Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
If we really shouldn’t lie about our history, as the prime minister says, let’s finally open up about the atrocities of empire
When Boris Johnson claimed last week that removing statues is “to lie about our history””, you could almost admire his brass neck. This is the man who was sacked from his (...)
The 30th anniversary of the Trafalgar Square riot is a good time to reflect on Simon Hannah’s engaging account of the movement that scuppered Thatcher’s poll tax, writes Andrew Stone
Simon Hannah, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax
(London: Pluto Press, 2020). 192pp. £16.99
As (...)
Shapurji Saklatvala, the first MP of colour elected on a Labour ticket, turned his parliamentary seat into a vehicle to fight both capitalism and imperialism.
This article is excerpted from Insurgent Empire – Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent published by Verso.
On 17 June 1927 a (...)
The former mining communities of Wales have been deliberately devastated for a generation - but their proud history of socialism and solidarity has not been so easily wiped away.
Driving into the village of Crai in the Brecon Beacons, at one point the land beside the road falls away, opening (...)
Evan Smith’s book deals with the Communist Party of Great Britain and anti-racism from 1945 to the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Aiming for a better understanding of the impact the Communist Party had on anti-racist politics, he has made a close reading of the party’s (...)
After the Second World War, Jewish soldiers returned to Britain and had to fight fascism all over again.
When 24-year-old Morris Beckman returned to his house on Amhurst Road in Hackney, he’d experienced quite a lot. His time fighting fascism abroad had seen him survive two Nazi torpedo attacks (...)
Governments want us to respect World War I veterans in an apolitical way. But we should not forget the thousands of veterans who returned home to fight for their rights.
In British society, biting representations of the Great War such as the seminal Blackadder Goes Forth and Joan Littlewood’s (...)
When Scots refused to service Chile’s jet fighters after the 1973 military coup, their protest all but grounded the air force – and may have saved prisoners’ lives. Nae Pasaran, a powerful documentary, tells their story
The artificial spiders’ webs hanging in the windows of the Royal British (...)
Review: Massacre at Ballymurphy (TV, Channel 4).
The “Ballymurphy Massacre” refers to the death of eleven civilians, killed in Ballymurphy, Belfast, Northern Ireland, by the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army during the Operation Demetrius, 9 and 11 August 1971. The shootings (...)
Growing up in Britain, I knew nothing of the many crimes the British Empire had committed against my Iraqi ancestors.
If you grew up in Britain, like me, you probably would not be able to recall being taught anything substantial about British colonial history in school.
The British curriculum (...)
Official documents show the British government’s concern with declining post-colonial influence and obsession with trade and arms deals. UK Foreign Office encouraged police to repress Sikh protests against the Indian government. Most British documents relating to military cooperation before and (...)
Churchill was no hero — he was a vile racist fanatical about violence and fiercely supportive of imperialism.
During the May Day protests in England in 2000, nothing infuriated the British establishment — its press, its politicians, its courts of respectable opinion — more than the desecration of (...)
The general election marked a setback for the Scottish National Party. Is the independence dream dead?
Coming the day after the Scottish independence referendum, September 19, 2014, was a rather different election hangover from June 9, 2017. Three years ago, the young and forgotten used a (...)
Despite our national cult of veneration, the historical record is plain: Churchill was a virulent racist, a diehard colonialist, and responsible for the deaths of millions
“Churchill matters today because he saved our civilisation. And the important point is that only he could have done it”, (...)
New Labour deserves no epitaph – it should have died in the deserts and cities of Iraq. As Jeremy Corbyn said, it’s time for a new politics.
The Chilcot report provides an utterly devastating indictment of Tony Blair’s preparations for and conduct of the Iraq war, the most lethal and grotesque (...)
In 1976 the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee produced an Alternative Corporate Plan for Lucas Aerospace that advocated the production of social useful products . This was in response to management announcing the need to cut jobs. The Combine was a representative body of staff and (...)
Robin Blackburn, author of The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776‑1848, spoke to International Socialism on the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade
What was your reaction to the official commemoration of the banning of the slave trade, and what do you think was left (...)
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