many into wealth for just himself.
Coleridge and the end of Christian economics. How a man who was a philosopher as well as poet had a plausible alternative to the Adam Smith vision. And how he noticed the Trade Cycle, maybe the first person to do so.
Burke – a British and Irish Deist. A man who founded 19th century Toryism, but was a Whig. And a disbeliver in an era before this could be said openly.
England’s Christian Revolution. The rival British Christianities of the 17th Century, and their relationship to the British Wars (“English Civil War”).
Petty on Real Capitalism. Writing a much more authentic description than the later work of Adam Smith. How he anticipated the modern world much better than Smith did, including the possibility of Britain becoming a country mostly devoted to industry and commerce, with agriculture margainalised. And was in favour of tax as part of the developing economy, accepting the necessary role of the state.
Mary Tudor and Elizabeth – almost a beautiful story. How history might have been very different had Mary had a son and heir to carry on a Tudor Catholic line. If there was a destiny that shaped Great Britain’s rise, then it wasn’t a destiny that cared anything for Christianity in either its Protestant or Roman Catholic versions.
Celtic, Germanic, Multicultural. The relationships between the peoples of North-West Europe. And remarks on their current religious beliefs.
Gwydion Madawc Williams 