Welsh Journals

wrecking and against militia service and outside labour. Howell offers a complex mix of explanations for such turbulent behaviour while confirming David Jones's verdict 'that radical input to disturbances was to come only from the 1790s'. The other essay on pre-twentieth-century popular politics also rests on much primary research. Owen Ashton, after publishing a biography onW. E. Adams, here provides a succinct analysis of Adams's political and journalistic career and is especially interesting on the Newcastle background to Sir Charles Dilke's famous pronouncement there on republicanism in 1871. Reflecting David Jones's later work on twentieth century history, Neil Evans provides a thoughtful study of unemployed activism in 1930s south Wales. He draws very effectively on the Welsh press and various archival sources to examine in some depth the widespread support for anti-means test campaigns from organized religion, the cultural significance of the well-supported marches and demonstrations, and other features of the 1934-6 protests. The high quality of the essays is maintained with the essays on crime. Clive Emsley provides a stylish and lively comparative assessment of British and European police, which deserves to be used widely as a brief but shrewd introduction to the subject. John Archer's essay on game-preserving and poach- ing in nineteenth-century Lancashire is superb. He shows that in Lancashire much poaching was carried out not by young farm workers seeking 'one for the pot' but by older men, often from the industrial towns. The violent gangs were criminals out to make money, with little or nothing of'social crime' about their activities. Peter Stead deals with the recent past, setting off a lucid assessment of the portrayal of the police on television and in crime novels against an account of the decrease in public confidence in the police after 1969. He writes especially well on the cultural history, where he quietly draws on his encyclo- paedic knowledge. This volume is highlighted by an impressive and enjoyable essay by Kenneth O. Morgan. He discusses whether modern Welsh history is predominantly about a society marked by conflict (a case memorably made by Gwyn Alf Williams in the television series and his book, When was Wales?) or by consensus (as suggested on television by the broadcaster Wynford Vaughan Thomas or generally in the work of Ieuan Gwynedd Jones). After reviewing the record of conflict in modern Welsh history, and in so doing providing a sparkling overview, he concludes that it has not been of the same order as that in Ireland, yet comments that consensus 'is hardly a satisfactory diagnosis either'. Perhaps another element in an Irish-Welsh comparison could be the notion of enmeshed economies, both linked to the dominant industrial economy, yet southern Wales was an important part of it (like northern Ireland) in its heyday, while northern Wales and southern Ireland were economically somewhat peripheral. Kenneth Morgan's stimulating, thoughtful and thought-provoking