The New Forest Suicide Prevention Initiative (NFSPI)

A retrospective suicide study revealed that the Forestry Commission car parks in the New Forest in southern England were a previously unrecognized magnet for nonlocal suicides, attracting as high a proportion of "visitors" (35/43 in 1993-97) as among suicides who jumped from the cliffs at the infamous Beachy Head (39/48 in 1993-97). Over 95% of the car park suicides died from car exhaust gas poisoning. A multiagency initiative aimed to reduce the number of suicides in the 140 New Forest car parks where restricting access was impossible, and environmental issues paramount. Signs displaying the Samaritans' national telephone number were erected in the 26 car parks in which 50% of the car park suicides had occurred. Numbers, location, and residence of all car park deaths were monitored for 3 years. Corresponding changes in other forest registration districts were also monitored. During the 3-year intervention period the number of car park suicides fell significantly from 10/year, 1988-1997, to 3.3/year. The average annual total number of suicides in the New Forest registration district also decreased. No significant changes were found in comparable forest districts. The number of suicides in the New Forest car parks remained low during the 2 years following the evaluation.     

Russia and Cuba: “doomed” comrades?

In 1991 Vitaly Churkin, a Soviet Minister for Foreign Economic Cooperation, stated that economic links between Russia and Cuba were “doomed” to continue. This gave a very negative impression of the relationship, but quickly he appeared to be incorrect because by the end of 1992 little seemed to remain of the 30-year relationship. However, as the 1990s progressed, the relationship continued to function and then improve. Fundamental to this were the principles of the realist paradigm of International Relations, which has been vital since the relationship’s inception in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, in conjunction with a long-term legacy. The outcome is that Russia and Cuba are indeed “doomed” comrades.     

Existential Terrorism: Civil Society and its Enemies

This paper explores the attitude of contemporary terrorism towards civil society, the intermediate realm between the family and the state that accommodates the free play of economic and cultural forces and individual and group interests. Terrorism now targets not only people and institutions that operate within civil society but civil society itself, i.e., terrorism increasingly targets the very possibility of an autonomous realm of everyday life. This tendency is found in the Islamism of Al‐Qaeda, but also in any group that adheres to the “Augustinian paradigm” of civil society that arose in the West and dominates radical ideologies. An exploration of this situation illuminates both the nature and tactics of contemporary terrorism and the role of civil society itself.     

Missing the nuclear boat? British policy and French military nuclear ambitions during the EURATOM foundation negotiations, 1955–56

This paper examines the neglected nuclear dimension of the ‘relaunch’ of Europe at Messina. France favoured British membership of EURATOM and some interests in Britain saw the commercial and diplomatic advantages of Britain's leadership of the European nuclear industry. However, the possibility of a French military nuclear programme and European nuclear proliferation compounded Britain's established reluctance either to participate in European integration or to jeopardize the prospect of Anglo‐American nuclear weapons cooperation. Britain's aversion to using the hypothetical ‘nuclear card’ is a recurrent theme in Anglo‐French diplomacy.