Introduction: the Fall and Rise of a Reputation
Harold Wilson’s Labour party came to power in October 1964 with a pledge to modernise Britain. ‘Modernisation’ was the omnibus phrase that he used in each and every area of policy, from the shape of the economy to Britain’s military commitments abroad. The idea was not limited to his famous speech at Labour’s 1963 Conference in Scarborough, in which he invoked the ‘white heat’ of the ‘technological revolution’. It was, rather, a constant theme in Labour’s appeal to the electorate. Science and the Future of Britain, Labour’s 1961 statement of aims in that field, set out new ways to achieve ‘the expansion and modernisation of our industries’. As chairman of the Science and Industry group of the National Executive Committee, Wilson was intimately concerned with that pamphlet, and with bringing scientists and other experts into the policy-making process. In his very first meeting with the TUC after becoming prime minister, he told trade union leaders that ‘modernisation and the National Plan’ were his priorities. Harold Wilson also emphasised modernity in foreign policy. Following the Conservatives’ failure to enter the European Community, Wilson encouraged the Labour party to view Commonwealth regeneration as an alternative. Genuinely committed to the strengthening of Commonwealth links, Wilson maintained that Britain’s international role would be best served by assisting the world’s poorest nations. The Commonwealth offered Britain leadership and influence and the moral dignity of assisting a diverse, underdeveloped and multi-racial grouping. In defence policy also, the Labour government would seek to bring stability to underdeveloped
Pemberton, H. (Author). (2007). Review of the 2006 periodical literature related to the period since 1945 and relevant to the study of British economic and social history. 10
clinical uses for the artificial radioisotope between 1945 and 1965. As part of the broader nuclear enterprise, the radioisotope programme enjoyed powerful political and financial support from the British government. This study examines the range of technical, political, economic, institutional and professional factors that shaped its journey from medical periphery to medical practice. Another study, by Quirke, explores the development by the British pharmacological industry between 1958 and 1978 of beta-blockers – which by 1987 accounted for 36 per cent of the total value of the world’s top twenty selling medicines, with nearly 75 per cent of these sales accounted for by products invented and developed in the UK.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1