Just a quick announcement that the Routledge’s series, Studies in Fascism and the Far Right, will be publishing an edited volume by Nigel Copsey and Matthew Worley, Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The UK Far Right since 1967. One of the chapters is by myself on the National Front of Australia and the efforts to build a Commonwealth National Front. It will come out in both hardback and paperback in December 2017. Order a copy now!
We are excited to announce that you can now pre-order our forthcoming volume Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956 from Manchester University Press. According to the MUP website, it should be available physically in December.
Furthermore, as part of MUP’s election sale, you can buy the first volume Against the Grain for only £9.00!
Celebrate the resurgence of the British left with these books. Forward to victory!
The latest issue of Socialist History Journal is out now, co-edited by myself and Matthew Worley. The issue is dedicated to British left intellectuals after 1956. It is an extension of our forthcoming collection with Manchester University Press, Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956. You can find read our editorial for free here and read Ian Gwinn’s essay of History Workshop for free here.
This is just a quick post to let you all know that Labour History Review have published an article by myself and Nicholas Barnett titled ‘”Peace with a Captial P: The Spectre of Communism and Competing Notions of “Peace” in Britain, 1949-1960’. It is available for free via open access here.
Here is the abstract:
This article is concerned with different factions within the British peace movement during the 1950s and early 1960s, each of which gave the word ‘peace’ a different meaning. We argue that the movement was made up of several, often contradictory sections, and despite attempts by groups like the Peace Pledge Union to distance themselves from the communist controlled British Peace Committee, popular perceptions were tainted by association with communism until the mid-1950s. Following the onset of the H-bomb era, this taint lessened as people began to fear the destructiveness of hydrogen weapons. When the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament formed in 1958 it became the predominant British organization opposed to nuclear weapons and achieved popularity because it limited its objective to nuclear disarmament whereas the Peace Pledge Union demanded the condemnation of all war.
We are running a competition to win a copy of the recently published paperback version of Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956. Click on the link here to go to the Hatful of History Facebook page. To enter, all you need to do is ‘like’ the page and tag someone in on the post.
The competition will end on the morning of March 8 (Australia time). A name will be randomly chosen and contacted via FB Messenger soon after.
So what are you waiting for?!
And remember, you can always order the book from Manchester University Press here.
Terrorism and Political Violence have just published my article, ‘Creating the National/Border Security Nexus: Counter-Terrorist Operations and Monitoring Middle Eastern and North African to the UK in the 1970s-1980s’. It is based on research funded by the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ David Phillips Travelling Fellowship. The abstract is below:
This article looks at an earlier episode in the history of the UK border security apparatus by examining how the immigration control system was used in the 1970s and 1980s to detect potential terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa. Using recently opened archival records, it shows that the UK government introduced a strict system of visa checks, interviews, and other measures to nearly all Middle Eastern and North African visitors to the UK to prevent the entry of suspected terrorist personnel. By using these highly arbitrary measures, it became the modus operandi of the UK authorities to treat all Middle Eastern and North Africans as potential terrorists until convinced otherwise.
You can find the full article here. If you would like a PDF, do let me know.
