Author: hatfulofhistory
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Ted Hill, the Khmer Rouge and Australian Maoism, 1977-1980
This piece was originally posted at my Patreon here. For more content, please subscribe. Throughout the nearly four years of its existence, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia (which called itself Democratic Kampuchea) invited a number of Western sympathisers to observe the regime and (hopefully) provide eyewitness accounts back in the West. Infamously, this ended…
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The Workers Revolutionary Party and the Anti-Nazi League
This was originally posted on my Patreon here. A scan of the pamphlet discussed below can be found here. In mid-1978, the Workers Revolutionary Party published a pamphlet titled The Anti-Nazi League and Fascism, based on articles written for their newspaper, Newsline, by Jack Gale. The WRP, led by Gerry Healy, was an orthodox Trotskyist…
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Talk: Anti-statism, the Revolutionary Communist Party and Spiked
On Saturday, I gave a paper at the Historical Materialism online conference titled ‘Anti-statism and the Trajectory from the Revolutionary Communist Party to Spiked’. It was recorded and is on the Haymarket Books YouTube channel. I have embedded the video above. My paper starts at about the 41 minute mark. I have posted the text…
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Legislating the free speech on campus culture war in the 1980s
This was originally posted on my Patreon here. This month is the 35th anniversary of the introduction of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 which was a response by the Thatcher government to the disruptive protests on campuses in the mid-1980s which included the shutting down of talks by Conservative MPs. It is particularly prescient…
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The BNP and the hijacking of the Free Speech Society at Leeds University
In the House of Commons yesterday, the Tories’ Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill was debated. Labour MP Alex Sobel, who attended Leeds University, told the story of Mark Collett and Chris Beverley, who were BNP members that tried to overturn the ‘no platform’ policy at Leeds in the early 2000s, via the Free Speech…
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Collected reviews of ‘No Platform’ book
My book, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech, has been out for a year and has been reviewed in several publications. I thought I’d collect them here, particularly as they’re an easy reference point for me then. Review by Nick Hillman in Times Higher Education. Mike Makin-Waite, ‘Controversial…
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Marxism and football at the 1966 World Cup: How North Korea captured a socialist imagination
Ever since the English football team was denounced for taking the knee by some right-wing pundits, who claimed that this was a symbolic action of the ‘Marxist’ Black Lives Matter movement, the meme of the English players as revolutionary Marxists has become widespread. Since English football has embraced Marxism, it has been memed, football is…
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CFP: Australian workers and anti-colonialism in the 20th century
Here is a call for papers that I am involved with. “Imperialism and its agents must be destroyed”: Australian Workers and Anti-Colonialism in the twentieth century 3-4 February, 2022 Online symposium (via Zoom) Keynotes: Professor Ann Curthoys (Sydney) & Professor John Maynard (Newcastle) The Australian working-class movement has a mixed history of internationalism and solidarity,…
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Me in Jacobin on Australian universities and the free speech culture wars
This is just a quick post to let you all know that Jacobin Australia has published a piece by myself on the transnational free speech culture wars and the attacks on Australian universities, linking what has been happening in this country with what is happening in Britain and the US. You can read the article…
New Historical Express 