I was an undergraduate student at LSE on the Government and History degree, pursued an MA at KCL in Contemporary British History, and am now working under Professor David Stevenson's supervision.
Ben was co-convener for the HY509 PhD and early career research seminar in 2019/20.
Provisional thesis title
Reappraising the "Edwardian Radical Right", 1903-1918
The thesis is a reappraisal of the "Edwardian Radical Right" from the years 1903-1918. It emphasises the ideological common ground within a portion of the Unionist/Conservative Party's right-wing which can be called the Radical Right, which was primarily a reaction to Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain's perceived geopolitical, military, economic, and social decline. The platform of the Edwardian Radical Right sought to cure this perceived decline with a militaristic, imperial-nationalist platform that included Tariff Reform, National Service, and social reform. Its attempts to influence party and national politics reveals the strength of party loyalty and identity in Edwardian Britain, but also reveals a distinction between those models of reform within the Unionist Party that succeeded and those that failed and why. This thesis will argue that, while the Radical Right failed in its objectives, it did retain an identity beyond the usual period of 1911-1914 wherein the Radical Right is presumed to be subsumed back into the Unionist Party. Instead, it was 1917 where the Edwardian Radical Right dissolved and was subsumed into different if overlapping strands of the Conservative Right.