'Fill the jails' : identity, structure and method in the Committee of 100, 1960 – 1968
The Committee of 100 (C100) (1960 – 68) were a British anti-nuclear protest group 
who campaigned for mass non-violent direct action (NVDA) in an effort to force the 
government to revise its defence policy. The formation of C100 created tensions with 
the already-established Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), whose leaders 
objected to C100's commitment to civil disobedience. The two anti-nuclear campaigns 
had some membership overlap but always remained separate. Until now, any 
investigation of C100 has been incorporated within wider studies of CND or has been 
quantitative in method. This thesis therefore addresses a historical gap by employing a 
life history approach to examine C100 as a distinct group. Drawing upon oral history 
interviews with twenty-four C100 members the resulting analysis reveals new aspects of 
C100's innovative structure and method, and identifies the particular nature of those 
who joined the campaign. 
A new image of first wave anti-nuclear activists emerges when focusing on C100 
protestors. The respondents reveal motivations for campaign engagement that contrast 
with those of earlier representations of CND supporters. They were inspired by a 
common interest in global civil rights concerning human health and survival and a need 
to actively challenge rather than merely petition the authorities. Significantly, many 
C100 members came from left-wing, progressive or anarchist backgrounds. They were 
an erudite group with regard for knowledge, despite many putting conventional 
education on hold to fully engage in the campaign. 
This thesis examines C100's libertarian nature, and the extent to which its membership 
managed to be anti-hierarchical in structure, ethos and policy. It explores tensions 
within C100 concerning limits and definitions of NVDA that changed over time and 
came to radicalise the campaign. A biographical approach also reveals significant 
factors around C100 prison experience concerning issues of class and gender. This 
thesis serves to situate C100 for the first time in its own right on the socio-political map, 
both historically and globally.
Poverty in Britain, 1900-1965
How was poverty measured and defined, and how has this influenced our judgement of the change in poverty in Britain during the first 60 years of the twentieth century? During this period, a large number of poverty surveys were carried out, the methods pf which altered after the Second World War. Commencing with Rowntree's social survey of York in 1899 and ending with Abel-Smith and Townsend's Poor and the Poorest 1965, Ian Gazeley shows how the means of evaluation and causes of poverty changed.
The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender, and National History inModern China
While there is much writing on the nation as the subject of linear history, considerably less attention has been paid to the dimension of the nation as the always identifiable, unchanging subject of history. This unchanging subject is necessitated by the ascendancy of the conception of linear time in capitalism in which change is viewed not only as accelerating, but can no longer be framed by an ultimate source of meaning such as God. Ostensibly, linear history is the falling of events into the “river of time,” but national history also posits a continuous subject to gather these changes. Such a subject is recognizable only by the spiritual qualities of authenticity, purity, and sacrality. The nation-state and nationalists stake their claim to sovereign authority, in part, as custodians of this authenticity. 
 
 
 
A range of figures, human and non-human, come to symbolize a regime of authenticity manipulable to some extent by nationalists and state-builders. This essay focuses on the instance of women in early twentieth-century China. Nationalists and cultural essentialists tended to depict women as embodying the eternal Chinese civilizational virtues of self-sacrifice and loyalty and to elevate them as national exemplars. The essay also examines cases of how women themselves may have perceived this role as examplars and concludes that while there was considerable subversion in their enunciation of this role (to their advantage), there was sufficient reference to the prescriptive code of authenticity in their self-formation to sustain the regime of authenticity. The essay ends with some thoughts about the changing relationship between authenticity and intensifying globalization in the contemporary world.