Author: hatfulofhistory
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When the fascists went to university (and the campaigns to keep them out)
Recently there have been several mentions of Oswald Mosley being invited to speak at universities in the early 1960s. One from a piece in The Times opining for the ‘lost days of campus free speech’ and then related to Max Mosley’s recent passing, who invited his father to speak in 1961 when Secretary of the…
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A short interview about ‘no platform’ with Marta Santiváñez
Last year the journalist Marta Santiváñez interviewed me about the history of ‘no platform’ as she was writing a chapter for Charlotte Lydia Riley’s edited book The Free Speech Wars. A few excerpts were published in the chapter, but I thought I would post (with Marta’s agreement) the original interview transcript. This interview was conducted…
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Guardian piece on the ‘war on woke’ and the ‘loony left’
A quick post to mention that last week The Guardian published a piece by myself on the Tories’ current ‘war on woke’ and its similarities with the right-wing attacks on the ‘loony left’ in the 1980s. You can read the piece here.
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Southall 1979 pamphlet
Today is the anniversary of the police riot in Southall on 23 April, 1979 when police attempted to break up a demonstration against the National Front outside Southall Town Hall. There were numerous injuries and over 300 arrests, while one protestor, Blair Peach, was killed. Recently declassified files reveal much more about what happened at…
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Turtlemania and the ninja moral panic in 1980s-90s Britain
I am very excited that Tribune has published my piece on how the moral panics about ninja weaponry and screen violence in the 1980s led to the BBC heavily censoring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when it appeared on British television in 1990. You can find the piece here.
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Review of ‘No Platform’ in Full Stop Mag
It is very exciting to see a review essay by Shane Burley (author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It) for Full Stop magazine on recent anti-fascist scholarship, including my book. You can find the review here. The other two books are Stanislav Vysotsky’s American Antifa and Devin Zane Shaw’s Philosophy…
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The Revolutionary Communist Party and Labour politicking on Merseyside in the 1980s
Last month a story emerged of conflict amongst the Labour Party in Liverpool over the shortlist for the party’s mayoral candidate, with accusations that the Labour Party’s national leadership was interfering in local party selection processes. Since then, another story has emerged of Labour allegedly running a ‘dysfunctional’ council in Liverpool and a proposal by…
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Will history absolve the Bristol protestors?
This was originally posted over at my Patreon here On Sunday night, a protest against the Tories’ Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which would have put severe limitations on the right to protest in England and Wales, turned into a violent confrontation with the police. As night fell, the police used force to push…
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New piece for Red Pepper on the British left and the first Gulf War
I’m delighted that Red Pepper has published a piece by myself on the history of the British left and the movement against the first Gulf War. You can read it here.
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Australian authorities and the far right threat: A historical perspective
This was originally posted over at my Patreon here. In the aftermath of the far right storming of the US Capitol on 6 January and the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormarck, drawing a comparison between this and the Black Lives Matter rallies across the world last year, there have been renewed questions about how…
New Historical Express 