Download or read book Bolshevism and the British Left Labour legends and Russian gold written by Kevin Morgan and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morgan goes far beyond the question of Russian gold, to dig beneath a host of myths and misconceptions. He shows that Labour's parliamentary advance was itself inconceivable solely on the basis of the workers' and trade union 'pennies' with which it is usually identified. In addition to the virtual market that developed in Labour's parliamentary nominations, there was almost always a need to cultivate private benefactors - not excluding Russian ones. Thus, as Morgan shows, George Lansbury drew on a wide variety of financial sponsors to create the space both for his own political career and for Labour's daily newspaper, the Daily Herald. As for the communist party itself, Russian subsidies often gave rise to fierce internal conflict and controversy: it was certainly regarded as mixed blessing by many. Kevin Morgan has uncovered some fascinating new material on this period of left history, and through his insightful analysis a much more complex picture than hitherto emerges, both of Labour-communist relations and those between the CPGB and the Comintern.

Download or read book Bolshevism and the British Left The Webbs and Soviet communism written by Kevin Morgan and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second book in Kevin Morgan's series Bolshevism and the British Left. It explores how the veteran Fabian socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb came to regard Stalin's Russia as a 'new civilisation' and the hope of the world. Through a meticulous reconstruction of the Webbs' thinking, Morgan offers a challenging reassessment of accepted stereotypes. Drawing on their diaries, papers and published writings, he assesses the couple's complex political evolution over some four decades, and shows how much more significant were their individual responses than the cliche of 'two typewriters beating as one' would suggest. While Sidney upheld the statist and technocratic perspectives synonymous with 'Webbism', Beatrice also contributed concerns with associationism and the search for a higher social morality. Their love affair with Soviet communism, which seemed to represent both synthesis and transcendence of these different strands of their thought, was far less idiosyncratic than is sometimes thought. Here it is discussed in a broader context, and the paradox that emerges is that across the European left it was often precisely those who had previously been most suspicious of state socialism who subsequently proved most susceptible to its Soviet apotheosis. Kevin Morgan is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Harry Pollitt (Manchester University Press, 1993) and co-author of Communists in British Society 1920-1991 (Rivers Oram Press, 2005) The Webbs and Soviet Communism is the Part 2 in a three-volume series, Bolshevism and the British Left, which examines attitudes to Soviet Russia as a way of opening up broader questions about the character of the British left between the 1890s and the 1940s. Part 1 is Labour Legends Russian Gold, Part 3 is due to be published in 2012"

Download or read book Labour And The Gulag written by Giles Udy and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Labour Party welcomed the Russian Revolution in 1917: it paved the way for the birth of a socialist superpower and ushered in a new era in Soviet governance. Labour excused the Bolshevik excesses and prepared for its own revolution in Britain. In 1929, Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to work in labour camps. Subjected to appalling treatment, thousands died. When news of the camps leaked out in Britain, there were protests demanding the government ban imports of timber cut by slave labourers. The Labour government of the day dismissed mistreatment claims as Tory propaganda and blocked appeals for an inquiry. Despite the Cabinet privately acknowledging the harsh realities of the work camps, Soviet denials were publicly repeated as fact. One Labour minister even defended them as part of 'a remarkable economic experiment'. Labour and the Gulag explains how Britain's Labour Party was seduced by the promise of a socialist utopia and enamoured of a Russian Communist system it sought to emulate. It reveals the moral compromises Labour made, and how it turned its back on the people in order to further its own political agenda.

Download or read book Romancing the Revolution written by Ian Bullock and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description.

Download or read book 1956 and all that written by Keith Flett and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the Smoke of Budapest 50 Years On The February 2006 Conference of the London Socialist Historians Group was held at the Institute of Historical Research in central London, one of a series of such conferences over the previous ten years. Assembled were a modest group of academics and activists come to mark the 50th anniversary of the events of 1956, and to do so in a particular way. Firstly by presenting new historical research on the questions under review rather than trotting out tired orthodoxies. Secondly by linking historical inquiry to political activism. It was queried why such a conference was held in February 2006 rather than in the autumn, and the answer was a simple one. To intervene historically in the debates of the year by setting a socialist historical agenda for doing so. The opening plenary heard from Sami Ramidani, an Iraqi exile now lecturing at a British University, from Stan Newens, who had been present at the protests in 1956 and from Nigel Wilmott, the letters editor of the Guardian but here speaking about Hungary. The flavour was one both of historical recall of the events of 1956 and of contemporary political parallels. Indeed during this session news came through via text message that the left-wing MP George Galloway had been detained in a Cairo jail overnight and an emergency protest called at the Egyptian Embassy for later in the day. The next two sessions focused on the key moments of autumn 1956, Hungary and Suez but again with new research examining their wider significance. Mike Haynes looks at the origins of the Hungarian revolt, in terms of workplace politics while Anne Alexander reviews the impact that Suez had on Nasser’s reputation within the Arab world and Arab nationalist politics. In the afternoon there was a widening of the focus. One session examined the impact of the events of 1956 on left-wing organisation and in particular the orthodox Communist or Stalinist tradition. Terry Brotherton took a fresh look at the impact of 1956 on the Communist Party of GB, while Toby Abse focused on how the events of that year worked their way through in the largest of the Western European CPs, the Italian. Alan Woodward examined how the crisis of Stalinist politics opened new possibilities for libertarian left-wing ideas. The other focused on the rise of a new left as a result of the crisis of 1956. Paul Blackledge examined the development of the theory of socialist humanism by E.P Thompson and others as an alternative to Stalinism. Neil Davidson examined the ideas of a forgotten left-wing thinker from this period Alisdair Macintyre, while Christian Hogsberg reviewed the influence of an existing Trotskyist theorist, CLR James around the events of 1956 Of course the conference could not hope to cover the huge range of possible historical issues arising from the 50th anniversary of 1956. The beginnings of the consumer society and the age of affluence; the birth of youth culture and rock’n’roll; British nuclear tests and the origins of CND and campaigns against the bomb; the new theatre marked by ‘look back in anger’. In an introduction, the editor Keith Flett reviews some of these wider trends However the research agenda proposed by the conference was and remains an important one.

Download or read book Bolshevism and the British Left Labour legends and Russian gold written by Kevin Morgan and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morgan goes far beyond the question of Russian gold, to dig beneath a host of myths and misconceptions. He shows that Labour's parliamentary advance was itself inconceivable solely on the basis of the workers' and trade union 'pennies' with which it is usually identified. In addition to the virtual market that developed in Labour's parliamentary nominations, there was almost always a need to cultivate private benefactors - not excluding Russian ones. Thus, as Morgan shows, George Lansbury drew on a wide variety of financial sponsors to create the space both for his own political career and for Labour's daily newspaper, the Daily Herald. As for the communist party itself, Russian subsidies often gave rise to fierce internal conflict and controversy: it was certainly regarded as mixed blessing by many. Kevin Morgan has uncovered some fascinating new material on this period of left history, and through his insightful analysis a much more complex picture than hitherto emerges, both of Labour-communist relations and those between the CPGB and the Comintern.

Download or read book Labour British radicalism and the First World War written by Lucy Bland and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a concise set of thirteen essays looking at various aspects of the British left, movements of protest and the cumulative impact of the First World War. There are three broad areas this work intends to make a contribution to; the first is to help us further understand the role the Labour Party played in the conflict, and its evolving attitudes towards the war; the second strand concerns the notion of work, and particularly women’s work; the third strand deals with the impact of theory and practice of forces located largely outside the United Kingdom. Through these essays this book aims to provide a series of thirteen bite-size analyses of key issues affecting the British left throughout the war, and to further our understanding of it in this critical period of commemoration.

Download or read book Communists and Labour The National Left Wing Movement 1925 1929 written by Lawrence Parker and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 which Marxists worked in a largely open fashion to promote specific programmatic principles. This publication sheds new light on how the early CPGB approached its work inside the Labour Party and points to a more variegated picture of the CPGB in the mid-to-late 1920s as still capable of producing rational and principled responses to the class struggle - albeit, in the case of the NLWM, partially flawed and unsuccessful ones. The NLWM had another goal forced upon it of protecting Communists and their sympathisers from a Labour leadership intent on expelling and disaffiliating such elements in a pursuit of respectability. This monograph seeks to qualitatively measure the impact of that disaffiliation process on the CPGB, the NLWM and Labour sympathisers.

Download or read book Fighting fascism the British Left and the rise of fascism 1919 39 written by Keith Hodgson and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years between the two world wars, fascism triumphed in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, coming to power after intense struggles with the labour movements of those countries. This book, available in paperback for the first time, analyses the way in which the British left responded to this new challenge. How did socialists and communists in Britain explain what fascism was? What did they do to oppose it, and how successful were they? In examining the theories and actions of the Labour Party, the TUC, the Communist Party and other, smaller left-wing groups, the book explains their different approaches, while at the same time highlighting the common thread that ran through all their interpretations of fascism. The author argues that the British left has been largely overlooked in the few specific studies of anti-fascism that exist, with the focus being disproportionately applied to its European counterparts. He also takes issue with recent developments in the study of fascism, and argues that the views of the left, often derided by modern historians, are still relevant today.

Download or read book Under Siege written by Ian Bullock and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the period between the two world wars, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was the main voice of radical democratic socialism in Great Britain. Founded in 1893, the ILP had, since 1906, operated under the aegis of the Labour Party. As that party edged nearer to power following World War I, forming minority governments in 1924 and again in 1929, the ILP found its own identity under siege. On one side stood those who wanted the ILP to subordinate itself to an increasingly cautious and conventional Labour leadership; on the other stood those who felt that the ILP should throw its lot in with the Communist Party of Great Britain. After the ILP disaffiliated from Labour in 1932 in order to pursue a new, “revolutionary” policy, it was again torn, this time between those who wanted to merge with the Communists and those who saw the ILP as their more genuinely revolutionary and democratic rival. At the opening of the 1930s, the ILP boasted five times the membership of the Communist Party, as well as a sizeable contingent of MPs. By the end of the decade, having tested the possibility of creating a revolutionary party in Britain almost to the point of its own destruction, the ILP was much diminished—although, unlike the Communists, it still retained a foothold in Parliament. Despite this reversal of fortunes, during the 1930s—years that witnessed the ascendancy of both Stalin and Hitler—the ILP demonstrated an unswerving commitment to democratic socialist thinking. Drawing extensively on the ILP’s Labour Leader and other contemporary left-wing newspapers, as well as on ILP publications and internal party documents, Bullock examines the debates and ideological battles of the ILP during the tumultuous interwar period. He argues that the ILP made a lasting contribution to British politics in general, and to the modern Labour Party in particular, by preserving the values of democratic socialism during the interwar period.

Download or read book Modernism Internationalism and the Russian Revolution written by David Ayers and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representations of the ancient hero in the new millenium

Download or read book Bolshevism Stalinism and the Comintern written by N. LaPorte and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-07-24 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together leading authorities and cutting edge scholars, this collection re-examines the defining concepts of Stalinism and the Stalinization odel. The aim of the book is to explore how the common imperatives of a centralized movement were experienced across national boundaries.

Download or read book A History of the British Labour Party written by Andrew Thorpe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 13 years in power, Labour suddenly returned to being the party of opposition in 2010. This new edition of A History of the British Labour Party brings us up-to-date, examining Gordon Brown's period in office and the Labour Party under the leadership of Ed Miliband. Andrew Thorpe's study has been the leading single-volume text on the Labour Party since its first edition in 1997 and has now been thoroughly revised throughout to include new approaches. This new edition: - Covers the entirety of the party's history, from 1900 to 2014. - Examines the reasons for the party's formation, and its aims. - Analyses the party's successes and failures, including its rise to second party status and remarkable recovery from its problems in the 1980s. - Discusses the main events and personalities of the Labour Party, such as MacDonald, Attlee, Wilson, Blair and Brown. With his approachable style and authoritative manner, Thorpe has created essential reading for students of political history, and anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with the history and development of one of Britain's major political parties.

Download or read book Red Ellen Wilkinson written by Matt Perry and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unearthing new evidence to provide a richer understanding of her life, this study, now available in paperback, delves beyond the familiar image of Ellen Wilkinson on the Jarrow Crusade. From a humble background, she ascended to the rank of minister in the 1945 Labour government. Yet she was much more than a conventional Labour politician. She wrote journalism, political theory and novels. She was both a socialist and a feminist; at times, she described herself as a revolutionary. She experienced Soviet Russia, the Indian civil disobedience campaign, the Spanish Civil War and the Third Reich. This study deploys transnational and social movement theory perspectives to grapple with the complex itinerary of her ideas. Interest in Wilkinson remains strong among academic and non-academic audiences alike. This is in part because her principal concerns – working-class representation, the status of women, capitalist crisis, war, anti-fascism – remain central to contentious politics today.

Download or read book East Wind written by Tom Buchanan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-04-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East Wind offers the first complete, archive-based account of the relationship between China and the British Left, from the rise of modern Chinese nationalism to the death of Mao Tse tung. Beginning with the "Hands Off China" movement of the mid-1920s, Tom Buchanan charts the mobilisation of British opinion in defence of China against Japanese aggression, 1931-1945, and the role of the British left in relations with the People's Republic of China after 1949. He shows how this relationship was placed under stress by the growing unpredictability of Communist China, above all by the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Cultural Revolution, which meant that by the 1960s China was actively supported only by a dwindling group of enthusiasts. The impact of the suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square (June 1989) is addressed as an epilogue. East Wind argues that the significance of the left's relationship with China has been unjustly overlooked. There were many occasions, such as the mid-1920s, the late 1930s and the early 1950s, when China demanded the full attention of the British left. It also argues that there is nothing new in the current fascination with China's emergence as an economic power. Throughout these decades the British left was aware of the immense, unrealised potential of the Chinese economy, and of how China's economic growth could transform the world. In addition to analysing the role of the political parties and pressure groups of the left, Buchanan sheds new light on the activities of many well-known figures in support of China, including intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, R H Tawney and Joseph Needham. Many other interesting stories emerge, concerning less well-known figures, which show the complexity of personal links between Britain and China during the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Lost World of British Communism written by Raphael Samuel and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of life as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain The Lost World of British Communism is a vivid account of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Raphael Samuel, one of post-war Britain’s most notable historians, draws on novels of the period and childhood recollections of London’s East End, as well as memoirs and Party archives, to evoke the world of British Communism in the 1940s. Samuel conjures up the era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power, brilliantly bringing to life an age in which the Communist Party enjoyed huge prestige as a bulwark for the struggles against fascism and colonialism.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution written by Jonathan Davis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution focuses on the leading individuals, ideas, political parties and main events that were central to the transformation of Russia during the revolution. The time period runs from January 1917 through to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that took Russia out of the First World War in March 1918. It covers the main events, ideas, people and parties and takes the story of the revolution from the eve of the overthrowing of Tsar Nicholas II through to the Bolshevik seizure of power, the first six months of Leninist rule and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended Russia’s involvement in the First World War. Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on the revolutions, the First World War, political parties, ideologies and individuals, and the main events that defined the course of the Russian Revolution. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Russian Revolution.