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Anssi Halmesvirta, PhD, senior assistent
Theme of research connected to the project:
The uses of public moralism in extra-parliamentary pressurizing in Britain, 1909-1914
My targets of research in this project are two influential pressure groups in the British political life during the constitutional crisis in the Edwardian age, c. 1909–1914. I shall concentrate on examining two special groups: (1) the experts gathered in the Public Morality Council (est. 1899) who alarmed about the ‘decline’ of British (Anglo-Saxon) physique and morals in general, and (2) the campaign of the Eugenics Society to change legislation in favour of negative and/or positive eugenics. The pivotal concept in my study is ‘public moralism’ as defined by Stefan Collini in his seminal Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850–1950 (C.U.P., 1991). My aim is to the apply his approach and develop it further in disentangling the messages (impregnated with concepts, argument, evidence) these pressure groups sent to the Parliament and explicate the means they used in order to get them across in leading political parties. I also intend to analyze the publications these two organs produced and disseminated during election campaigns in order to persuade the reading public and candidates to their side. It is also pertinent to find out whom the pressure groups listed as their scientific or moral experts (authorities) to back up their programmes and why they wanted to take a stand. Equally important is to peruse the Parliamentary Papers from the period in order to find out how the Members of Parliament reacted to at times intimidating pressurizing from the outside and what arguments they used to oppose or support the measures proposed by the ‘public moralists’.
My studies belong to the field of intellectual history which in this case means listening to the voices from the past by method of eavesdropping in their debates and arguments. I have tried to illustrate this method in my Ideology and Argument (SKS: Helsinki, 2006) which emphasizes the significance of explaining the ways scientific or pseudo-scientific evidence and arguments were/are quite promiscuously employed in political rhetoric and persuasion.
Anssi Halmesvirta
Contact me via email:
anssi. halmesvirta _at_ jyu.fi
tel. +358 (0)14 260 1272
[Direct link to Anssi´s information presented in Department´s own website.]