The School of Politics and International Relations was set up in 1970 as a sub-department of the Economics Department. Two years later, Trevor Smith (later Lord Smith of Clifton) transformed it into a full department, with a staff of five and several dozen students.
In those early years, our small department had its work cut out. First, it needed to secure the approval of a federal Board of Studies in the relevant discipline for each course. Second, and true to its founding mission to diversify education in politics, it faced a challenge in gaining recognition and approval for a focus on the politics of women and gender. This area was a specialism of the department’s second Head, Elizabeth Vallance (later Lady Vallance of Tummel), and has remained a rich and exciting part of our teaching and research.
In time, the department organically assumed an interdisciplinary form that remains to this day, producing alumni and staff who spanned both the radical and conservative ends of the spectrum. Notable examples include Stuart Christie who was jailed in Spain for a very amateur plan to blow up General Franco; Peter Hain, MP for Neath between 1991 and 2015 and served in the Blair and Brown governments; Tom Pursglove (2010), Tory MP and minister; Jane Hill (1991) presenter of BBC News 24; and our founder, Trevor Smith, a prominent Liberal Democrat. For many years Bill Fishman taught a popular course on Jewish East End Radicals and was understudied by David Cesarani, author of an outstanding study on Europe’s Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.
Areas of study started with a Cold War focus on the USSR led by David Black, a linguist who had served in the Royal Navy, then expanded to Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Throughout this period, the Department was one of the few in the UK to offer regular provisions on race and ethnicity.