Category: British ‘race relations’
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British Communism and the Politics of Race – out now!
After 10 years in the making, my book British Communism and the Politics of Race, has been published in the Historical Materialism series by Brill. Please order a copy for your institutional library. Link is here. And a library recommendation form can be found here. As with all HM books, a paperback edition will be published…
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The history of racial violence in Britain: A short reading list
I saw this tweet during the week: Fifteen years ago, I taught a course on collective racial violence in the US. It is the only course I decided to never teach again. #Thread — Walter D. Greason (@WorldProfessor) August 13, 2017 And then tweeted this: Reading this & thinking about what would you include in…
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Race, class and black rebellion in Britain, 1976-1981
To commemorate the passing of radical black activist Darcus Howe and the forthcoming anniversaries of the riots of 1980-81, I am posting an excerpt from an older article on how the British left and black activists interpreted the rebellious actions by black youth in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Howe, alongside Stuart…
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The last time the government evoked the ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ slogan
The new Home Secretary Amber Rudd has, in the wake of Brexit, evoked the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, which has been used in the past by Gordon Brown in 2007 and by the British National Party and the National Front in the 1980s. While she has been heavily criticized for her statements, this…
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After Grunwick: Trade unions and anti-racism in the 1980s
This is the latest post looking at the history of the turbulent relationship between the British labour movement and black and Asian workers in the post-war era, following on from posts on the Imperial Typewriters strike in mid-1974 and the Grunwick strike between 1976 and 1978. While Grunwick is seen as a turning point, there…
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Theresa May and UKIP: A repeat of Thatcher and the NF in ’79?
While everyone is falling over themselves to make analogies between the Labour Party of the 1980s and that of today under Corbyn (or stressing that it’s not a repeat of that decade), we are also in danger of seeing Theresa May’s time (however long) as Prime Minister through the prism of Margaret Thatcher. In the…
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Powellism and the advent of the British far right: The Communist Party response
48 years ago this week, Tory Minister Enoch Powell gave his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, in which he predicted dire consequences for Britain if further immigration from the Commonwealth continued. While criticised by many at the time, Powell’s speech opened up a political space to the right of the Conservative Party, mobilising around the…
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The Communist Party and Black Power in the UK (new scanned doc from YCL’s Cogito)
As part of my on-going series of scanning various far left documents, I have now uploaded Willie Thompson’s 1968 article on ‘Black Power’ for the Young Communist League theoretical journal, Cogito. This essay is possibly the most developed article by the CPGB (or the YCL) on the issue of black power and black radicalism at…
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The UK Home Office and American Nazis: The Deportation of George Lincoln Rockwell
Earlier this week, a researcher at the BBC contacted me to ask about other cases of the Home Office refusing visas to ‘undesirable’ political figures, as Parliament was to debate the petition calling for Donald Trump to banned from entering the country. Amongst the cases that I could remember, one of the most interesting cases…
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New archival documents reveal potential dangers of Thatcher’s advisers on policing and community relations issues
The latest round of government papers from the Thatcher era have been released by the National Archives, this time relating to documents from 1986 to 1988. Amongst the papers that have been released is a Prime Minister’s Office file (PREM 19/1783) relating to the 1985 riots in Handsworth and Tottenham, continuing on from these files…
New Historical Express 