Horowitz’s Theory of Ethnic Party Competition and the Case of the SDLP, 1970-79

Donald Horowitz's theory of ethnic conflict suggests that a political party operating in a deeply divided society can be effected by a centrifugal pull even when it is not subject to formal electoral competition. This idea can be applied to Northern Ireland's SDLP in the 1970s, when the party faced no credible electoral rival within its primary political constituency. Doing so helps to explain why the SDLP failed in its original objective of mobilizing a cross-community constituency, and instead became what Horowitz terms an “ethnically based party,” representing the interests of only one side of the political divide in Northern Ireland.

Healthcare in Ireland and Britain 1850-1970: Voluntary, regional and comparative perspectives

This volume explores developments in health and social care in Ireland and Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The central objectives are to highlight the role of voluntarism in healthcare, to examine healthcare in local and regional contexts, and to provide comparative perspectives. The collection is based on two interconnected and overlapping research themes: voluntarism and healthcare, and regionalism/localism and healthcare. It includes two synoptic overviews by leading authorities in the field, and ten case studies focusing on particular aspects of voluntary and/or regional healthcare in Ireland and Britain.

A European Culture War in the Twentieth Century? Antic-Catholicism and Anti-Bolshevism between Moscow, Berlin, and the Vatican 1922 to 1933

The term “culture war” has become a generic expression for secular-catholic conflicts across nineteenth-century Europe. Yet, if measured by acts of violence, anticlericalism peaked in the years between 1927 and 1939, when thousands of Catholic priests and believers were imprisoned or executed and hundreds of churches razed in Mexico, Spain and Russia. This essay argues that not only in these three countries, but indeed across Europe a culture war raged in the interwar period. It takes, as a case study, the interaction of communist and Catholic actors located in the Vatican, the Soviet Union, and Germany in the period between the beginning of the Pontificate of Pius XI in 1922 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany in 1933. Using correspondence and reports from the Vatican archives, this essay shows how Papal officials and communist leaders each sought to mobilize the German populace to achieve their own diplomatic ends. German Catholics and communists gladly responded to the call to arms that sounded from Rome and Moscow in 1930, but they did so also to further their own domestic goals. The case study shows how national contexts inflected the transnational dynamics of radical anti-Catholicism in interwar Europe. In the end, agitation against “godlessness” did not lead to the return of a “Christian State” desired by many conservative Christians. Instead, the culture war further destabilized the republic and added a religious dimension to a landscape well suited to National Socialist efforts to reach a Christian population otherwise mistrustful of its völkisch and anticlerical elements.

The frequency of gastrointestinal endocrine tumours in a well-defined population--Northern Ireland 1970-1985

The reported incidence of gastrointestinal endocrine tumours is variable. In Northern Ireland circumstances allowing such an assessment are favourable with a central diagnostic laboratory and register established to collect data on tumours from a well-defined population of 1.5 million people. From 1970 to 1985, 368 cases were recorded of which 85 per cent were carcinoid tumours. The annual incidence of carcinoid tumours was 1.3 per 100,000 of the population and the majority occurred in the appendix (61 per cent). No patients presented with the carcinoid syndrome. The annual incidence for other tumours was 0.12 per 100,000 for insulinomas; islet cell tumours of unknown type 0.07; Zollinger-Ellison syndrome 0.05; and multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) 0.05. There were two cases of VIPoma, one glucagonoma, one neurotensinoma and one tumour producing ACTH. It is possible that some tumours are more uncommon than others because of difficulty in diagnosis.