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It’s common knowledge that Henry VIII had six wives. But the cataclysmic love triangle between Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn gets all the airtime, while wives three to six are an afterthought.
In director Alexander Korda’s rollicking film The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Katherine Parr (wife six) was reduced to a throwaway joke in the film’s last moments. Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s upcoming film Firebrand is the first to bring Parr to centre stage – and not before time.
Right on cue, new evidence has come to light giving an intriguing glimpse into Parr’s relationship with her capricious husband. Namely, the discovery of Henry’s notes in a book authored by his wife.
Katherine Parr was unlike her five predecessors. Aged 30 and already twice widowed in 1543, the king made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, forcing her to break off another planned marriage. The increasingly disabled Henry had finally stopped pursuing nubile broodmares and sought out a companion instead.
Parr deftly navigated the tangled politics of the royal family, brokering a reconciliation between the king and the two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, he had declared to be bastards. She may even have helped in restoring them to the line of succession.
Henry certainly came to trust her judgment. When he set off for his final, futile war in France in 1544, he made her regent in his absence. Part of the appeal, it seems, was her bookish piety. Parr was the first English queen to publish a book and the first English woman to publish under her own name.
Her three books were pious exercises, beginning with a safe collection of translated texts titled Psalmes or Prayers (1544) and becoming more daring thereafter. The Lamentation of a Sinner (1547) was written during Henry’s husband’s lifetime, but its theology was too assertively Protestant to be published until he was safely dead.
The earlier books, though, seem to have delighted the king. He inscribed the queen’s own copy of Psalmes or Prayers: “Remember this writer / when you do pray / For he is yours”. He had always been theatrically pious and in his last years – brooding, in pain, nurturing his many humiliations – he turned to religion with melancholy intensity.
We know what Henry thought religion should mean to his subjects: a tough, moralistic faith without much room for forgiveness, whose keynote was obedience to himself. But what about his personal faith?
Enter a new discovery by Canadian literary scholar Micheline White.
Queen Katherine ordered a few luxury copies of Psalmes or Prayers printed on vellum, with delicate hand colouring. One of these, now in Buckinghamshire’s Wormsley Library is festooned with marginal markings and “manicules” – little doodled hands with fingers pointing to a passage some reader wanted to emphasise.
White has established, by meticulously comparing these distinctive manicules with others whose provenance we know, that this attentive reader was none other than Henry VIII.
It’s no surprise Henry should have taken comfort in the Biblical psalms. They were supposedly the work of a pious but lecherous king, David, with whom he strongly identified.
The passages Henry marked are a telling glimpse of the extent – and the limits – of his self awareness. His illness and other troubles are much on his mind: he marks prayers to “take away thy plagues … turn away thine anger”.
He is also drawn to prayers lamenting sin and asking God for wisdom. “Give me a new heart, and a right spirit, and take from me all wicked and sinful desires.”
The sentiments indicate a man who was serious both about his kingly responsibilities and personal spiritual predicament. Unlike many other murderous narcissists, Henry VIII did know he was a sinner who needed forgiveness. But his confidence “that my sins may be purged” suggests tension between the eagerness with which he sought grace and his refusal to countenance mercy – royal or divine – for his subjects.
Queen Katherine, as the popular rhyme tells us, “survived” her marriage, but it was a close run thing.
In 1546, the last summer of Henry VIII’s life, she was suspected – on good grounds – of nurturing a nest of religious radicals at court. Henry allowed himself to be persuaded that all her pious talk was actually an attempt to allure him into heresy.
According to a late but well-informed account by the martyrologist John Foxe, she got wind of the danger and immediately threw herself on his mercy. Katherine protested that she, a “poor woman so much inferior in all respects of nature unto you”, had simply been seeking his religious guidance.
“Not so, by Saint Mary,” Henry replied. “You are become a Doctor, Kate, to instruct us (as we take it) and not to be instructed, or directed by us.”
No, she protested: she had only sought to distract him with talk during “this painful time of your infirmity” and had in the process learned a great deal from his wisdom. With someone else, that might have been laying it on too thick, but she knew her man.
“And is it even so, sweetheart?” Henry replied. “Then perfect friends we are now again.” The arrest warrant was cancelled.
Months later, the king was dead. Unfortunately, Queen Katherine married the man she’d kept waiting with almost indecent haste – only to be cold shouldered when she fell pregnant and left to die in childbirth. History is thin on happy endings.
Alec Ryrie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
To reach net zero, the world may need as many 200,000 offshore wind turbines generating 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of energy.
To put this in context, by the end of 2022, 63 GW of offshore wind capacity had been installed worldwide. Within the next 28 years, the offshore wind energy sector needs to expand so that it is capable of producing 32 times its current energy capacity.
But where do we put all these extra offshore wind farms? Their locations will need to be chosen in order to maximise their energy output and their social benefits, while ensuring they have the minimum impact possible on the environment. Balancing all these factors is not a straightforward task.
To work out where to place new turbines, a good starting point is to define how much of the ocean we need to use in order to meet the 2050 net zero targets. This calculation depends on the dimensions of the turbines, how wind power technology is likely to evolve between now and 2050, and the exact configuration of the turbines within a wind farm.
Together, these factors control the future “power density” of offshore wind farms –- how much offshore wind capacity can be installed per unit area of space in the ocean. The figure required for achieving net zero is 4 megawatts (MW) per sq km. This means the area of ocean we’ll need for offshore wind is around 500,000 sq km, which is roughly the size of France.
Once the total space is known, the next task is to gather data on the factors that constrain infrastructure development in the ocean. There are numerous constraints, from ensuring there is adequate windspeed for turbines to turn, to avoiding shipping lanes and marine protected areas, to whether seabed conditions are difficult to build in.
Some types of constraint create “no-go zones”, because an offshore wind farm would cause clear and unacceptable disruption to an existing activity, such as a site used for military exercises, for oil drilling or a shipping lane.
For other constraints, it’s a case of working out whether the net impact of a wind farm is harmful to the environment or the activities already there. It’s important to identify how crowded prospective sites are, as this provides a baseline, or starting point, for assessing a site’s suitability.
Our recent research shows how such considerations can be used to identify suitable future sites for offshore wind farms, using UK waters as a case study.
The UK is a leading region for offshore wind, so the country offers insights into the challenges faced globally in placing new wind farms. The UK is also a leader in legislating for net zero, including plans for transforming energy infrastructure.
Our study used 34 different layers of constraints, from which the available space for future sites is defined by excluding the no-go and crowded zones. We identified the available ocean space for future offshore wind turbines as covering an area of about 240 sq km, which is equivalent to the area of the UK’s landmass.
The data further reveals that, to achieve the basic net zero target for domestic electrification in the UK, 7% of that available area will need to be used for offshore wind farms. Domestic electrification refers to the conversion of homes to electric heating from (predominantly) gas.
For more ambitious decarbonisation targets for offshore wind, accounting for increased domestic electricity demand among other things, the required space rises to 44%.
If future offshore wind farms are to be shared out equally across the space available for them, up to 70% of future sites will overlap with one to three constraints. Moreover, about 90% of future sites will have to be in deep water (roughly 60m in depth).
New technology, such as floating platforms, will be crucial to enable wind turbines to be installed in these places.
Our study suggests that the huge expansion of offshore wind farms required to meet net zero targets may be achievable. Furthermore, it can be done without increasing the average level of overlap with existing activities in UK waters.
However, it’s still possible that an expansion of offshore wind could harm the environment or limit existing ocean activities. For example, in the case of marine protected zones, wind farms could stop fish and animals from spreading into adjacent parts of the ocean. Potentially, this would undermine some of the objectives behind creating the protected zone in the first place.
Increasing interaction between wind farms, natural ecosystems, heritage sites such as shipwrecks, and human activities is inevitable. Without careful planning and study, these interactions could harm the environment and disrupt wider human activities. They must therefore be anticipated and addressed proactively.
The move to turbines in deeper water and further away from shore, however, poses some real challenges. It is these challenges that will need to be overcome by improved technology.
Hugo Putuhena is affiliated with the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) hub and the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies - Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering.
Fraser Sturt is a deputy director for the University of Southampton's Marine & Maritime Institute. He receives funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering Engineering X programme, looking at Safer End of Engineered life for offshore infrastructure and ships, and the Arts & Humanities Research Council as part of the Towards a National Collection Unpath'd waters project.
Susan Gourvenec receives funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering supporting her Chair in Emerging Technologies for Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering.
More than 80% of women in England and Wales will become mothers at some point during their working lives, according to OECD figures. Most of these women will have two children around two or three years apart, spending at least 20 years of their adult lives with a child under 18 and creating significant childcare needs for some of this time.
The current price of childcare is high, averaging £149 per week in Great Britain for 25 hours of care for a child under two years old. This represents about 60% of the minimum wage earnings of someone working part-time (around 25 hours per week), and 25% of the median full-time earnings for a woman in Great Britain.
Availability is also a problem. Only 57% of local authorities report having enough childcare places for children under the age of two.
Career breaks during motherhood are a major driver of the increase in the gender pay gap over the child-bearing years. Mothers’ earnings ten and even 20 years after the birth of a first child are about 20% lower than a similar childless woman. Fathers’ earnings over the same life stages do not show any evidence of these “child penalties”.
Having children creates a double hurdle when a mother is deciding whether and how much to work. First, childcare fees substantially reduce take-home pay. But also, time is valued differently. When not at work, it changes from leisure time to time spent with your child (and a little leisure too, of course).
Both hurdles reduce the attractiveness of work. But while the latter reflects a combination of individual preferences and social norms, the former – childcare costs – can be overcome with the right policies. If these policies do not alleviate childcare costs and give parents (affordable) ways to work, mothers will lose out in the long term – but so will the wider economy.
On an individual level, wage growth is affected by the decision to work part time or not at all because only full-time employment typically leads to wage progression. The relative penalties of choosing a part-time job or no work are particularly marked for graduates.
Lower wages will also have a negative impact on both women’s independence and on their productivity, feeding into the economy. Low wages and hours worked by mothers, combined with parents’ separation are an important source of child poverty. In less educated families, women’s employment is the most effective measure against the incidence of child poverty.
Research shows that childcare subsidies are the most effective policy for raising mothers’ labour supply, particularly among low-skill households. Unsurprisingly, subsidies conditional on work are a more effective incentive to get people to seek or remain in employment than unconditional child credits, which can reduce the attractiveness of work.
Research also shows that childcare subsidies can be partly self-financing over the long term. If mothers work more now and then enjoy more wage growth over time, they are more likely to continue to work and earn more in the future. This means they will pay more income tax, which could offset some of the initial government spending on childcare subsidies.
But designing childcare subsidies should not just be about cost and the average price per hour of care for young children. Research on what other countries do shows there are four dimensions that typically affect families’ choices:
One factor that tends to limit the power of such policies is the strength of prevailing social norms. Public opinion (and academic literature) on the role of mothers, fathers and childcare providers in the wellbeing and development of young children has evolved over past decades. It is now much more socially acceptable for mothers to work and fathers to be more involved in childcare.
Such thinking also affects government choices when it comes to developing policies to support families. Individual perceptions on the role of mothers as the primary caregiver have been found to drive both mothers’ labour force participation and their decision to have children in cross-country comparisons. These social preferences will also drive political support for childcare policies and hence policymakers’ choices.
In the medium term, childcare subsidies can reduce the gap between mothers’ and fathers’ career paths, and increase mothers’ economic value in the working world. But beyond this, higher rates of employment among mothers in this generation will also influence the next generation’s perceptions about the compatibility of career and motherhood.
By helping to shape future social norms, childcare subsidies could offer more choices to mothers – not only today, but even more so for the next generation of women.
Helene Turon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life, which opened at London’s Serpentine South Gallery in June, explores how humans relate to spiders. It features installations of spider webs displayed and lit to be viewed as sculptures. There are also films: one made about Saraceno’s work with groups battling lithium mining in Argentina and another about spider diviners from Somié village in Cameroon.
That’s where I came in. Ŋgam dù (the Mambila term for spider divination) is one of many types of oracle or divination used by Mambila people in Cameroon. It is the most trusted form and – unlike other types which are sometimes dismissed as mere games – its results can be used as evidence in the country’s courts. Variants of this form of divination are found throughout southern Cameroon and the long history of the word ŋgam attests to the longevity of the practice.
I work as a social anthropologist in the Mambila village of Somié. I have visited almost every year since 1985, working on a variety of projects. Divination was the focus of a chapter in my PhD in 1990, but I never stopped working on the subject. As well as becoming an initiated diviner, I have continued to think about the wider implications of using divination or oracles.
Ngam dù is a form of divination in which binary (either/or) questions are asked of large spiders that live in holes in the ground. The options are linked to a stick and a stone then, using a set of leaf cards marked with symbols, the spider is left to make its choice.
The hole plus the stick, stone and cards are covered up. The spider emerges and will move the cards so the diviner can then interpret the pattern relative to the stick and stone. If cards are placed on the stick, then the option associated with that has been selected, and vice versa if the cards are placed on the stone.
Things get more interesting (at least to me and other diviners) if both options are selected, or neither. Sometimes a contradictory response is interpreted to mean that the question posed is not a good one. The diviner is thereby told to go and discuss the issue with the client and reframe the problem, posing a different question.
The process is “calibrated” regularly by asking test questions such as “Am I here alone?” or “Will I drink tonight?”. Spiders that fail these tests are discarded as liars and not used for future consultations. It’s also common to ask the same question in parallel to get a consistency check, so more than one spider can be used at the same time. Sometimes the stick and stone option are reversed to ensure that the spider isn’t just moving the cards always in the same direction.
Mambila diviners rely on these tests to justify the system, although they also say (as do many groups in Cameroon) that spiders are a source of wisdom since they live in the ground where the “village of the dead” is found.
As an anthropologist, I avoid questions about whether spider divination is true. For me the important question is: “Does it help?”
Sometimes the results of divination are considered, but rejected, and the advice is not followed. Even in these instances it can be helpful, however, since it enables people decide on a course of action.
People use the results as a tool to help them think through hard decisions such as who to marry, or where to go for treatment when a child is ill. The latter involves weighing up conflicting considerations about expense, the possibility an illness has been caused by witchcraft and the reputations for effective treatment of different traditional healers as well as of rival biomedical health centres.
I met the Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno when he had an exhibit at the Venice Bienale in 2018. He was intrigued by the computer simulation of spider divination that my colleague Mike Fischer had made. He invited me to Venice to demonstrate the simulation and talk about spider divination in front of his “sculptures”, which are made in collaboration with spiders. They are patterns of spiderwebs displayed as art.
As we talked, I said that if one day he wanted to visit Cameroon I would be happy to introduce him to the diviners I worked with. In December 2019, he came with his friend, the filmmaker Maxi Laina. We visited Somié, where he worked with the diviner Bollo Pierre Tadios and the Mambila filmmaker Nguea Iréné.
Saraceno and Laina came with some questions to ask from their friends. This included “Who would win the 2020 US election?” This was the Trump v Biden election, the results of which Trump went on to question. The answer was that there would be a new president but it would not be straightforward!
Saraceno liked the idea that spiders could help humans resolve their personal problems. It gave an example of a different way in which human-spider relationships are expressed. Bollo liked the idea of opening the process up to questions from outside the village. He already has some clients from other places in Cameroon who call him, so working internationally is very doable.
He suggested that Saraceno could make his work accessible via the internet, which he has now done through a dedicated website. Some of the first results are included in the Serpentine exhibition along with film made by Nguea Iréné of Bollo in action. The film will also be shown in the village later in the summer.
Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life is on at London’s Serpentine South Gallery until 10 September.
David Zeitlyn has received funding from AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC
A long-term workforce plan for the NHS – which the UK government promised four and a half years ago – has finally been unveiled. Its arrival, days before the NHS turns 75, is welcomed.
The ambitious plan sets out a 15-year strategy to address the increasing demand for healthcare and decreasing supply of healthcare professionals in England. An investment of more than £2.4 billion has been agreed to fund a 27% increase in training places by 2028-29. The total NHS workforce would grow from 1.4 million in 2021-22 to around 2.3 million in 2036-37.
This investment targets the current shortfall of NHS staff, which has around 150,000 vacancies. This shortfall is forcast to grow to 260,000–360,000 staff vacancies by 2036-37 without any intervention.
The main emphasis of the 151-page plan is on training and increasing the number of healthcare professionals – not only doctors and nurses, but also allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and podiatrists, as well as pharmacists and healthcare scientists.
Existing apprenticeships for nurses and other healthcare professionals will be expanded, and a new apprenticeship scheme for doctors will be introduced to meet the required number of 12,000–15,000 medical school places by 2030-31.
New healthcare roles have been promised, including “enhanced practitioners”, who have specific knowledge and skills in a field of expertise, and the more senior “advanced practitioners”, who manage the whole episode of a patient’s care. These posts will combine with the more generalist roles that provide basic care across a range of patients and free up the time of those more specialist practitioners.
To mark the 75th anniversary of the launch of the NHS, we’ve commissioned a series of articles addressing the biggest challenges the service now faces. We want to understand not only what needs to change, but the knock-on effects on other parts of this extraordinarily complex health system.
Retention in the NHS is a considerable problem. The overall staff leaving rate increased from 9.6% in 2020 to 12.5% in 2022. The plan acknowledges the importance of retaining workers, offering them more flexibility, and improving the culture and leadership in the NHS. But details of how this will be achieved are limited in the current plan.
Reform and innovation are also part of the plan to improve productivity by including staff with a more varied mix of skills and expertise within multidisciplinary teams, combining generalists and specialists. For example, a dental practice might have only one dentist, but two dental therapists and two dental hygienists. The therapist and hygienist would do most of the basic dental care, with the dentist intervening when more specialist care is needed.
The plan also draws on the increased use of technological advances to enhance and transform healthcare, such as AI technology, which can decrease diagnostic screening times in radiology.
While the plan is certainly a positive step, it is only the first step in a longer trajectory, setting out clear markers for growth and improvement. Much more detail is needed on how the plan will be implemented and what measures will be used to judge its success.
The emphasis of the plan is on boosting the quantity of staff and services. However, aspects of quality of care, type and level of staffing required and overcoming obstacles to this expansion, need to be explored further, such as the feasibility of shortened medical degree programmes, medical apprenticeships and the student take-up of all the new university places.
The plan acknowledges that NHS staff are working in highly pressured environments and many are exhausted since the COVID pandemic. The recent nursing strikes are not only about pay but also poor working conditions and lack of support and leadership. To make this plan viable, a clearer blueprint on how to retain staff must be included.
Where will this expansion come from? Universities do not always fill their quota of places for some health courses, including nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. It is difficult to see where the students will come from to fill the government’s proposed 92% increase in adult nursing training places by 2031-32 if current places are not being filled.
During the pandemic, people saw the value of working in healthcare as they clapped weekly for those working in the NHS who they regarded as heroes. But this perception of feeling valued in society has not endured in the NHS workforce. More NHS staff are leaving – the overall number rising by more than 25% from 2019 to 2022.
Meanwhile, nurses, doctors and some allied health professionals are taking strike action. About 170,000 NHS workers left their jobs in 2022, more than 41,000 of whom were nurses, the highest rate for a decade.
Improving the culture, wellbeing and work environment of staff in the NHS will lead to people valuing NHS roles and seeing the opportunities they bring. This will encourage people into health and social care careers.
The availability of clinical placements during training is a major obstacle to this ambitious expansion plan, mainly due to the shortage of experienced staff to supervise students. All healthcare courses incorporate “practice-based hours” where students work in a variety of healthcare settings.
This shortage of experienced supervisory staff means that clinical placements are notoriously hard to find and universities are sometimes forced to cut target placement numbers, despite the need, because of a lack of capacity.
Partnership working is essential if the plan is to be successful. Close collaboration between training institutions and NHS trusts will ensure that the appropriate type and number of health courses are offered at the right time and with the right balance of skills.
A closer alliance between schools, colleges and universities will allow students to step on and step off at different points in their learning trajectory, depending on their abilities, experience and choice of occupation. Showcasing the benefits and opportunities of healthcare as an occupation both in primary and secondary school will lead to more people choosing to join the NHS and fill these newly released places.
If working conditions for NHS staff are improved, the current trend of people leaving can be reversed. This, in turn, can lead to a more positive image of working as a healthcare professional in the NHS.
And, combined with the development of more active and well-defined partnerships across education, health and social care, the hope is that more people will opt to enter the health and social care sector.
If all of the above issues are addressed, the ambitious expansion, retention and reform targets of the NHS long-term workforce plan are more likely to be achieved. And in 25 years, at the NHS’s 100th anniversary, the NHS workforce will hopefully meet the healthcare needs of the population.
Victoria Joffe is a professor of Speech and Language Therapy and Dean of the School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex. She has received research grants from the ESRC, The Nuffield Foundation and the NIHR.
The privatisation of water companies in England and Wales was supposed to bring efficiency and investment to a vital sector that had been starved of public funding. But since 1989, the industry has failed to invest sufficiently in replacing antiquated pipes and sewage treatment systems.
Rivers and seas have become increasingly polluted with raw sewage. Meanwhile, dividend payments, funded by water companies loading up on corporate debt, have soared.
The largest of those companies, Thames Water, has debts of almost £14 billion – roughly 80% of the value of the assets of the business. Rising inflation and interest rates mean this debt is increasingly expensive to service, let alone reduce.
If Thames Water collapses, the UK government is likely to step in and manage the company through a special form of business administration to ensure 15 million customers continue to receive their water and sewerage services. But state involvement would probably be temporary, with the aim of an eventual return to the private sector.
Many would see this as a missed opportunity to do things differently. There are already groups calling for Thames Water to be renationalised and brought into public ownership to remove the company’s profit motive and the pressure of paying dividends to shareholders. Instead, the theory goes that, as a local natural monopoly, Thames Water ought to be run as a publicly owned utility fully focused on providing a public service.
But doing this would be far from straightforward. To begin with, it would involve the transfer of corporate debt onto the government’s own balance sheet, which could dramatically constrain spending on other public services, such as the NHS and education.
Another complication comes from the fact that an administration process usually involves attempts to raise funds from the sale of company assets to pay off debts. But in the case of a water company, those assets are part of an integrated and complex infrastructure. It would not be practical to break up those assets if any new company was to go on providing water and sewage services to the public.
Renationalising Thames Water would therefore require the government to buy the assets. But the cost of doing so could be enormous, and the current shareholders would need to be adequately compensated. These include investors like pension funds, which the government would find politically hard to ignore.
And even though governments can generally borrow more cheaply than private sector companies (or even deal with its own debts by printing money), these options are not attractive. They could be inflationary, and would risk a negative response from the financial markets. Renationalistation could end up being seen as an expensive acquisition that brings no new money to improve the water industry.
An alternative would be to sell the assets to a new private company or investor. But existing water companies are unlikely to be considered suitable buyers on competition grounds (and many already face similar problems as Thames Water). Demands for significant future investment to meet tighter environmental standards are also likely to deter other investors.
A more attractive option might be to create a new kind of water provider – a bit like an unusual one that already exists in Wales.
Welsh Water has a unique corporate structure, with no shareholders and is run solely for the benefit of its customers. It is commercially run, with professional managers held to account by 62 independent trustees. While not perfect, its performance in recent years compares favourably with that of the other privatised water companies.
Welsh Water’s decisions are made not in the interest of profit-seeking shareholders but in the interests of broader society. Any profits made are either reinvested or returned to its 3 million customers in the form of cheaper services.
Creating such an organisation would not be easy. But there is a precedent in the case of Network Rail, a similar trustee-governed organisation, which was created when its commercial predecessor Railtrack went bust. Railtrack’s debts were subsumed into Network Rail, which were underwritten by the government (while initially staying off the public sector balance sheet). This change in ownership structure led to significant improvements on Railtrack’s atrocious safety record and reduced the cost of rail operations too.
A move towards the Welsh Water model would be in line with recent calls to turn all water firms into democratically run companies focused on public benefit. If renationalisation is considered to be too tricky politically and not viable economically, other solutions are available.
And while it is true that these public-interest companies are funded by debt, a government debt guarantee helps keep the costs of servicing this debt down (while costing the government very little). By not renationalising, the UK economy would avoid many considerable challenges – and a hefty water bill.
J. Robert Branston has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies and several other health related charitable organisations. He is a non-active member of the Liberal Democrats.
Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for an Interact project on UK co-working spaces and manufacturing.
The Home Office has revealed how much it believes it will cost to send migrants arriving in the UK to Rwanda – a staggering £169,000 per person. This estimate is even more surprising when you consider that one of the aims of the government’s migration policy is to stop spending billions of pounds on housing refugees in the UK.
Although the Court of Appeal has ruled the government cannot legally proceed with its plan to send deported migrants to Rwanda, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has already said the government will appeal it in the supreme court.
The government has arrived at this £169,000 number from five separate calculations. Each of these is itself wildly uncertain and, as the government’s own assessment notes, does not include a wide range of other costs that are sure to emerge. That implies that the true cost per head is likely to be even higher.
The largest component of the £169,000 is £105,000 for “third country costs”. This is the amount the government believes it will have to pay to cover the costs incurred by a third country like Rwanda to host a refugee if they cannot be returned to their home country.
The calculation is based on a National Audit Office estimate of the cost of hosting Syrian refugees in the UK. This was published in 2016, at the beginning of the programme to take in Syrian refugees and so is itself a forward-looking estimate. The NAO itself recognised that the actual cost was “uncertain”.
To reach £105,000, the government has taken the estimated average cost per refugee coming to the UK in 2016 (£17,340), multiplied it by five and transformed it into 2023 costs. This was based on the Syrian resettlement scheme lasting five years – but there is no explanation as to why they assume someone deported from the UK would need support for that period.
A presumably more accurate estimate of these costs has recently been agreed in the partnership signed with Rwanda but the government has not published this figure, deeming it “commercially sensitive”. Publishing a figure that the UK will use in all future agreements (still to be negotiated) will result in this being used as a minimum starting point by any other third-country negotiators.
“Flight and escorting costs” are estimated at £22,000 per person. This is based on an “uncertain assumption” that 50 people will be deported per flight, which is extremely optimistic. In 2022, an average of 25 people were on each deportation flight out of the UK and most of these were to European destinations, which are easier logistically and cheaper than other third countries outside of Europe. And that only includes flights that took off.
Another element of the calculation is “Home Office resource costs”, estimated at £18,000. This is probably the most accurate component of the cost estimate, since it is based on current average legal costs of appeals. Still, this figure does not include costs to retrain Home Office officials or related capital costs for things such as building new detention centres.
The final two costs are more problematic. The figure of £7,000 for detention assumes 40 days between arrival and deportation. The inaccuracy of this figure may be judged by the 374 days that the passengers on the inaugural flight to Rwanda have spent in detention between June 14 2022, when the flight was cancelled, and the judgment on June 29 2023 that Rwanda deportations cannot go ahead.
Finally, £1,000 for “Ministry of Justice costs” includes only the costs of legal aid, not all of the other costs incurred by the Ministry of Justice to hold legal proceedings.
The final hole in these calculations comes from the recognition that this cost is only for those who are successfully deported and does not include those who, for whatever reason, remain in the UK.
Usually, economic impact assessments lay out the financial cost of legislation as a whole. So it’s notable that we’re now getting a “cost per head” of the proposed policy.
But the most surprising element of the impact assessment of this policy, as immigration expert Lucy Mayblin has pointed out, is the Home Office’s frank admission that it has no idea how the bill will work once it becomes law.
The document itself states that this is “a novel and untested scheme, and it is therefore uncertain what level of deterrence impact it will have”.
In other words, the government does not know if people will stop trying to enter the UK if they know they could be deported to Rwanda or another third country on arrival. That uncertainty around how many people are implicated makes it impossible to calculate a total cost. And given the limited success of deterrence tactics so far, it seems entirely plausible that the eventual cost will be much higher.
Michael Collyer is Chair of Sanctuary on Sea, the Brighton and Hove branch of City of Sanctuary. He is also Chair of the Independent Advisory Group on Country of Origin Information, within the Office of the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. Both are voluntary positions. This article is written in a personal capacity. He currently receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (grant numbers ES/T008067/1 and ES/T004509/1).
The oldest outdoor swimming pool in the UK – the Grade II listed Cleveland Pools in Bath which first opened in 1815 – will reopen during the summer of 2023, after significant restoration. With a new 50-metre outdoor pool having opened in Brighton) in June and a council-funded restoration under way in Hull, the simple pleasure of the public outdoor pool is seeing a return to popularity to the UK.
In the early 20th century, an explosion of new outdoor pools opened across Britain. Taking the name “lido” from the Italian word for coastline, the boom of construction in the 20th century was part of the post-war public works programme, which aimed to create jobs and promote health. While indoor pools had been gender segregated, public lidos were deliberately mixed and became synonymous with fun and socialising.
Lidos at coastal towns such as Scarborough and Blackpool were destinations for residents and tourists. Lido design between the 1920s and 1940s was innovative and drawn from exotic sources, such as European resorts and cruise ships. They incorporated sumptuous sundecks, sophisticated outdoor restaurants and cafes, alongside vast inviting bathing areas. Impressive diving boards challenged those brave enough to leap theatrically and please the crowds. These lidos were able to accommodate thousands of visitors as wholesome, accessible leisure destinations.
Some of the most iconic lidos are the magnificent art deco sites in Saltdean, Plymouth and Penzance in the south of England. These stunning sites have thankfully been saved from demolition, many others were not. Lido lovers remain hopeful that another art deco site, Broomhill in Ipswich, will one day be restored.
Lidos were grand constructions and monuments of civic pride, both for those who created them and for those who frequented them. They reflected times of change in society and great optimism. At their peak, there were more than 300 active public outdoor pools in the UK, with 11 in Liverpool and 68 in London.
The 1960 Wolfenden report, Sport and the Community and the 1968 Sports Council report Planning for Sport were catalysts for the demise of outdoor swimming pools in policy. The mandate was that “as a general rule, [pools] should be indoors”.
Lidos fell into disrepair and were steadily replaced or destroyed, after councils no longer saw them as part of their leisure facilities and reduced or stopped funding. At the turn of the century, only around 130 public outdoor pools remained, predominately in the south of the UK. That number hardly changed in the following two decades.
The steady loss of these lidos didn’t go unnoticed. The Thirties Society’s report Farewell my Lido (1991) and then Janet Smith’s important 2005 English Heritage-funded book Liquid Assets (with a forthright foreword from artist Tracey Emin) document the history and argued passionately for a brighter future for these much-loved public luxuries.
But as local councils faced financial crises in 2008 and central government reduced spending further from 2010, leisure was treated differently. Responsibility for lidos was transferred to charitable trusts. Those that remained were preserved and saved by community groups or trusts and some local authorities, who understood their public value.
During the last two decades – and recently accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic where outdoor swimming was one of the few activities allowed for a while – there has been a steady growth in outdoor, wild and lido swimming.
And there are cultural markers of a resurgence, too. Fashion label Radley created a limited-edition lido handbag in 2016. In 2019, crowdfunding helped create The Lido Guide. The same year, a heart-warming novel, The Lido by Libby Page, beautifully captured the community spirit, history and value of lidos.
Photographer Christopher Beanland paid homage to lidos in 2020 through a global collection of outdoor pools and their stories. And then this year, Brit Pop band Blur choose the iconic 2014 Martin Parr image of a solitary swimmer in Gourock Pool for the cover of their upcoming album, The Ballad of Darren.
Over 30 lido schemes have emerged from 2021 onwards. They’ve been nurtured by the Future Lidos Group and their National Heritage Lottery funded pooling resources project. The design emphasis is once again on innovation, taking the lessons of lido heritage and the human connection which formed in these inclusive sites into consideration.
If Sport England’s policies can recognise the diverse value of lidos to public health and leisure, the next decade could see a further resurgence in restorations. Even more lidos could soon be making a welcome return across Britain, allowing more access to outdoor swimming – whatever the weather.
Michael Wood founded the Future Lidos Group in 2021 and is a volunteer on the steering committee for the Pooling Resources project. The Pooling Resources project received funding from National Heritage Lottery Fund in January 2023 to create a toolkit to support the restoration and creation of lidos. He has been a volunteer with the Friends of Tynemouth Outdoor Pool for 9 years. He has not personally received any fees for any of this work.
An Islamic State-linked group in Uganda attacked a school in June, killing more than 40 people, mostly students, in what seems to be an escalating trend of terrorism against schools. The attackers set fire to school dormitories and used machetes to kill and maim students.
This was the latest in a cycle of shocking attacks on schools around the world. The Nigerian group Boko Haram infamously kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school in 2014, and it has attacked other schools throughout the country.
Many more attacks have occurred since then. In Afghanistan, IS affiliate IS-K has repeatedly bombed educational institutions in recent years, often killing dozens of children or teens. In 2020 in Cameroon, sources suggest that separatists fighting for their own, independent state attacked a bilingual school, killing eight children.
Why would a group carry out such an attack, killing schoolchildren? These attacks are happening more frequently in recent years, and they also tend to be carried out by particular types of groups.
I recently co-wrote a book, Insurgent Terrorism: Intergroup Relations and the Killing of Civilians, with political scientists Victor Asal and R. Karl Rethemeyer, examining the use of terrorism (intentional civilian targeting) by rebel organisations in civil wars. We dedicated a chapter to understanding attacks on schools and discovered a few patterns.
First, attacks on schools are on the rise. In the years examined in our book, 1998-2012, we found a marked increase starting in the late 2000s during civil wars. In the 1990s and early 2000s, there fewer than 20 attacks per year on schools by rebel organisations. But between 2009 and 2012, there were more than 90 such attacks per year.
Examining more recent data on terrorism generally, and not only during civil wars, we see a similar increase starting in the late 2000s. The graphic below shows a massive increase in terrorist attacks on schools.
Terrorist attacks on schools, 1970-2020
The annual average number of terrorist attacks on schools in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the Global Terrorism Database, was less than 60. In the 2000s, the average year saw nearly 80 school attacks. In the 2010s, there was an average of 250 terrorist attacks on schools per year. After the early 2010s peak, the number of attacks started to decrease, but numbers are still far above what they were in the 1990s or early 2000s.
The increase in terrorism against schools is in part because influential global networks such as al-Qaida and IS seem to encourage it, but also because groups learn from others that this is a good way to bring attention to their cause, to force a government to give in, or to intimidate a rival community.
Read more: Nigeria's new national security bosses: 5 burning issues they need to focus on
A second pattern we noticed was that the organisations that carry out these kinds of attacks tend to have a few attributes in common. Groups that attack schools tend to be in alliances with other rebel or terrorist organisations. These alliances provide extra resources to groups, which are essential for large-scale attacks. For example, allies might provide explosives, vehicles or recruits. Cooperative relationships with other rebels can also contribute to heinous attacks because groups learn tactics from each other, and they might pressure each other to use extreme tactics.
This seems to be the case with the group behind the recent Uganda attack, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). It has been cooperating with IS since 2017 and has received funding from it. The funds and propaganda support seem to have enabled ADF to carry out increasingly vicious attacks. Additionally, other IS-affiliated groups have attacked schools, so it is possible that the main IS encourages this, or that the groups are learning from each other.
We found that groups that had recently been subjected to government crackdowns were more likely to subsequently target schools, while groups that had recently received government concessions didn’t attack schools the following year. This is consistent with other research finding that government repression of religious freedom seems to lead to terrorist attacks on school.
The Uganda school attack, where boys and girls were killed and buildings set alight with people inside, was apparently intended to send a message to the government and its president Yoweri Museveni. Victims reported that the attackers said: “We have succeeded in destabilising Museveni’s country.”
Interestingly, in our research, we did not find that religiously oriented groups, such as Islamist groups, were more likely than other types of groups to attack schools. Certainly, some Islamist groups have carried out these attacks – such as the recent Uganda school killings.
IS-K’s attacks are intended to intimidate the mostly Shia Hazara minority community, consistent with IS-K’s extreme religious views. But non-religious groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Communist Party of India (Maoist), have also repeatedly attacked schools.
Overall, attacks on schools occur because militant organisations see that they bring a great deal of attention – including from international news media – to their cause. Terrorism is fundamentally violent propaganda, and groups that use terrorism constantly innovate, seeking new tactics to help them stand out. They also hope the increasingly extreme methods will pressure governments to give up.
It seems likely that terrorist attacks against schools are going to continue. Governments should prioritise safeguarding educational institutions, and the international community should work harder to prevent these kinds of attacks.
Brian J. Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Data collected by an observatory in Antarctica has produced our first view of the Milky Way galaxy through the lens of neutrino particles. It’s the first time we have seen our galaxy “painted” with a particle, rather than in different wavelengths of light.
The result, published in Science, provides researchers with a new window on the cosmos. The neutrinos are thought to be produced, in part, by high-energy, charged particles called cosmic rays colliding with other matter. Because of the limits of our detection equipment, there’s much we still don’t know about cosmic rays. Therefore, neutrinos are another way of studying them.
It has been speculated since antiquity that the Milky Way we see arching across the night sky consists of stars like our Sun. In the 18th century, it was recognised to be a flattened slab of stars that we are viewing from within. It is only 100 years since we learnt that the Milky Way is in fact a galaxy, or “island universe”, one among a hundred billion others.
In 1923, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble identified a type of pulsating star called a “Cepheid variable” in what was then known as the Andromeda “nebula” (a giant cloud of dust and gas). Thanks to the prior work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, this provided a measure of the distance from Earth to Andromeda.
This demonstrated that Andromeda is a far away galaxy like our own, settling a long-running debate and completely transforming our notion of our place in the universe.
Subsequently, as new astronomical windows have opened on to the sky, we have seen our galactic home in many different wavelengths of light –- in radio waves, in various infrared bands, in X-rays and in gamma-rays. Now, we can see our cosmic abode in neutrino particles, which have very low mass and only interact very weakly with other matter – hence their nickname of “ghost particles”.
Neutrinos are emitted from our galaxy when cosmic rays collide with interstellar matter. However, neutrinos are also produced by stars like the Sun, some exploding stars, or supernovas, and probably by most high-energy phenomena that we observe in the universe such as gamma-ray bursts and quasars. Hence, they can provide us an unprecedented view of highly energetic processes in our galaxy – a view that we can’t get from using light alone.
The new breakthrough detection required a rather strange “telescope” that is buried several kilometres deep in the Antarctic ice cap, under the South Pole. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory uses a gigatonne of the ultra-transparent ice under huge pressures to detect a form of energy called Cherenkov radiation.
This faint radiation is emitted by charged particles, which, in ice, can travel faster than light (but not in a vacuum). The particles are created by incoming neutrinos, which come from cosmic ray collisions in the galaxy, hitting the atoms in the ice.
Cosmic rays are mainly proton particles (these make up the atomic nucleus along with neutrons), together with a few heavy nuclei and electrons. About a century ago, these were discovered to be raining down on the Earth uniformly from all directions. We do not yet definitively know all their sources, as their travel directions are scrambled by magnetic fields that exist in the space between stars.
Neutrinos can act as unique tracers of cosmic ray interactions deep in the Milky Way. However, the ghostly particles are also generated when cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere. So the researchers using the IceCube data needed a way to distinguish between the neutrinos of “astrophysical” origin – those originating from extraterrestrial sources – and those created from cosmic ray collisions within our atmosphere.
The researchers focused on a type of neutrino interaction in the ice called a cascade. These result in roughly spherical showers of light and give the researchers a better level of sensitivity to the astrophysical neutrinos from the Milky Way. This is because a cascade provides a better measurement of a neutrino’s energy than other types of interactions, even though they are harder to reconstruct.
Analysis of ten years of IceCube data using sophisticated machine learning techniques yielded nearly 60,000 neutrino events with an energy above 500 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Of these, only about 7% were of astrophysical origin, with the rest being due to the “background” source of neutrinos that are generated in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The hypothesis that all the neutrino events could be due to cosmic rays hitting the Earth’s atmosphere was definitively rejected at a level of statistical significance known as 4.5 sigma. Put another way, our result has only about a 1 in 150,000 chance of being a fluke.
This falls a little short of the conventional 5 sigma standard for claiming a discovery in particle physics. However, such emission from the Milky Way is expected on sound astrophysical grounds.
With the upcoming enlargement of the experiment – IceCube-Gen2 will be ten times bigger – we will acquire many more neutrino events and the current blurry picture will turn into a detailed view of our galaxy, one that we have never had before.
Subir Sarkar received funding from the University of Oxford to support his participation in IceCube.
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, has told the recently opened COVID-19 Inquiry that the UK’s pandemic planning was “completely wrong”. According to Hancock, the doctrine was “to plan for the consequences of a disaster” rather than stopping or containing the virus in the first place.
While there is truth in this claim, it doesn’t give us the whole picture. Hancock was repeatedly asked during his appearance about something called Exercise Cygnus. In 2016, the UK government engaged in a series of exercises including Cygnus to assess their preparedness and response to a pandemic outbreak of influenza.
As the global scale of the COVID pandemic was starting to become apparent in the first half of February 2020, the UK applied the lessons from these exercises to plan for a wide range of scenarios. Based on the scientific evidence available at that time, they anticipated that a “reasonable worst-case scenario” could involve up to 80% of the UK population being infected (with only 50% of those infected showing symptoms). However, it was hoped that the majority of cases would have relatively mild disease.
This information was contained in planning assumptions labelled “officially sensitive” that were shared between a range of healthcare authorities and that I had access to at the time. Some of the figures were also published in the media.
The concept of “herd immunity” played a key role in the existing mathematical models. Herd immunity is the idea that once a sufficiently large proportion of the susceptible population is infected and subsequently acquires immunity, the whole population becomes protected. The thinking was that herd immunity for COVID might be achieved once 80% of the UK population had been infected, or perhaps even earlier.
Underlying all this was the assumption that, in the absence of effective vaccines at that time, the case fatality rate from the new virus (the proportion of infected people who end up dying) would not be so high that herd immunity could only be achieved at the cost of many lives.
Unfortunately, the actual COVID mortality figures – first from China, then other east and southeast Asian countries, and by the second half of February 2020 also from Italy – showed that the initial case fatality rate of COVID was much higher than had been modelled in the UK scenarios.
Without effective vaccines, any attempt at herd immunity had to be abandoned as too many people would have died in the meantime.
The assumption that any new viral pandemic would develop along similar lines as previous influenza pandemics was arguably the key flaw in the UK’s planning doctrine.
Countries that had been significantly affected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2002–2004 – principally China but also other Asian countries – didn’t make the same mistake. Those countries recognised important biological similarities between COVID (or SARS-CoV-2) and SARS (or SARS-CoV-1) and quickly took action against COVID by means of intensive testing and quarantine policies.
In contrast, the UK lost valuable time between mid-February and mid-March while COVID cases and subsequent deaths were rapidly beginning to rise. The effect on older adults and other vulnerable people in UK care homes was especially severe.
In the end, the UK’s first wave of COVID was only slowed and eventually stopped by the introduction of a lockdown in the fourth week of March 2020.
Hancock’s statement raises a key question about the extent to which errors in the UK’s pandemic planning could have been foreseen at the time. Notably, the UK’s healthcare planning authorities could have taken a wider view of the potential nature of viral pandemics.
The earlier Sars outbreak had been largely confined to China, although it spread to more than 20 other countries through worldwide air travel, and was contained within a few short months. Therefore, the risk of future outbreaks of this type in the UK was regarded as relatively low. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to include the global re-emergence of a Sars-type virus as one of the possible, albeit more extreme, pandemic scenarios analysed in the UK’s planning exercises in 2016.
Even given the wrong assumption regarding the nature of the new virus, some issues could have been anticipated better. For example, it was well known that the supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), which is vital for health and care staff, had become increasingly dependent on low-cost suppliers in China. If the UK’s pandemic planning exercises had taken a more global perspective, the breakdown in the PPE supply chain in the spring of 2020, which caused huge financial waste (and apparent corruption), could have been better anticipated.
Other questions, such as when effective COVID vaccines would become available, were much harder to predict.
Read more: How to prepare for a pandemic
In sum, no planning exercise can cover all eventualities. But a key requirement for policymakers should be to learn as fast and effectively as possible while events unfold.
The business concept of “dynamic capability” – that is, an organisation’s ability to configure and reconfigure its assets, processes and capabilities so as to respond effectively to rapidly changing external circumstances – is useful here. Building and strengthening this capability should be a prerequisite for policymakers and planners in government.
In regards to Hancock’s comment that the planning was “completely wrong”, one could say that the UK plans were indeed flawed in their key assumption (of an influenza rather than a coronavirus pandemic), but also that policymakers should have learned the true nature of the new virus more quickly than they did.
Robert Van Der Meer receives funding from NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Golden Jubilee and the Scottish Government.
The British Museum has had to apologise after a translator’s words were used without permission. Writer and translator Yilin Wang shared on Twitter that their translations of work by the Chinese feminist poet Qiu Jin appeared in the museum’s exhibition, China’s Hidden Century, without consent.
The museum’s subsequent press release cited “unintentional human error”. It explained that it had corresponded privately with Wang and had now offered a fee for the use of the translations. Along with the Chinese poems, these were then removed from the exhibition. But the removal of the texts has also fuelled criticism of the museum, and sparked a debate about the role of translators.
Literary translation is legally recognised as an act of original artistic production. This means that translated literary texts enjoy their own copyright status, independent of the source texts. While Qiu’s work is now out of copyright because she died in 1907, Wang’s translations are not.
The role of original creativity in translation practices is frequently ignored or underestimated. It’s common to talk about reading “author X” rather than “translator Y’s translation of author X”. Even the Nobel Prize conveniently sidesteps the role of translators and their creative work when it confers its annual literary honour.
Recently, however, literary publishing has increasingly recognised the role of translators. In 2016, the International Man Booker Prize announced it would now split winnings evenly between the author and the translator. Translators are gaining visibility and it is becoming more and more difficult to pretend they don’t exist.
Read more: International Booker Prize 2023: our experts review the six shortlisted books
Translations are creative acts that take place in specific cultural contexts. They transform source texts into new, original literary works, and they can advocate for the source text and writer by introducing them to new readers.
Wang has written about the power dynamics of literary translation, including the barriers to access and participation faced by translators who are “outsiders” and translators of colour. In their essay writing, they draw specifically on their experience of systemic prejudice while translating Qiu Jin’s poetry.
They describe translation as an act of “reclamation and resistance” – and talk of the barriers they and others face finding a career in translation.
Like a translation, a museum is not neutral or objective. The objects and texts on display have been deliberately selected and positioned together. Just like the objects they frame, the words in a museum belong to someone and they have been chosen to tell a particular story.
Museums increasingly face pressure to reflect on their processes of acquisition and their contested ownership of items. This latest mistake – and handling of the fallout – shows that they also need to be transparent about the origins of the words they use to build the stories they tell.
Removing items from display is not standard practice for the museum. The museum made a public statement in 2020 that it would not remove “controversial objects” from display. A section of the website dedicated to “contested objects” explicitly engages with the provenance of some of its most famous pieces, such as the Parthenon marbles.
But now Wang has described the museum’s response as “erasure”, and Wang argues, it has troubling implications, both for the museum’s critical engagement with its own curatorship and for the power dynamics of its relationships with non-white contributors.
The British Museum said in a statement: “In response to a request from Yilin Wang, we have taken down their translations in the exhibition. We have also offered financial payment for the period the translations appeared in the exhibition as well as for the continued use of quotations from their translations in the exhibition catalogue. The catalogue includes an acknowledgement of their work.” Wang contests this.
Meanwhile, the story has not gone away. It has been reported in the Chinese and French media, and Wang’s still developing Twitter thread about the discovery has been shared over 15,000 times.
As momentum grows behind the criticism of the museum, it is a good time for all of us to consider how we value and engage with the work of translators, whose creative labour allows us to access worlds and imaginations far beyond our own.
Caroline Summers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Court of Appeal has ruled against the UK government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, adding a significant legal hurdle to the prime minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to “stop the boats”.
Under the migration partnership announced in April 2022, the UK government could send people to Rwanda who had entered the UK irregularly. Rwanda would then determine their asylum claims and, if they were found to be refugees, they would be resettled there. The government has argued this will deter people from making dangerous boat crossings across the English Channel, despite evidence showing such policies don’t work.
After a series of legal challenges, the European Court of Human Rights intervened to stop the first deportation flight from taking off.
In December 2022, the High Court found that the Rwanda policy was lawful. Now, the Court of Appeal has overturned that decision.
The main question for the court was whether Rwandan officials would accurately and fairly assess the asylum claims of people sent there from the UK. The claimants, a group of 10 refugees and the organisation Asylum Aid, argued that the Rwandan legal system would put genuine refugees at risk of being erroneously returned to countries where they would face persecution.
Two out of three judges agreed, finding that Rwanda’s current asylum system is not reliably fair and effective, citing five key reasons:
Asylum interviews are conducted in a brief and perfunctory manner, which could prevent a person from being able to fully explain their case;
Rwanda’s committee to determine refugee status does not allow lawyers to make arguments on behalf of a person, to help explain why they should be granted asylum;
Local non-governmental organisations do not have capacity to provide asylum seekers with legal assistance throughout the process;
Rwandan officials deciding applications do not have sufficient skill and experience to make reliable decisions, partly due to a lack of effective training; and
Judges in Rwanda may be susceptible to political influence and reluctant to overturn decisions not to grant asylum.
While the court noted there was nothing to indicate Rwanda was not trying its best to determine asylum claims fairly, Lord Justice Underhill observed that “aspiration and reality do not necessarily coincide”.
The majority judges also noted concerns about the safety of asylum seekers in Rwanda, including the extent to which Rwandan authorities are tolerant of protest and dissent. In 2018, Rwandan police shot and killed 12 refugees who were protesting a reduction in their food rations. Sir Geoffrey Vos found that these concerns were relevant to considering whether Rwanda was a “safe third country”.
All three judges agreed with the High Court’s decision on other grounds, including that sending asylum seekers to a third country is not necessarily incompatible with the UN Refugee Convention. This will no doubt be a worrying finding for critics of the government’s policy, who hoped the court would reinforce the UK’s obligations under international law.
This ruling effectively gives the government license to pass the burden of refugee protection on to poorer nations, even if they are prevented from sending people to Rwanda for now.
This judgment is a victory for refugees and the organisations that support them. It means that no asylum seekers in the UK will be sent to Rwanda for now – and maybe not ever.
These proceedings began with seven men being handcuffed, shackled and highly distressed as they were forced on to a plane. Over the past year, many men and women have received letters placing them at risk of removal to Rwanda. For these people, this judgment is not just a legal win, but a source of immense relief.
The illegal migration bill, which is currently facing fierce opposition from the House of Lords, legally requires the home secretary to detain and remove any person who arrives in the UK irregularly. With removals to Rwanda now unavailable, the viability of the bill is even less apparent.
Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman have said they will appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court. But even if the government succeeds, there is little to show that the plan will stop people travelling irregularly to the UK. The government’s own analysis acknowledges as much, stating:
Academic consensus is that there is little-to-no evidence suggesting changes in a destination country’s policies have an impact on deterring people.
The plan has already cost at least £120 million, and would cost a further £169,000 per person deported (compared with the £106,000 per person it costs to house an asylum seeker in the UK). With legal costs now stacking up, the Rwanda plan is quickly becoming very expensive.
These legal developments are a clear signal that the government should rethink its policy. If the government wanted to help people in need of protection while reducing the number of people risking their lives on small boats, it could open more safe and legal routes to the UK for people to seek asylum. Instead, ministers are doubling down on a plan that is costly, legally precarious, unlikely to work, and risks exposing people to more danger, rather than helping them reach safety.
Natalie Hodgson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Have you heard of “eldest daughter syndrome”? It’s the emotional burden eldest daughters tend to take on (and are encouraged to take on) in many families from a young age.
From caring for younger siblings, helping out with everyday chores, looking after sick parents to sorting shopping orders or online deliveries, eldest daughters often shoulder a heavy but invisible burden of domestic responsibility from a young age.
What’s wrong with that? You might ask, shouldn’t the eldest children, who are supposed to be more grown-up, help out and look after their younger siblings? Aren’t girls “naturally” better at caring? These popular assumptions are so entrenched that they can make it difficult for us to see the problem.
But #EldestDaughterSyndrome is now trending on TikTok, with adolescent girls speaking out about the unfair amount of unpaid (and unappreciated) labour they do in their families, as well as discussing its adverse effects on their lives, health and wellbeing.
Of course, the “syndrome” has existed for centuries across many parts of the world. So why is it now being spoken about as such an issue?
This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.
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Despite women’s rise in education and employment, they still shoulder the lion’s share of housework. Indeed, progress towards gender equality in the workplace has not translated into gender equality at home. And eldest daughter syndrome can go some way to explain why this is the case.
Research shows that children make a notable but often overlooked contribution to domestic labour. Mirroring the gender divide among adults, girls between five and 14 years old spend 40% more time on domestic work than boys.
Following a patriarchal pecking order, the eldest daughter often bears the brunt of the burden among her siblings.
As voiced by many on TikTok, the syndrome can impair eldest daughters’ wellbeing and “steal” their childhood as they are rushed into assuming a disproportionate amount of adult responsibilities – also known as parentification. In doing so, it reproduces gender inequality in domestic labour from one generation to another.
At least three behavioural theories underlie eldest daughter syndrome and they are often simultaneously at play, reinforcing one another.
First, the role modelling theory, which suggests that eldest daughters often follow their mother as a role model in learning to “do” gender. Second, the sex-typing theory proposes that parents often assign different, gendered tasks to girls and boys.
Sex-typing often builds on parents’ gendered understanding of domestic work as something associated with femininity. For parents who consciously strive to instil gender equality in their children, sex-typing can still occur as eldest daughters unconsciously join their mothers in gendered activities such as cooking, house cleaning and shopping.
And third, the labour substitution theory suggests that when working mothers have limited time available for domestic work, eldest daughters often act as “substitutes”. As a result, they end up spending more time on care provision and housework.
Consequently, mothers’ progress towards gender equality at work can come at the cost of their eldest daughters picking up the domestic slack at a young age.
As we look further afield, the issue of eldest daughter syndrome has far-reaching implications for global gender inequality and an ongoing global care crisis.
In the Philippines, for example, many mothers migrate to the US, the Middle East and Europe to work as domestic workers.
Their work helps free their clients from domestic gender inequality to some extent through domestic outsourcing. But back in the Philippines, the women’s eldest daughters often have to step up as “surrogate” mothers and run the household.
In this process, eldest daughter syndrome reproduces domestic gender inequality across generations and offloads such inequality from one part of the world to another.
The “cure” might seem simple – we need families to recognise the unfair burden that may have been placed on the eldest daughter and to redistribute household responsibilities more equally.
Yet, doing so is far from straightforward. It requires male family members in particular to step up their contribution to domestic work. In turn, it requires us to “undo” centuries of thinking about housework and care as something gendered and “feminine”.
To achieve that, we need to first recognise the problem that domestic labour, particularly labour performed by children and eldest daughters, which goes largely unseen, unpaid and under-valued.
In the 2023 UK Budget, the £4 billion investment in extending childcare coverage sheds some light on the sheer economic value of childcare, which, although massive, represents only a tiny fraction of the extensive range of domestic responsibilities disproportionately shouldered by women and often eldest daughters.
But we can’t change something we can’t see. This is why being more aware of eldest daughter syndrome, not only as an individual struggle but also as an issue of gender inequality, is a good start.
Yang Hu receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada, for his ongoing collaborative projects on artificial intelligence and labour market inequalities.
The results of Finland’s parliamentary elections signal a tumultuous period ahead. This was to a certain degree foreseen by pre-election polls, which indicated that prime minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) was about to lose to the opposition conservative National Coalition Party (Kok), led by Petteri Orpo.
The final election result showed a significant shift to the right – and increased success for rightwing populists in particular. The next government is therefore likely to be a coalition of rightwing parties but difficult negotiations lie ahead.
Marin received a very high number of personal votes and her party actually increased its vote share and parliamentary seats but it was not enough to make up for the significant losses suffered by her coalition partners.
Among these parties, only the social-liberal Swedish People’s Party of Finland (RKP/SFP) maintained its position. The Left Alliance (Vas) and the Green League (Vihr) both lost ground. There are indications that among the supporters of these parties some chose to vote tactically for SDP in an unsuccessful attempt to preserve Marin’s hold on the premiership.
Meanwhile, the most significant loses were suffered by the agrarian-liberal Centre Party (Kesk), which has now lost its status as one of Finland’s largest three political parties.
Kesk appears to have been replaced by the rightwing populist Finns Party (PS) on its home turf (namely, the northernmost regions of the country, such as the electoral districts of Lapland, Oulu, and Savonia-Karelia).
The PS has gained seven seats and now has 46 MPs, making it the second largest party in the new parliament. This indicates a heavy rightward shift among voters in both middle-sized cities and rural communities, as well as in the more ethnically homogeneous Finnish regions of the north, where the PS became the largest party. The PS has a new female leader, Riikka Purra, who seems keen to push even further on the radical agenda set by her predecessor Jussi Halla-aho. Purra proved to have significant personal popularity in this election.
The remaining seats are divided among the conservative Christian Democrats (KD) (5 MPs), the economically liberal one-man show Movement Now (Liike Nyt) (1 MP), and the representative of the autonomous Åland islands (1 MP, usually joining the parliamentary group of RKP/SFP on grounds of their common Swedish language).
While Finland has lost Marin as prime minister, from a gender perspective, the results of these elections nevertheless cement the standing of several women party leaders. Marin and Purra are the most prominent but seven out of the nine parties in parliament are now led by women. Even among the future MPs, the gender distribution is decently balanced, with 46% women and 54% men.
Marin was a trailblazer on the international stage as a young and charismatic woman heading the Finnish government and she did secure a very good result for her party. But this was not enough to shore up her coalition.
Marin showed clear leadership skills during the COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding economic recession brought about by the war in Ukraine. However, it appears that the policies Marin and the SDP had identified to balance stimulating economic growth and public spending in education, social services, with preparation for a green transition did not gain enough traction among the Finnish electorate to guarantee her continued premiership.
Kok and Orpo’s winning ticket appears to have come off the back of promises to bring in financial restraint while expanding nuclear energy. The PS and Purra, meanwhile, ran on a platform literally promising to “Save Finland!” from alleged uncontrolled migration, EU meddling and the Finnish government’s welfare overspending.
As the leader of largest party in the coming parliament, Orpo now has the task of negotiating a stable governing coalition. Preferably, he will collect the support of more than half of the Finland’s 200 MPs to ensure that stability. The negotiations ahead won’t be easy, since any potential coalition with the rightwing populist PS makes for a very hard sell to the centre-right parties.
So even with the election over, it remains to be seen if Finnish politics is about to switch from being a source of international inspiration to being run according to a rightwing populist isolationist ideology.
Ov Cristian Norocel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As the French and Chinese presidents, Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping, were discussing the need for more constructive international engagement to end the war in Ukraine, it emerged this week that Ukraine, too, was open to reconsidering its options. A top adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, noted that Kyiv might be open to negotiate the return of Crimea from Russia, rather than taking it by force.
The likelihood of actual negotiations and the prospects for their success may appear slim. But things were not that different 25 years ago when, in the early hours of April 10 1998, negotiators in Northern Ireland announced they had reached an agreement, ending a 30-year conflict that had cost more than 3,000 lives.
While the political process in Northern Ireland has been fraught with difficulties over the years, the peace has largely held. This is a considerable achievement and one that is worth reflecting on in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Three particular lessons stand out from Northern Ireland. The first, and most important, is about local leadership. Only if the parties in a conflict are genuinely committed to peace will an agreement last. Second, international diplomacy can make a difference in nudging the sides along to an agreement. Third, there needs to be a pathway to a face-saving deal for the conflict parties that can survive contact with reality.
This last point means that not only negotiators need to agree but also those that they represent and – where applicable – the external supporters backing them. Frequently, implementation gets stuck, and then international diplomacy can play a useful role again. If the sides remain committed to peace and the deal they agreed creates opportunities to reengage in dialogue rather than resume violence, relapse into conflict can be prevented.
As Northern Ireland and countless other peace processes have demonstrated, a peace process does not start with the negotiations but needs to be prepared. This includes getting buy-in from leaders and followers alike that negotiations present an acceptable way forward.
With Russia’s offensive stalled and much talk of an impending Ukrainian counter-offensive, there are no signs that either is ready yet to negotiate. Ukraine, understandably, insists that negotiations would be meaningless while Russia still occupies large parts of its internationally recognised sovereign territory. Moscow, in turn, demands a recognition of its territorial gains, aiming to consolidate its illegal land grab at the negotiation table.
Unless the two sides fight each other to complete exhaustion – which is not likely anytime soon – sustained, well-resourced, and if necessary muscular international mediation are required to get the parties to the negotiation table and help them to achieve a lasting peace. In Northern Ireland, this role was partly performed by the United States – the then US president, Bill Clinton, dispatched Senator George Mitchell to mediate the talks – and partly by the British and Irish governments who provided the time, resources, and ultimately domestic legal frameworks in which a deal was possible.
In Ukraine, there is no such impartial, mutually acceptable mediator. China may be willing to mediate, but Beijing is widely seen as backing Russia in the conflict, so Chinese mediation on its own would not be feasible. But it would also be difficult to see mediation without China – either actively part of a mediation team or throwing its weight, for example, behind mediation by the United Nations or a revival of the earlier UN/Turkish mediation effort. These were the talks that resulted in the original export deal for grain and fertiliser through the Black Sea and its two subsequent extensions.
Northern Ireland is also an instructive example when it comes to pre-conditions before negotiations start. The key requirement imposed by Mitchell was that, before any party could be admitted to the talks, they had to accept six principles of non-violence.
An equivalent for Ukraine would be a commitment to the full and unconditional respect of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is something that China has repeatedly emphasised it is committed to – including in its own position paper on Ukraine. Thus, negotiations would not need to be entered into unconditionally.
A version of the Mitchell principles would also be important in shaping a future settlement. They would prevent the simple legalisation of the current status quo or a recognition of Russia’s illegal annexations of Crimea in March 2014 and four other Ukrainian provinces in September 2022.
Beyond what an eventual settlement of the war should not look like, it is also important to consider what might be possible. Even here, Northern Ireland offers some insights. On the one hand, it was not only a local agreement between the conflict parties in the region, but also one that was part of a broader agreement between the British and Irish governments on their future relations.
The war in Ukraine has all but destroyed the broader European security order and continues to affect the ongoing changes in the international order. No sustainable settlement will be possible to the war in Ukraine if it is not embedded in a reconstituted European and international order. This must reflect the changing power balances between Russia, China and the west. And no settlement will be feasible or sustainable that does not include a credible pathway for Ukraine to EU and Nato membership.
A final lesson from Northern Ireland is that wars can only end sustainably at the negotiation table, and only if all parties’ core interests are reflected in a settlement – and the settlement itself has credible and enforceable guarantees attached. This may not be achievable in the war in Ukraine at present and perhaps not at all with Putin’s Russia.
But ultimately, responsible leaders in Kyiv, Brussels, Washington, Beijing and elsewhere need to come together and work diligently towards this end and prevail against the odds just as those leaders did in Northern Ireland 25 years ago.
Stefan Wolff receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK. He is also a past recipient of grants from the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London and Co-Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions.
The US president, Joe Biden, is expected in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland next week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. His visit will be one of historic symbolism and of personal significance, as an Irish Catholic president who has spoken proudly of his ties to the country.
A few weeks ago, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, formally invited Biden to come to Northern Ireland to mark the anniversary of the peace deal, which the US helped broker. The UK has much work to do to repair relations with the US following the Trump-Johnson years, especially if they are to pursue a much desired trade deal that has been stymied partly due to US concerns about the safety of the Good Friday Agreement post-Brexit.
The four-day visit comes at a fragile time for the agreement, threatened by post-Brexit trade arrangements and political tensions in Northern Ireland. Power-sharing in the Northern Ireland assembly – a key feature of the Good Friday Agreement – has been in limbo for over a year, due to a boycott by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In a recent poll, a majority of Northern Irish unionists said they would vote against the agreement if a referendum were held today.
Read more: Rishi Sunak's Brexit deal: how the Stormont brake could block new EU laws from Northern Ireland
The visit has other historical symbolism and personal relevance for the US president. Biden will spend three days in the Republic of Ireland. For that part of the island, the visit will be less about Northern Ireland issues, and more around the historically resonant imagery of an Irish Catholic president returning to his roots.
There is a long history of US presidents visiting Ireland. It is thought that 23 of the 46 presidents have been of Irish heritage. Until the early 1960s, most visits were by former presidents whose families originated in Northern Ireland.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy became the first sitting – and first Irish Catholic – president to visit. His sojourn was widely viewed as a symbolic homecoming. Both Irish and American media at the time described it as a “sentimental journey”. Biden, the second Irish Catholic US president, will stir memories of Kennedy.
Biden will spend time visiting his ancestral home and meeting family in County Louth and County Mayo. He is clearly proud of his Irish roots, often referencing how his family history has shaped his political career and worldview. As he wrote in 2016: “Northeast Pennsylvania will be written on my heart. But Ireland will be written on my soul.”
Biden has knowingly taken on the Kennedy mantle as a politician. Over the years he has come to personify a liberal politics of empathy, in which his Irish ancestry and Catholicism function as moral touchstones. However, this can shroud an underlying reality, that Ireland and the US are increasingly adrift, out of sync on matters political and cultural.
At the same time, Irish America is ageing and growing more conservative, with very few new emigrants refuelling it. Biden represents a disappearing figure, the last of a once powerful tribe of liberal Irish American politicians.
Biden’s visit should not be understood as purely a sentimental journey. Indeed, looking back we can see that Kennedy’s visit was much more of a diplomatic mission than many viewed it in 1963.
Kennedy visited Ireland on his return from Berlin, after giving one of the most important speeches of the Cold War. His engagement with Ireland at that time aligned the controversially neutral state with the forces of “freedom”. And behind the scenes, a good deal of diplomatic and economic business was carried out that would benefit Ireland’s relations with the US for years to come.
As with Kennedy’s visit, economic diplomacy will be important, most obviously in the promise of US investment in Northern Ireland to reward and secure the new EU-UK deal on Brexit.
It is also a chance for Biden to repair the US’s global reputation for leadership in liberal internationalism, which has been on the back foot since the Trump administration.
Biden views the Good Friday Agreement as a significant achievement of US foreign policy, and one that enjoys bipartisan support in the US. To celebrate it today is to assert the US’s support for the rule of law in foreign policy, and promote the agreement as a model of peace for other post-conflict states. He’ll receive a warm welcome, but like Kennedy, the visit is something more than just sentimental.
Liam Kennedy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In February 1990, in the midst of the Troubles, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness publicly invited the British government to reopen a back-channel used during previous phases of contact with the IRA in the 1970s and during the 1981 hunger strike.
If [the British government] think there is something to be lost by stating publicly how flexible they would be, or how imaginative, we are saying they should tell us privately … there is an avenue which they are aware of whereby they can make what imaginative steps they are thinking about known to the Republican movement.
It was a crucial early step on the road to the Good Friday Agreement.
The British government, acting in conditions of the greatest secrecy, took McGuinness up on his offer the following year. An MI5 officer who went by the name Robert McLaren liaised with intermediary Brendan Duddy, a Derry businessman who had played this role on several occasions since 1972. The aim was an IRA ceasefire followed by political negotiations. On the British side only prime minister John Major and a handful of senior officials knew of the initiative. Duddy told me in 2009: “the very moment Robert appeared, the very second he appeared, I knew: the British government don’t send Robert to me unless they want to do business.”
The prospect of a negotiated end to the IRA campaign had first been explored more than a quarter century earlier. In June 1972, William Whitelaw, the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, told his cabinet colleagues that, after three years of conflict and almost 400 deaths, “it was inescapable that some understanding would have to be reached with the ‘Provisional’ IRA; no solution seemed possible unless their point of view were represented.”
But although Whitelaw met secretly with IRA leaders in London in 1972 and Labour PM Harold Wilson sanctioned secret talks again in 1975, for most of the 30 years of conflict, orthodox thinking held that the IRA and the political party associated with them, Sinn Féin, would never compromise and that any settlement would have to exclude them.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block was the Republicans’ central ideological demand – that the British government “acknowledge the right of the Irish people to determine their own future without let or hindrance.”
But as early as 1972 British officials considered whether it might be possible to accommodate them. After Whitelaw’s meeting with the IRA a senior civil servant noted that “the formula of the IRA was very close to the position of Mr Lynch [the Irish prime minister], that the future of Ireland should be decided by the people of Ireland as a whole.”
The question, though, was how this could be squared with the principle that Ireland could only be reunited if a majority in Northern Ireland agreed. In the 1990s a way would finally be found to do it.
The secret contacts that started in 1991 culminated in an IRA ceasefire offer made through the back-channel in early 1993. But the British government didn’t respond by agreeing to talks, as the Republicans had expected they would. After a period of recrimination the back-channel fell into disuse and was then dramatically revealed by the Observer newspaper in November 1993. Ironically, this exposure helped to accelerate movement towards a compromise peace settlement.
Speaking in 2020, not long before his death, John Chilcot, permanent under-secretary in the Northern Ireland Office in the 1990s and perhaps the single most important driver of the peace process on the British side, told me of the sense of deep uncertainty created by the revelation of the back-channel, and the subsequent sense of relief:
The whole thing came to a head I think on the Monday after the Observer revelations … it wasn’t known whether the House of Commons would call for [secretary of state Patrick Mayhew’s] head on a platter and possibly John Major’s as well, instead of which the reverse happened. The whole of the House of Commons, or all of it that mattered, rose up to say ‘thank God. This is the right thing to be doing’ … my heart was in my mouth that Monday, same as Patrick Mayhew’s. I was in the House of Commons, in the official box and it was a wonderful moment actually.
Chilcot felt a sense “of immense relief and coupled with, I think, something more positive, elation really, that it really looked as though the thing was going to take wing and who knows, succeed. It took a long time after that, but nonetheless, that was a turning point.”
Within weeks the British and Irish governments had issued the Downing Street Declaration. It included a British acknowledgement, for the first time, of a right to Irish self-determination, albeit one that was heavily qualified and subject to the agreement of a majority in Northern Ireland/
In August 1994, the IRA finally announced an end to its campaign. There were further twists and turns before the Good Friday Agreement, including a return to IRA violence in 1996 before they finally ended their campaign in July 1997.
Nine months later, on April 10 1998, the Belfast Agreement – or Good Friday Agreement as it became popularly known – was signed after intensive talks chaired by US special envoy George Mitchell. The settlement guaranteed a place in government to all parties that enjoyed significant electoral support, including Sinn Féin. It opened the way to conflict resolution measures aimed at bedding down the peace – including police reform, the removal of troops from the streets, and the early release of paramilitary prisoners. The text on self-determination from the Downing Street Declaration, with a few embellishments, was incorporated word for word into the Good Friday Agreement and endorsed by all of the parties to the Agreement.
The 1998 agreement was the achievement of the British and Irish governments, of all the political parties in Northern Ireland (with the exception of the DUP), and of external actors such as the then US president, Bill Clinton. But the ending of the IRA’s armed campaign was a prerequisite for the inclusive negotiations that produced the agreement. And ending the IRA campaign had required engagement between the British government and the IRA. As Chilcot told me in a 2010 interview: “Ultimately … the basic players in this game are the British government and the republican movement.”
The back-channel may have collapsed in public acrimony in late 1993, but it had helped to establish the foundations for the agreement that followed. The argument within the IRA for a ceasefire to facilitate talks had been won. The argument within the British state for a negotiated settlement that included Republicans had been significantly advanced. This was no trivial achievement at a time when powerful forces in the British state continued to oppose contact.
The back-channel made it possible for both sides to nurture trust and understanding. They learned about the constraints within which the other party was operating and gradually became willing to make the moves and concessions that would allow the other party to move in turn.
It was through the back-channel that the British government and Sinn Féin began to build a new and less conflictual relationship. This was crucial to the ending of violent conflict.
Niall Ó Dochartaigh received funding from the Irish Research Council
The UK National Archives has produced educational resources for secondary schools to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Signed on April 10 1998, the agreement marked the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the establishment of a new shared institution, the Northern Ireland assembly. It also established new formal political relationships between Ireland and the UK, and on the island of Ireland.
The school resources are detailed and provide important context. But some political nuance is overlooked – and the history of teaching on Irish history in British schools suggests there is a risk they may not be widely used. In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, their generally optimistic tone may limit their effectiveness.
The resources include a video, two sets of slides and associated guides and a student workbook. They provide teachers in secondary schools and colleges throughout the UK with materials for a school assembly and follow-up classroom work.
The assembly materials provide a brief history of Northern Ireland, before outlining the nature of the political violence that occurred during the Troubles, the journey towards peace, and the positive impact of the agreement over the past 25 years.
The follow-up resources are designed to support discussion about the agreement and how it brought an end to the conflict. They cover the deal’s three core principles: respect, consent and identity – including the right of anyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, Irish or both, and to hold citizenship and a passport for either or both countries.
The resources cover the three strands of political institutions established by the agreement and the actions that followed its implementation. Paramilitary organisations decommissioned their weapons and accepted the principle of consent – that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland will only change if a majority of people vote to support it. Members of these groups who had been imprisoned for crimes before the signing of the agreement were released from jail on a licence, which could be revoked if they rejoined a paramilitary group or supported paramilitary activities.
The security presence on the streets was rolled back and the number of British troops deployed in Northern Ireland was steadily reduced. A major reform of policing produced a new – and more representative – police service.
The materials explain how these measures aimed to move Northern Ireland in the direction of peace and stability. They were intended to reduce levels of violence, promote reconciliation and forgiveness, and move from relationships based on fear to ones based on trust. Students are encouraged to explore this further by designing a campaign to promote the lessons of the agreement for other areas of conflict around the world.
The resources from the National Archives are wide-ranging and helpfully set the Good Friday Agreement in context. Violent political conflicts rarely end in a moment, but after a long process.
Some political nuances are avoided. The conflict is cast as between communities, with the security forces implicitly presented as a neutral arbiter in the middle. However, responses to the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) bill currently working its way through parliament suggest a more complex reality.
The bill will limit investigations or inquests into Troubles-related deaths and is supported by those trying to protect military veterans from prosecution. It is opposed by all political parties in Northern Ireland as it will provide effective amnesty for many of those accused of killing people during the Troubles.
The resources also underplay some of the challenges the agreement has faced. The Northern Ireland assembly has been suspended due to political disputes for about 40% of its tenure. It is currently suspended, as the assembly has failed to elect a speaker or executive since the May 2022 election.
In part this comes from the mechanisms built into the assembly to promote consensus-building. Contentious issues not only require majority support in the assembly, but also a set level of support among the blocs of Members of the Legislative Assembly who designate either as unionist or nationalist. The aim was to promote cooperation, but it has more often led to decisions being blocked or vetoed. The architecture of the agreement was predicated on a more inclusive approach by elected politicians than has actually been achieved.
Studying the agreement could pose some interesting questions in schools in Britain. But the likelihood is that few schools in Britain will make use of these educational resources. Irish history has not previously been taught to any significant extent in British schools.
A similar gap in provision in Irish schools may also have produced a poor level of knowledge of the peace process in Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland especially, the generally optimistic and uncritical approach of the resources may make them less effective.
The achievement of 25 years ago should be celebrated. In Northern Ireland, we also need to engage frankly with the limitations of the agreement if the drive for a more peaceful and settled society is to be achieved. Northern Ireland has come very far in a relatively short time, but we’re not there yet.
Tony Gallagher has received funding from a range of organisations including the ESRC, the Department of Education in Northern Ireland, Atlantic Philanthropies, the International Fund for Ireland and Sixteen Consultancy (Belfast). He is a member of the Board of the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation and the WAVE Trauma Centre.
The UK recently announced that it will join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), giving British businesses access to the 11 other members of the Indo-Pacific trade bloc and bringing its combined GDP to £11 trillion.
Some commentators have suggested the deal could make up for Brexit. It’s been called “a momentous economic and strategic moment” that “kills off any likelihood that it [the UK] will ever rejoin the EU customs union or single market”. Shanker Singham of think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs has even said: “it’s no exaggeration to say that CPTPP+UK is an equivalent economic power to the EU-28-UK”, comparing it to a trade deal between the UK and EU members.
UK business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch echoed such sentiments, telling Times Radio:
We’ve left the EU so we need to look at what to do in order to grow the UK economy and not keep talking about a vote from seven years ago.
The problem with this fanfare is that the government’s own economic analysis of the benefits of joining this bloc is underwhelming. There is an estimated gain to the UK of 0.08% of GDP – this is just a 50th of the OBR’s estimate of what Brexit has cost the UK economy to date. Even for those that are sceptical about models and forecasts, that is an enormous difference in magnitude.
Of course, the CPTPP is expected to offer the UK some real gains. It certainly provides significant potential opportunities for some individual exporters. But the estimated gains for Britain overall are very small.
The main reason for this is that, apart from Japan, the major players of the global economy are not in the CPTPP. The US withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership (the CPTPP is what the remaining members formed without it). And China started negotiations to join in 2022, but current geopolitics now make its entry highly improbable. India was never involved.
In addition, the UK already has free trade agreements with nine out of the 11 members. The remaining two, Malaysia and Brunei, are controversial due to environmental threats from palm oil production to rainforests and orangutans.
Britain’s existing trade agreements with CPTPP members
And despite the widespread public perception of the Asia-Pacific area as a hub of future growth, the performance and prospects of the CPTPP members are a mixed bag. The largest member, Japan, is arguably in long-term decline, as is Brunei, while just three members (Vietnam, Singapore and New Zealand had average growth in the last decade above 3% annually.
Finally, distance really does matter in trade. All the CPTPP members are thousands of miles from the UK, which explains their relatively small shares in UK trade at present.
While all of these points pour cold water on the suggested gains, there are some potential benefits from the CPTPP agreement, which allows for mutual recognition of certain standards. This includes patents and some relaxation of sanitary and phytosanitary rules on food items.
However, agreements over standards will involve the UK submitting to international CPTPP courts on these issues. This sits uncomfortably with many of the “sovereignty” objections to the European Court of Justice in relation to Brexit (largely from many of those who have extolled the CPTPP). It’s also notable that out of the nine agreements with CPTPP members that existed before the UK signed this deal, all but two are rollovers of previous EU deals.
But a trade deal with the CPTPP is worth more to the UK than separate deals with each member due to requirements around “rules of origin”, which determine the national source of a product. When a product contains inputs from more than one country, a series of separate free trade agreements may not eliminate tariffs. But if all the relevant countries are members of a single free trade agreement, then rules of origin on inputs from other members cease to be a problem (although there might be some issues if some members do not police the requirements properly).
While these benefits should be recognised, we should also acknowledge that the CPTPP is not the ideal agreement for Britain. As stated above, distance really does matter in trade – this is overwhelmingly accepted by modern trade economists.
Research shows that the rate at which trade declines with distance has barely changed over more than a century. This might seem strange because transport costs have fallen over time. But, as transport and communications have improved, firms have outsourced much of their production to complex supply chains that often cross national borders many times, with “just-in-time” supply schedules to keep down the costs of holding large stocks.
This means that, while trade everywhere has grown, there is still a big premium for trading (many times) across borders between contiguous countries. It is exactly this type of trade which benefits most from big comprehensive trade agreements that simplify rules of origin and regulatory paperwork.
This suggests that, while some elements of the the CPTPP offer benefits to the UK, it is unlikely to boost its trade in the way it does between countries around the Pacific Rim. For this sort of boost, the UK really needs to look towards its own neighbours. Of course, this is just the sort of agreement that Badenoch seems reluctant to discuss.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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