New Historical Express

(Formerly Hatful of History)

Category: 1956

‘The Far Left in Australia since 1945’ – forthcoming with Routledge

We are pleased to announce that our forthcoming edited volume on the history of the Australian far left in the Cold War era has been put up on the Routledge website, with a Table of Contents. Unfortunately it is not available to pre-order just yet. We hope this is rectified soon! You can check out…
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August 13, 2017
Announcing the chapter list for ‘Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956’

Now that we have entered the copy-editing phase, Matthew Worley and I are happy to announce the chapter list for our forthcoming volume with Manchester University Press, Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956. It is the second volume that Matt and I have co-edited for MUP (the first being Against the…
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April 15, 2017
Sydney, London, Moscow, Beijing: Schisms in the international communist movement, 1947-61

The following forms part of a forthcoming book chapter on the relationship between the Communist Parties in Britain, Australia and South Africa. It builds on previous posts (here and here) and will also be worked into the manuscript that I am currently developing from my postdoctoral research. As per usual, any feedback is most welcome!…
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February 26, 2017
Paperback edition of ‘Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956’ is out now

This is a quick announcement that the paperback version of Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956 (edited by myself and Matthew Worley) is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you really should do so. If you are in the UK, I would recommend buying via here (or asking Bookmarks,…
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December 1, 2016
South African progressives and the Suez Crisis of 1956

On 29 October, 1956, the Suez Crisis began with an Israeli attack upon Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with the UK and France intervening the subsequent days to ‘protect’ the Suez Canal. Many historians have viewed these actions as the last major ‘roll of the dice’ for the British and French governments hoping to stem the decolonisation…
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October 30, 2016
Hobsbawm, 1956 and the Mythology of the CPGB Historians’ Group

The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain is historically significant for two main reasons. Firstly the historians involved in the Group became some of the most influential in contemporary British history, helping to pioneer the theory of ‘history from below’. Secondly, the historians involved in the Group were significantly involved in three…
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April 4, 2016
CFP FOR EDITED VOLUME ON HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN FAR LEFT

Evan Smith (Flinders University), Matthew Worley (University of Reading) and Jon Piccini (University of Queensland) are calling for chapter proposals for an edited volume on the Australian far left in the post-war era (1945 to the present). Expanding on our work looking at the history of the British far left, we believe that a survey…
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January 11, 2016
Russia and the United States have been fighting for dominance in Syria since 1957

Of the latest release of files from the National Archives, most media attention has focused on the files relating to the investigation into the Cambridge Spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. However there was one file relating to the possible reaction by the USSR to an invasion of Syria by the United States in the…
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October 24, 2015
The Communist Party of Australia’s Post-War Internationalism

Looking through documents from the National Security Archive from Georgetown University has got me thinking about the shifting allegiances of the Communist Party of Australia in the post-war era up until the mid-1970s. As I have written in another post, the CPA came out of the Second World War as quite a militant organisation and…
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November 20, 2014
The CPGB response to the New Statesman letter and the Historians’ Group: From the newly released MI5 files on Hobsbawm

The National Archives have just released a series of MI5 files, including a number of files on British Marxist historians Erich Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill. 8 files on Hobsbawm have been released, with two digitised. The first of these digitised files is particularly interesting because it covers the period 0f 1956, when the Historians’ Group…
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October 24, 2014