Category: Thatcherism
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‘No platforming’ homophobes in the 1980s
As it is LGBT+ History Month in the UK this month, I thought I’d share a short story of protest against homophobia in Britain in the 1980s by students at Swansea University. This story can be found in my book No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech. When the…
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‘Rather swamped’: Thatcher, moral panics and racist rhetoric
There has been shock at the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, using the word ‘invasion’ in a parliamentary speech to describe the arrival of those seeking asylum in Britain. However, this kind of rhetoric has a much longer history, with politicians since the 1890s using the term ‘invasion’ and similar phrases. The following post is about…
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Culture wars and moral panics in the history of Thatcherism
I originally posted this late last year on Patreon but have been working on this topic for the last few months and decided to post it here as well, following a Twitter discussion about the overlooking the social conservatism of Thatcherism in the historical narratives of the Thatcher years. The agenda of Boris Johnson’s Conservative…
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Anti-statism and the trajectory from the Revolutionary Communist Party to Spiked
Late last year, I presented a paper at the online Historical Materialism conference on the RCP, Spiked and their shifting concept of the state. I had previously posted the text of my paper on my Patreon, but thought I’d post it here now as interest in the history of the RCP/LM/Spiked network has risen again…
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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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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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Watch-along The Young Ones starts this Saturday
Looking for some anarchic fun during the lockdown period? I am starting a weekly watch-along on Twitter of the classic alternative comedy The Young Ones, starting with the debut episode ‘Demolition’ this Saturday night (25/04). I will be tweeting about the show from 9pm Adelaide time (this 9.30pm for the Eastern states and 12.30pm in the UK).…
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We Call it Hiiiistory: Thinking Historically about Acid House, Rave Culture and Late Thatcherism
I was asked by Paprika!, a zine created out of the Schools of Architecture and Art at Yale, to write something about Thatcherism and the history of acid house/rave culture. It ended up being a combination of an older blog post and a review of Jeremy Deller’s recent documentary. A shorter version was published by the…
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‘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 Historical Express 