Although Milton’s relationship with Ireland will not be as active after 1653 as it had been in the previous fifteen years, Ireland does not entirely disappear from Milton’s work. Ireland is implied in “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” and in Paradise Lost (1667, 1674). Ireland also appears occasionally in Milton’s The History of Britain. Milton’s personal connections to Ireland grow after the Cromwellian conquest. More importantly, though, Milton has been a persistent presence in Ireland – not only as a literary figure, but also as a republican political theorist: He is cited by Irish Republicans in the eighteenth and twentienth centuries, and by Irish authors including W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, John McGahern, Eimear McBride, and more. At the same time, Milton’s insights into pre-Cromwellian Ireland represent a hidden potential for today’s post-Brexit Ireland.

This chapter examines the diplomacy before, during, and after the 1980 majority rule elections in Zimbabwe. The pre-election diplomacy focused on ceasefire violations and the large number of unreported South African troops in Rhodesia before the election. The diplomacy of Lord Soames in dealing with this issue, and the issue of violence and intimidation by the different nationalist parties, especially from ZANU, meant that the elections were a tense situation. Lord Soames’ handling of the election observers is discussed, as is his meeting with Robert Mugabe once Mugabe’s overwhelming victory was known. The chapter then looks at Anglo-American relations with Zimbabwe in the first two years of independence. The focus is on the British and American responses to events in 1982, primarily the problems created in Britain among Conservatives over the reports of the torture of detained white officers, some of them British citizens, who were charged with sabotage against Zimbabwe’s Thornhill Air Force base. In addition, the firing of Joshua Nkomo from the government, and his exile to London is discussed.

This chapter examines the breakthrough in the Anglo-American diplomacy with the decision made at the July 1979 Lusaka Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting by the British to support Commonwealth proposals to not recognize the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia government led by Bishop Muzorewa and to not lift sanctions. Instead, a declaration was made that committed the British to holding a constitutional conference in London and Lancaster House in late 1979. The chapter covers some details of the Lancaster House negotiations relating to the difficulties Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe had with some of the strong provisions to protect white Zimbabwean rights around land and pensions. The unilateral decision by Robert Mugabe and ZANU to run on a separate ticket in the 1980 elections is also discussed.

The PRC appears to hold the Joint Declaration which it does treat as a valid treaty to have become fully executed, meaning that all its terms have been performed. Hong Kong has been handed over and much of the substance of the document is to be found in its first annex (Annex I) which is – and the PRC emphasises this aspect – entitled an ‘Elaboration by the Government of the People's Republic of China of its basic policies regarding Hong Kong’. The UK takes a different view, treating as substantive treaty commitments the PRC’s (own) elaboration of Chinese policies in the third paragraph and in Annex I. The roots of this controversy run deep and have their origin in the treaty negotiations.

Chapter 6 traces the trajectory of a renewed consciousness of the rule of law and various freedoms in the final decade of colonial rule and unpacks the geopolitical concerns and motivations of the British government in de-silencing Hong Kong before the handover in 1997. The conclusion in 1984 of negotiations between Britain and China on the reversion of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to the latter marked the opening of an era of liberalistic rule of law and individual freedoms in Hong Kong. Laws and regulations that had been used to suppress free speech, control publication and prosecute political protesters were loosened or repealed one after another in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hong Kong’s first statute expressly recognising freedom of speech, assembly and association was passed only in 1991, just six years before the colonial era came to an end. Not only were laws and senior judicial appointments liberalised in the last decade of British rule, but the 1980s and 1990s also witnessed unprecedented levels of public discussion of, and official and media narratives on, the importance of free speech and the rule of law to Hong Kong.

This chapter examines the diplomacy before, during, and after the 1980 majority rule elections in Zimbabwe. The pre-election diplomacy focused on ceasefire violations and the large number of unreported South African troops in Rhodesia before the election. The diplomacy of Lord Soames in dealing with this issue, and the issue of violence and intimidation by the different nationalist parties, especially from ZANU, meant that the elections were a tense situation. Lord Soames’ handling of the election observers is discussed, as is his meeting with Robert Mugabe once Mugabe’s overwhelming victory was known. The chapter then looks at Anglo-American relations with Zimbabwe in the first two years of independence. The focus is on the British and American responses to events in 1982, primarily the problems created in Britain among Conservatives over the reports of the torture of detained white officers, some of them British citizens, who were charged with sabotage against Zimbabwe’s Thornhill Air Force base. In addition, the firing of Joshua Nkomo from the government, and his exile to London is discussed.

This chapter examines the breakthrough in the Anglo-American diplomacy with the decision made at the July 1979 Lusaka Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting by the British to support Commonwealth proposals to not recognize the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia government led by Bishop Muzorewa and to not lift sanctions. Instead, a declaration was made that committed the British to holding a constitutional conference in London and Lancaster House in late 1979. The chapter covers some details of the Lancaster House negotiations relating to the difficulties Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe had with some of the strong provisions to protect white Zimbabwean rights around land and pensions. The unilateral decision by Robert Mugabe and ZANU to run on a separate ticket in the 1980 elections is also discussed.

Chapter 8 examines the Cold War during 1984, a presidential election year. It featured a dramatic shift in US foreign policy, as the need to avert a major crisis conjoined with domestic imperatives. The pragmatists grasped the symbiosis. If his ambition of reducing nuclear arms was to be realized, Reagan would need to win a second term. His immediate political interests would be served by forging a more flexible, constructive approach with Moscow. Reagan would now emphasize the peaceful side of “peace through strength” – a candidate who could be peacemaker and statesman. The chapter provides in-depth analysis of Reagan’s move toward the center. A string of new US initiatives were undertaken without any Soviet movement: Reagan’s conciliatory address on US–Soviet relations; the pursuit of new agreements with Moscow (diplomatic and military); the reversal of Carter’s 1980 sanctions; and a White House invitation to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Although these events did not yield a major diplomatic breakthrough, 1984 witnessed a thaw in US–Soviet relations, in which the sense of fear, paranoia, and distrust were eased. Orwellian scenarios did not come to pass.

In Chapter 4 we tell the story of how identity conflicts were first mobilised into electoral politics during the first wave of migration to Britain after the Second World War. This period of British history is rarely mentioned in conjunction with our decision to leave the EU in 2016, but it is critical for understanding more recent identity conflicts. The first wave of sustained mass migration was the first demonstration of the disruptive power of such conflicts, producing a wave of ethnocentric voter mobilisation which upended political competition and has continued to reverberate in debates over multiculturalism, discrimination and identity ever since. The new political conflicts generated more recently by another surge in immigration have interacted with, and sometimes reinforced, these older divisions. The paths followed by Labour and the Conservatives on such issues were first traced out in this period, with Labour establishing themselves as defenders of ethnic minorities, and the Conservative choosing to mobilise anti-immigrant sentiments in the white majority. We cannot understand the identity conflicts mobilised by Cameron, May and Farage without first understanding the era of Heath, Powell and Thatcher.

After 1975, British policymakers no longer believed that the IRA would settle for a political compromise. Instead, the British government sought to reduce IRA activity to a level at which it would not interfere with potential political agreements between constitutional nationalists and unionists. Continuing IRA activity convinced the Thatcher government to continue this strategy towards Irish republicans. The aim of enticing Irish republicans to fully politicise via backchannel negotiations would only be readopted under Peter Brooke in 1990. In order to force republicans to promptly agree to a political compromise, John Major’s government followed a similar strategy to that of Harold Wilson’s government between 1974 and 1975. There would be a combination of backchannel conversations alongside a continuing intelligence campaign to erode the IRA’s armed capacity. This chapter also outlines how the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership privately only sought a return to talks after 1975. They sought to persist with the IRA’s campaign and to maximise Sinn Féin’s share of the vote in order to get the British government to return to talks and provide concessions towards Irish republican objectives.