Download or read book Cold War Crisis and Conflict written by James Klugmann and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume Five of a comprehensive history of the British Communist Party in the twentieth century, and covers the period from 1951 to 1968. The cold war was at its most intense during this period, and it was also the time of the dramas of 1956 - Khruschev's critique of Stalin, the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis. Then in the 1960s the opening up of new possibilities for radicalism began, leading up to the events of May 1968. The impact of these events on the Party is extensively analysed, drawing on evidence from detailed archival research and many interviews with former activists. Topics covered include: the nature of the Party and its Soviet 'ecology'; its responses to the events of 1956; its involvement in anti-colonial struggles; its positions on international and economic issues and perspectives on class struggle; its relationship with the Labour Party and the trade unions; and the forces for change in the Party in the 1960s. Times change, and John Callaghan's book differs from previous volumes in this series in a number of ways - most obviously, in that it was written after the demise of the Soviet Union and the Party, and thus with much better access to archives and the views of former party members. In addition, it is organised thematically rather than chronologically, and is written from a more critical position than previous titles in the series. It shares with its predecessors, however, the idea that a history of the CPGB has some importance, not least for the light it casts on some of the key issues of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Communist Party of Great Britain and the National Question in Wales 1920 1991 written by Douglas Jones and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2017-10-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While electorally weak, the Communist Party of Great Britain and its Welsh Committee was a constant feature of twentieth century Welsh politics, in particular through its influence in the trade union movement. Based on original archival research, the present volume offers the first in-depth study of the Communist Party’s attitude to devolution in Wales, to Welsh nationhood and Welsh identity, as well as examining the party’s relationship with the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru and the labour and nationalist movements in relation to these issues. Placing the party’s engagement of these issues within the context of the rapid changes in twentieth century Welsh society, debates on devolution and identity on the British left, the role of nationalism within the communist movement, and the interplay of international and domestic factors, the volume provides new insight into the development of ideas by the political left on devolution and identity in Wales during the twentieth century. It also offers a broad outline of the party’s policy in relation to Wales during the twentieth century, and an assessment of the role played by leading figures in the Welsh party in developing its policy on Wales and devolution.

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 The Chronology of Revolution written by Ben Harker and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a decade of research in over twenty archives, The Chronology of Revolution is an accessible and richly detailed work of historical and cultural analysis that fixes its gaze on the legacy of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Communists anticipated that the party, formed in the world's first industrialized nation, would be in the vanguard of world revolution. Instead, the party never came close to matching the political power of the British Labour Party or continental Communist Parties in France or Italy and dissolved itself in 1991. In this book, Ben Harker draws on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci to argue that the CPGB, despite having great influence over British culture, never fully appreciated the importance of civil society to its political strength. Analysing party members’ efforts in fields such as science, journalism, the arts, broadcasting, and education, The Chronology of Revolution offers an alternative, radical history of Britain between 1920 and 1991 that draws out important lessons for the contemporary Left.

Download or read book The Years of Anger written by Andy Croft and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Randall Swingler (1909–67) was arguably the most significant and the best-known radical English poet of his generation. A widely published poet, playwright, novelist, editor and critic, his work was set to music by almost all the major British composers of his time. This new biography draws on extensive sources, including the security services files, to present the most detailed account yet of this influential poet, lyricist and activist. A literary entrepreneur, Swingler was founder of radical paperback publishing company Fore Publications, editor of Left Review and Our Time and literary editor of the Daily Worker; later becoming a staff reporter, until the paper was banned in 1941. In the 1930s, he contributed several plays for Unity Theatre, including the Mass Declamation Spain, the Munich play Crisis and the revues Sandbag Follies and Get Cracking. In 1936, MI5 opened a 20-year-long file on him prompted by a song he co-wrote with Alan Bush for a concert organised to mark the arrival of the 1934 Hunger March into London. During the Second World War, Swingler served in North Africa and Italy and was awarded the Military Medal for his part in the battle of Lake Comacchio. His collections The Years of Anger (1946) and The God in the Cave (1950) contain arguably some of the greatest poems of the Italian campaign. After the war, Swingler was blacklisted by the BBC. Orwell attacked him in Polemic and included him in the list of names he offered the security services in 1949. Stephen Spender vilified him in The God That Failed. The book will challenge the Cold War assumptions that have excluded Swingler’s life and work from standard histories of the period and should be of great interest to activists, scholars and those with an interest in the history of the literary and radical left.

Download or read book 1968 in Europe written by M. Klimke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-04-14 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise reference for researchers on the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this book covers the history of the various national protest movements, the transnational aspects of these movements, and the common narratives and cultures of memory surrounding them.

Download or read book British Communism and the Politics of Race written by Evan Smith and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Communism and the Politics of Race explores the role that the Communist Party of Great Britain played within the anti-racism movement in Britain from the 1940s to the 1980s. As one of the first organisations to undertake serious anti-colonial and anti-racist activism within the British labour movement, the CPGB was a pioneering force that campaigned against racial discrimination, popular imperialism and fascist violence in British society. The book examines the balancing act that the Communist Party negotiated in its anti-racist work, between making appeals to the labour movement to get involved in the fight against racism and working with Britain's ethnic minority communities, who often felt let down by the trade unions and the Labour Party. Transitioning from a class-based outlook to an embrace of the new social movements of the 1960s–70s, the CPGB played an important role in the anti-racist struggle, but by the 1980s, it was eclipsed by more radical and diverse activist organisations.

Download or read book A Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939 2000 written by Paul Addison and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Contemporary Britain covers the key themesand debates of 20th-century history from the outbreak of the SecondWorld War to the end of the century. Assesses the impact of the Second World War Looks at Britain’s role in the wider world, including thelegacy of Empire, Britain’s ‘specialrelationship’ with the United States, and integration withcontinental Europe Explores cultural issues, such as class consciousness,immigration and race relations, changing gender roles, and theimpact of the mass media Covers domestic politics and the economy Introduces the varied perspectives dominating historicalwriting on this period Identifies the key issues which are likely to fuel futuredebate

Download or read book The Representation of Working People in Britain and France written by Antoine Capet and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a truism that History is about “representation”: but then opinions will diverge–as it should be–between what is meant by “representation”. Most of the chapters in this volume were first presented in November 2008 at an International Conference co-organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History and the University of Rouen. The authors–of all generations–come from Britain, France, Germany and the United States, and cover the field from the Middle Ages to the most recent developments. The friendly confrontation of points of view and cross-fertilisation which result from such undertakings can only add to our perception of the diversity of that elusive notion in History, “representation”–of working people in Britain and France in this particular instance. Beyond the differences in periods, places and situations, the reader will not fail however to see the “bridges” which recurrently link the various elements in the collection.

Download or read book Edward Upward and Left Wing Literary Culture in Britain written by Benjamin Kohlmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering the first book-length consideration of Edward Upward (1903-2009), one of the major British left-wing writers, this collection positions his life and works in the changing artistic, social and political contexts of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Upward’s fiction and non-fiction, from the 1920s onwards, illustrate the thematic and formal richness of left-wing writing during the twentieth-century age of extremes. At the same time, Upward’s work shows the inherent tensions of a life committed at once to writing and to politics. The full range of Upward’s work and a wealth of unpublished materials are examined, including his early fantastic stories of the 1920s, his Marxist fiction of the 1930s, the extraordinary semi-autobiographical trilogy The Spiral Ascent and his formally and thematically innovative later stories. The essays collected here reevaluate Upward’s central place in twentieth-century British literary culture and assess his legacy for the twenty-first century.

Download or read book The Shadow Man written by Geoff Andrews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Klugmann appears as a shadowy figure in the legendary history of the Cambridge spies. As both mentor and friend to Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and others, Klugmann was the man who manipulated promising recruits deemed ripe for conversion to the communist cause. This perception of him was reinforced following the release of his MI5 file and the disclosure of Soviet intelligence files in Moscow, which revealed he played the key part in the recruitment of John Cairncross, the 'fifth man', as well as his pivotal war-time role in the Special Operations Executive in shifting Churchill and the allies to support Tito and the communist partisans in Yugoslavia. In this book, Geoff Andrews reveals Klugmann's story in full for the first time, uncovering the motivations, conflicts and illusions of those drawn into the world of communism and the sacrifices they made on its behalf.

Download or read book The World Was All Before Them written by Matthew Reynolds and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are more than seven billion people on the planet. They have, on average, over 100 billion nerve cells in their brains and 5 litres of blood pumping through their bodies. Their skeletons are made up of 206 bones and their hearts beat approximately 72 times per minute. They are connected to each other in more ways than they can possibly imagine. Philip is one of them. Sue is another. This is their story. It is the story of one year and two lives and what it means to live in them. It is a story about love and courage, risk and betrayal. It is a story that will make you look at the world with new eyes.

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 British Antifascism and the Holocaust 1945 79 written by Joshua Cohen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945–79 explores the extent to which the Holocaust has shaped British antifascism. The author tests assertions of an uncomplicated relationship between Holocaust memory and the imperative to resist postwar fascist revivals. For those with a scholarly interest in how antifascists confront their opponents, it is essential to understand whether the Holocaust has always been seen as an insurmountable barrier against fascism: is the idea of the genocide’s constant antifascist ‘use’ actually a dangerous assumption and, if so, what are the implications of this for ‘Antifa’ as its battle with the contemporary far right unfolds? This book provides a political and structural history of the Holocaust’s relationship to antifascist organisations and questions whether networks of solidarity formed around Holocaust memory, including analysing the impact of the genocide in Jewish antifascists’ motivations and rhetoric. It also assesses the Holocaust’s political capital in wider antifascism and connected anti-racism, including in defence of the Black and Asian communities increasingly victimised by fascists over the postwar period. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in antifascism, fascism, racism, and Jewish and left-wing history in Britain, and how these intersect with Holocaust consciousness.

Download or read book Cold War Crisis and Conflict written by James Klugmann and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume Five of a comprehensive history of the British Communist Party in the twentieth century, and covers the period from 1951 to 1968. The cold war was at its most intense during this period, and it was also the time of the dramas of 1956 - Khruschev's critique of Stalin, the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis. Then in the 1960s the opening up of new possibilities for radicalism began, leading up to the events of May 1968. The impact of these events on the Party is extensively analysed, drawing on evidence from detailed archival research and many interviews with former activists. Topics covered include: the nature of the Party and its Soviet 'ecology'; its responses to the events of 1956; its involvement in anti-colonial struggles; its positions on international and economic issues and perspectives on class struggle; its relationship with the Labour Party and the trade unions; and the forces for change in the Party in the 1960s. Times change, and John Callaghan's book differs from previous volumes in this series in a number of ways - most obviously, in that it was written after the demise of the Soviet Union and the Party, and thus with much better access to archives and the views of former party members. In addition, it is organised thematically rather than chronologically, and is written from a more critical position than previous titles in the series. It shares with its predecessors, however, the idea that a history of the CPGB has some importance, not least for the light it casts on some of the key issues of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Global Revolution written by Silvio Pons and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading European historian offers a fresh analysis of communism as a global movement that played a major part in the formation of our modern world - from the birth of Soviet Russia and the revolution in China to the Cold War and the impact of Western-led processes of globalization.

Download or read book Refugees in Twentieth Century Britain written by Becky Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely history of the entry, reception and resettlement of refugees to Britain across the twentieth century.