Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
In the 1950s, the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan visited Kyiv and went on to translate Ukrainian poets. His encounter was full of misunderstandings but held the promise of a cosmopolitan solidarity.
In the year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the discussions of what this violence (...)
BLM protesters in Bristol were accused, in 2020, of ‘erasing history’. Now we know they have flooded it with light
In the summer of 2020, there was perhaps no moment that divided the nation more sharply than when Black Lives Matter protesters tore a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward (...)
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century. (...)
In shocking, meticulous detail, an acclaimed American historian uses ‘lost’ records from 37 former colonies to reveal the barbarity of the British empire and the hubris that fuelled it
Caroline Elkins made front-page headlines a decade ago when her research into Britain’s brutal suppression of (...)
Marxist historian Neil Faulkner takes a critical look at the official commemorations.
The Luton municipal elite planned to celebrate ‘Peace Day’ on 19 July 1919 with an exclusive banquet in the Town Hall. Local veterans of the trenches, many of them now unemployed, were not invited.
The (...)
In her new memoir, Sheila Rowbotham writes about the radical aspirations of feminism and socialism in the 1970s – and how many of the decade’s struggles remain to be won today.
Known as an influential British historian, activist and theorist of socialist-feminism, Sheila Rowbotham played a (...)
With a new three-part Channel 5 historical drama showing this week, Marxist historian Neil Faulkner shares some thoughts on Henry VIII’s doomed second queen.
[Note: Anne Boleyn (1507?—1536) was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England and mother of Queen Elizabeth I. The events surrounding (...)
Nothing, it seems, can be allowed to tarnish the national myth – as I found when hosting a Cambridge debate about his murkier side
A baleful silence attends one of the most talked-about figures in British history. You may enthuse endlessly about Winston Churchill “single-handedly” defeating (...)
In this contribution to narrating the black British history of struggle, one of the leading lights of community-based anti-racism, who has worked over four decades from Southall, west of London and one of the first post-war settlements of ‘New Commonwealth’ Asian workers, is interviewed. He (...)
One of the most remarkable black radical formations of the twentieth century was the International African Service Bureau, which was active in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s. Theo Williams writes about an astonishing activist group and argues that the left of today has much to learn from (...)
Tariq Ali was a close friend and comrade of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, whom he interviewed for the Trotskyist The Red Mole in 1971. This interview is the finest piece on the radicalism of John & Yoko in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Here, Ali remembers a few episodes from his “street (...)
To mark Black History Month, Ron Ramdin explores the labour struggles that forged Britain’s Black working class – battles fought against the state, business and within the trade union movement itself.
“That England that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” – (...)
When reflecting on the legacy of Black Radicalism in Britain, few would expect to see the inclusion of the Asian Youth Movements (AYM) in its history. However, the AYMs played a vital role in the fight waged against systemic racism.
The Asian activists who organised during the 1970s and 80s, (...)
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 (...)
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