Category: British far left
-
CFP: The British Far Left from 1956 (new volume)
CALL FOR PAPERS: THE BRITISH FAR LEFT FROM 1956 (NEW VOLUME) It has been five years since we published Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956 and the scholarship on the history of the British left has grown considerably in this time. We are also starting to see historical analysis of the…
-
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…
-
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.
-
Tankie: The origins of an epithet
A common term used in online left-wing discourses is ‘tankie’. It has been used to describe those who are self-identified Marxist-Leninists and those who defend ‘actually existing socialism’ in its various guises (such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, the Eastern Bloc, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea). As an extension of this,…
-
There is no such thing as the ‘alt left’
Earlier in the week, a journalist at the ABC asked me some questions about whether there was such a thing as the ‘alt left’ and the possibility of left-wing violence in the twenty first century. I responded, but in the article published, there were no quotes from me. As the article has attracted significant criticism…
-
‘No Platforming’ at Bristol University in the 1980s and Now
The protests against Eric Kaufmann at the University of Bristol last week are part of a much longer history of ‘no platforming’ at the university, stretching back to the 1980s. This research is part of a book that I am writing on the history of ‘no platform’ and free speech at British universities for Routledge’s Fascism and…
-
New article on Corbyn and the historical context of the 2017 Labour manifesto
Very excited to announce that British Politics has published an article by myself and Rob Manwaring on Jeremy Corbyn and the 2017 Labour Party manifesto in historical context. You can access a free version of the article here.
-
New covers for paperback editions of books on the history of the British far left
I am very happy to announce that for the new paperback editions of Against the Grain and Waiting for the Revolution – our two books on the British far left from 1956 – Manchester University Press have designed new covers for each volume. Inspired by the left-wing pamphlets of the 1970s, Matt and I are excited to see them!…
-
New book: ‘Communists and Labour: The National Left-Wing Movement 1925-1929’ by Lawrence Parker (with extract)
Lawrence Parker, author of The Kick Inside: Revolutionary Opposition in the CPGB, 1945-1991, has published a new book, Communists and Labour: The National Left-Wing Movement 1925-1929. The National Left-Wing Movement (NLWM), set up by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1925–26 to pull the Labour Party rank and file towards Communist politics, was one in…
-
Communist Party of Australia’s Rupert Lockwood on the Common Market (c.1961)
In the early 1960s, Britain first tried to join the Common Market. The British Labour Party, the trade unions and the Communist Party opposed this, arguing that it was creating a supranational capitalist entity that served no purpose for the British working class (or the other working classes of Western Europe). This can be seen…
New Historical Express 