Stop Trident Rally in London – this Friday
Help make this the biggest mobilisation of people against Trident for a generation. If you’re in London, come to the rally at Friends House at Euston, this Friday, 19th February.
Join us and speakers: Tariq Ali • Kate Hudson CND general secretary • Richard Norton Taylor The Guardian • Lindsey German Stop the War • Brian Eno • Bruce Kent CND vice president • Amelia Womack Green Party deputy leader • Shelly Asquith NUS
If you’re not in London, take a look at the CND website to find one of the many local events happening in the run up to (and after!) the demonstration.
#StopTrident Demonstration: Saturday 27th February
Assemble 12 noon
Marble Arch, London
Join us to say No to government plans to buy a new system at a cost of over £100 billion. Let's get the message out loud and clear: we don't want Trident! We’ll be marching from Marble Arch to a rally in Trafalgar Square – join us!
Need transport to the demo? Book your place on one of the many coaches coming from around the UK. Find your local transport on the CND website here.
And you can sign up to the event on Facebook if you haven’t already.
===============================
The next seminar in the London Socialist Historians spring term series
is on
Monday 22nd February, 5.30 p.m.
Room 304(third floor) Institute of
Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, WC1.
http://feministlibrary.co.uk/
IWCE INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS EDUCATION NETWORK
May we invite you to book for
1, The Labour Party: where's it been? where's it going?
6 February 10.30 - 3.30 Ruskin House
Croydon CR0 1BD
or 2 World to Win: 19th March Norwich
or 3. Women Making History: 2nd April Salford/Manchester
email Keith Venables: iwceducation@yahoo.co.uk
================================
Help make this the biggest mobilisation of people against Trident for a generation. If you’re in London, come to the rally at Friends House at Euston, this Friday, 19th February.
Join us and speakers: Tariq Ali • Kate Hudson CND general secretary • Richard Norton Taylor The Guardian • Lindsey German Stop the War • Brian Eno • Bruce Kent CND vice president • Amelia Womack Green Party deputy leader • Shelly Asquith NUS
If you’re not in London, take a look at the CND website to find one of the many local events happening in the run up to (and after!) the demonstration.
#StopTrident Demonstration: Saturday 27th February
Assemble 12 noon
Marble Arch, London
Join us to say No to government plans to buy a new system at a cost of over £100 billion. Let's get the message out loud and clear: we don't want Trident! We’ll be marching from Marble Arch to a rally in Trafalgar Square – join us!
Need transport to the demo? Book your place on one of the many coaches coming from around the UK. Find your local transport on the CND website here.
And you can sign up to the event on Facebook if you haven’t already.
Join us and speakers: Tariq Ali • Kate Hudson CND general secretary • Richard Norton Taylor The Guardian • Lindsey German Stop the War • Brian Eno • Bruce Kent CND vice president • Amelia Womack Green Party deputy leader • Shelly Asquith NUS
If you’re not in London, take a look at the CND website to find one of the many local events happening in the run up to (and after!) the demonstration.
#StopTrident Demonstration: Saturday 27th February
Assemble 12 noon
Marble Arch, London
Join us to say No to government plans to buy a new system at a cost of over £100 billion. Let's get the message out loud and clear: we don't want Trident! We’ll be marching from Marble Arch to a rally in Trafalgar Square – join us!
Need transport to the demo? Book your place on one of the many coaches coming from around the UK. Find your local transport on the CND website here.
And you can sign up to the event on Facebook if you haven’t already.
===============================
The next seminar in the London Socialist Historians spring term series
is on
Monday 22nd February, 5.30 p.m.
Room 304(third floor) Institute of
Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, WC1.
David Drake will speak on his new book, Paris at War 1939-1944.
David Drake was Head of French and Head of Modern Languages at Middlesex
University before teaching at the Institut d’études européennes (IEE) at
Paris VIII University until he retired.
He has published extensively on French intellectuals and politics and
has gained an international reputation as a Sartre scholar. He was President of
the UK Sartre Society, co-edited Sartre Studies International for many
years and has accepted invitations to lecture on Sartre in Britain,
France, Ireland, North America and China.
In 2005 his contribution to the promotion of French culture was
recognised by the French government when he was made a Chevalier dans
l'ordre des palmes académiques.
Paris at War is his fourth book.
Saving the Feminist Library meeting, 7 p.m. 3rd Feb.
Yet again, the Feminist Library's landlord is threatening to put up our rent hugely! We cannot afford this major increase on our current situation and the change is imminent, so we are looking for any or all potential help that we can get. If you would like to pitch in and brainstorm with us, please do come and join us on Wednesday 3rd Feb, 7pm. If you cannot join us, you can support us in various ways by going to our website and donating/joining/spreading the word here:
http://feministlibrary.co.uk/
http://feministlibrary.co.uk/
Feminist Library, 5 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7XW 020 7261 0879 admin@feministlibrary.co.uk
==================================
Cardiff Anarchist Bookfair 2016 / Ffair Lyfrau Anarchaidd Caerdydd 2016
Workshops, Stalls, Music, Food, creche, and much more. Full programme of the day comming soon.
20/02/2016 at Cathays Community Centre from 10 am until late.
https://southwalesanarchists.wordpress.com/bookfair-2016/?utm_source=February+2016+Events&utm_campaign=February+2016+Events&utm_medium=email
==================================
IWCE INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS EDUCATION NETWORK
May we invite you to book for
1, The Labour Party: where's it been? where's it going?
6 February 10.30 - 3.30 Ruskin House
Croydon CR0 1BD
or 2 World to Win: 19th March Norwich
or 3. Women Making History: 2nd April Salford/Manchester
email Keith Venables: iwceducation@yahoo.co.uk
================================
Bruce Castle Museum
Lordship Lane, Tottenham, N17 8NU.
Nearest Tube: Seven Sisters
Buses: Lordship Lane / Wood Green
Tottenham Bus: 243 / 123
Mainline: Station: Bruce GroveFREE EVENING TALK
Charlie Lahr and Family: Routes and Locations of an Émigré North London Bookseller and Anarchist Wednesday 27th January 2016
7.30pm · Doors open at 7pmRefreshments available
Supported by the Friends of Bruce CastleCharlie Lahr came to London from Germany in 1905 and settled - or better unsettled - in Muswell Hill, including for a time Alexandra Palace, where he was interned. An anarchist and a book publisher, he was involved in various bohemian circles, and appears as a idiosyncratic character in many memoirs and histories of the period. His wife, Esther, a Jewish anarchist, moved from the East End cigarette factories to running the bookshop, as well as working in the large asylum Colney Hatch and giving soap box speeches.
This illustrated talk by Esther Leslie explores the lives of the Lahrs and their relations through two world wars. It draws on the recently published memoir Yealm* by Sheila Lahr (Unkant, 2015)
Poster available
*"Yealm is a memoir by Sheila Lahr, born in 1927. Dealing with her first 18 years, it tells, through the eyes of a child, as much as through the lenses of social history, of the migration of Jews from the East, Anarchist circles in East End London, imprisonment in Alexandra Palace, London bohemia, schooling in Muswell Hill, war, evacuation, the world of clericalwork and all the intricacies of everyday life that bolster and ruin us. Through all this course the destructive energies of world events. We observe the ways in which people are flung around by forces that are greater than themselves.
*"Yealm is a memoir by Sheila Lahr, born in 1927. Dealing with her first 18 years, it tells, through the eyes of a child, as much as through the lenses of social history, of the migration of Jews from the East, Anarchist circles in East End London, imprisonment in Alexandra Palace, London bohemia, schooling in Muswell Hill, war, evacuation, the world of clericalwork and all the intricacies of everyday life that bolster and ruin us. Through all this course the destructive energies of world events. We observe the ways in which people are flung around by forces that are greater than themselves.
Yealm is both intimate and grand-scale. All the contradictions that texture lives, personal and political, are assembled here, like the bundle of straw that lends the title, in order to make sense of the nonsense of official history."
‘If you want to know not just about one set of individual lives, not just about the local history of part of North London, not just about the awfulness of education, or the intransigence of bureaucracy, or even coming of age during the war, but if you want to get a sense of what it all might actually mean, to us as readers, as inheritors, as future components of the dustbin of history, then this book that you're holding in your hands is one of the things you should read. I've just finished it and I want to read it again.’ Ian Patterson, Queens College, Cam-bridge
Paperback: 524 pages, published by Unkant, London, 2015 ISBN-10: 0992650941/ISBN-13: 978-0992650940
"Available online and usually in stock at The London Review Bookshop and Housman’s."
UPDATE: Text of talk now available (17pp. Word document as formatted)
UPDATE: Text of talk now available (17pp. Word document as formatted)
============================================
BOOK TALK. Anarchist Federation present:
‘Revolutionary Women’
with Nick Heath
Wednesday 3rd February, 7pm
Entry £3, redeemable against any purchase
Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Rd, London N1 (nearest tube Kings Cross)
“[We] women must simply take our place without begging for it.” – Louise Michel
Anarchism proclaims itself against all hierarchies which would include the oppression of women. Women were to enter the anarchist movement precisely because they were attracted by these new liberating ideas of emancipation and equality. But the subordination of women was at best a peripheral concern of the anarchist movement as a whole.
Most anarchists refused to recognise the specificity of women’s subordination, and few men were willing to give up the power over women they had enjoyed for so long. Everywhere women were forced to fight against the hidebound attitudes and prejudices of their male comrades. Nevertheless they persisted. Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Louise Michel, and Lucy Parsons are the names that come to mind if one thinks of anarchist women but there were many others just as determined, devoted and courageous.
Nick Heath discusses the new Anarchist Federation pamphlet ‘Revolutionary Women’ (2015, £2) which makes an attempt to illuminate the lives of these lesser known women anarchists, such as Clara Gilbert Cole, Virginia Bolten,Victorine Brocher-Rouchy and Johanna Lahr, to mention just a few.
======================================
Screening of "Pride" with original LGSM Activist Mike Jackson in Bounds Green
Feb.12th
Talkies Community Cinema is an entirely volunteer run, community pop-up cinema. Since September we have been presenting films monthly in Bounds Green usually with a Q&A, live music or some other activity alongside the screening so, a fun night out ... and a film!
Our next screening is "Pride" on Feb 12th 7:30pm at Bounds Green Bowls and Tennis Club N11 2DD. There is information online here. It would be great if you could share this information with your networks and supporters.
|PRIDE | Dir. Matthew Warchus | 2015 | UK |Cert 15 | 119 mins|
Talkies Bowes and Bounds brings you a chance to see this great British independent movie. 'Pride’ tells the real life inspiring tale of how a group of gay activists in London decided to fundraise for a mining community in South Wales during the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
BOOK TALK. Anarchist Federation present:
‘Revolutionary Women’
with Nick Heath
Wednesday 3rd February, 7pm
Entry £3, redeemable against any purchase
Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Rd, London N1 (nearest tube Kings Cross)
“[We] women must simply take our place without begging for it.” – Louise Michel
Anarchism proclaims itself against all hierarchies which would include the oppression of women. Women were to enter the anarchist movement precisely because they were attracted by these new liberating ideas of emancipation and equality. But the subordination of women was at best a peripheral concern of the anarchist movement as a whole.
Most anarchists refused to recognise the specificity of women’s subordination, and few men were willing to give up the power over women they had enjoyed for so long. Everywhere women were forced to fight against the hidebound attitudes and prejudices of their male comrades. Nevertheless they persisted. Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Louise Michel, and Lucy Parsons are the names that come to mind if one thinks of anarchist women but there were many others just as determined, devoted and courageous.
Nick Heath discusses the new Anarchist Federation pamphlet ‘Revolutionary Women’ (2015, £2) which makes an attempt to illuminate the lives of these lesser known women anarchists, such as Clara Gilbert Cole, Virginia Bolten,Victorine Brocher-Rouchy and Johanna Lahr, to mention just a few.
======================================
Screening of "Pride" with original LGSM Activist Mike Jackson in Bounds Green
Feb.12th
Talkies Community Cinema is an entirely volunteer run, community pop-up cinema. Since September we have been presenting films monthly in Bounds Green usually with a Q&A, live music or some other activity alongside the screening so, a fun night out ... and a film!
Our next screening is "Pride" on Feb 12th 7:30pm at Bounds Green Bowls and Tennis Club N11 2DD. There is information online here. It would be great if you could share this information with your networks and supporters.
|PRIDE | Dir. Matthew Warchus | 2015 | UK |Cert 15 | 119 mins|
Talkies Bowes and Bounds brings you a chance to see this great British independent movie. 'Pride’ tells the real life inspiring tale of how a group of gay activists in London decided to fundraise for a mining community in South Wales during the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
In addition to the film, we are delighted that Mike Jackson, one of the original LGSM activists will join us for a Q&A.
Tickets £5 Book Online Tickets also on sale from La Coppia 135 Myddleton Road N22
======================================
Big Brother – Who’s Watching You? Mark Jenner meeting
February 26 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Why did undercover cop Mark Jenner infiltrate Hackney campaigns in the 1990s?
The Special Demonstration Squad’s Mark Jenner was deployed using the name Mark Cassidy.
The Undercover Research Group’s extensive profile of Jenner shows the range of issues he spied on – anti-racist campaigns, trade unions, Irish republicanism and Hackney community campaigns. He chaired meetings, wrote articles and instigated action.
Why was he there?
Speakers:
Graham Smith – former secretary of Hackney Community Defence Association, founding member of the Colin Roach Centre
John McDonnell MP – shadow chancellor and social justice campaigner
Female speaker from Police Spies Out of Lives who was affected by
undercover policing in Hackney
Mark Metcalf – founder member of the Colin Roach Centre, NUJ member,
editor of the Unite Rebel Road and book of the month projects
Friday 26 February
Doors open 7pm for prompt 7.30 start
Venue
Chats Palace, 42-44 Brooksby's Walk, London, E9 6DF
Phone: 0208 533 0227
http://www.chatspalace.co.uk/
Background:
https://policespiesoutoflives.
http://www.powerbase.info/
Mark Metcalf wrote There Is No Way Of Knowing How Much Damage Jenner
Caused shortly after Jenner was exposed.
http://www.bigissuenorth.com/
“Alison”, an activist who was deceived into a five year co-habiting
relationship with Jenner, gave this testimony to parliament and told her
story to Newsnight in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
See also: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/1527870fc5ff3e05?projector=1
Newsnight programme: "Stephen \Lawrence and Police Corruption" (Part 2 of 3 video)
==============================
David Goodway on GDH Cole
Saturday 23 January 2016
G.D.H. Cole: A Libertarian Trapped in the Labour Party
David Goodway
New venue: MayDay Rooms. 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH, 2.00 – 4.30 pm
Meeting organised by the New Anarchist Research Group "From the 1920s until his death in 1959 Cole was the pre-eminent Labour intellectual, surpassing Harold Laski and R.H. Tawney in the proliferation of his publications and general omnipresence. The paradox is that he was an extremely restive, critical member of the Labour Party, going so far as [to] say towards the end of his life that he was ‘neither a Communist nor a Social Democrat in the ordinary sense, but something, not betwixt and between these two, but essentially different from both’. ‘I was’, he said, ‘– and I remain – a Guild Socialist.’ David Goodway taught sociology, history and Victorian studies to mainly adult students from 1969 until the University of Leeds closed its School of Continuing Education in 2005. For twenty-five years he has written principally on anarchism and libertarian socialism, publishing collections of the writings of Alex Comfort, Herbert Read, ‘Maurice Brinton’ and Nicolas Walter and of the correspondence between John Cowper Powys and Emma Goldman; Talking Anarchy with Colin Ward (2nd edition, 2014); as well as Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward (2nd edition, 2012). But his first book was London Chartism 1838-1848 (1982); and he has recently published The Real History of Chartism (2013) and an edition of George Julian Harney’s late journalism, The Chartists Were Right (2014). He was the convenor of the original Anarchist Research Group."
==================================
The next event for the Public History Discussion group, ‘Commemorating Anti-Racism: The origins of the C.L.R. James Library in Dalston, Hackney,’ with speaker Dr. Christian Hogsbjerg will be held on Saturday 13th February in room 6.12 at UCL's Institute of Archaeology.
The next event for the Public History Discussion group, ‘Commemorating Anti-Racism: The origins of the C.L.R. James Library in Dalston, Hackney,’ with speaker Dr. Christian Hogsbjerg will be held on Saturday 13th February in room 6.12 at UCL's Institute of Archaeology.
For more information please see: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/calendar/articles/2015-16-events/20160213 and
the attached leaflet.
We will be serving tea and coffee from 11:00 in
room 6.09. The talk will start promptly at 11:30, lasting until lunchtime
(about 13:00).
==================================
Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives
Exhibition continues: The Wapping Dispute: The Workers’ Story
Until – Thursday 11 February 2016
The Wapping Dispute began on 24 January 1986, when Rupert Murdoch, owner of four of Britain’s leading newspapers, including The Sun and The Times, sought to move production from Fleet Street in central London to a new non-union print works in Wapping. This led to a strike by the print unions, who fought to save thousands of jobs and the basic rights of workers to organise in defence of their conditions.
In 2011 the 25th anniversary of the year-long strike and the ruthless dismissal of 5500 workers by Rupert Murdoch was marked by an exhibition which presented the workers’ story of the dispute and provided a political context. We are pleased to be hosting the exhibition at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives from December 2015 until February 2016, to mark the 30th anniversary of the strike. The exhibition will includes dramatic accounts and photographs of the dispute, in addition to objects and items from the time, including banners, posters, badges, and press articles...
The Wapping Dispute began on 24 January 1986, when Rupert Murdoch, owner of four of Britain’s leading newspapers, including The Sun and The Times, sought to move production from Fleet Street in central London to a new non-union print works in Wapping. This led to a strike by the print unions, who fought to save thousands of jobs and the basic rights of workers to organise in defence of their conditions.
In 2011 the 25th anniversary of the year-long strike and the ruthless dismissal of 5500 workers by Rupert Murdoch was marked by an exhibition which presented the workers’ story of the dispute and provided a political context. We are pleased to be hosting the exhibition at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives from December 2015 until February 2016, to mark the 30th anniversary of the strike. The exhibition will includes dramatic accounts and photographs of the dispute, in addition to objects and items from the time, including banners, posters, badges, and press articles...
=========================================
art soup: the art of the modern Tues eves 23 Feb – 22 March, 7–8.30 p.m.
Full - £50 Concessions - £45T&Shop, 78 Green Lanes, London
New Hackney creative org, CARAVAN ARTS, presents 'art soup' - 5 week pop up courses on art, artists and ideas in interesting and quirky venues around North and East London. The courses are informal, informative and discussion based, offering a chance to meet people, discuss art and eat soup!
The art of the modern will be held in Green Lanes cafe and supper club favourite, T&Shop - it offers an alternative take on art of the late 19th/20th C, mapping the changes in the world through the creative explosion of the avant garde. We'll look at radical movements and styles, analysing specific works and the role of artists in times of political, social and technological change. The course will critique traditional approaches, looking through feminist, postmodern and post-colonial eyes and giving platforms to the known, obscure and brilliant artists of the modern age.
all ages and levels welcome, but places are limited!
Early bird tickets - 10% off if you book before 1 Feb
Early bird tickets - 10% off if you book before 1 Feb
Booking: https://artsoup1.eventbrite.
Info: www.caravanarts.co.uk
Contact: caravanartscourses@gmail.com
Info: www.caravanarts.co.uk
Contact: caravanartscourses@gmail.com
================================================
Wakefield Socialist History Group
Our meeting, THE LEVELLERS AND THE DIGGERS, is on Saturday 13 February, 1pm at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1.
The speakers are Ian Brooke, Steve Freeman and Shaun Cohen. Kitty Rees is chairing.
The venue is near the rear entrance to Trinity Walk Shopping Centre..it is about 10 minutes walk or so from Wakefield Westgate and Wakefield Kirkgate Railway Stations and five minutes walk from the bus station.
All are welcome. Admission is free and we have free snacks.
The venue is near the rear entrance to Trinity Walk Shopping Centre..it is about 10 minutes walk or so from Wakefield Westgate and Wakefield Kirkgate Railway Stations and five minutes walk from the bus station.
All are welcome. Admission is free and we have free snacks.
There is also an bar which has won many CAMRA awards.
We also have a meeting on Saturday 27 February, 1pm on WILLIAM MORRIS.
Then on Saturday 16 July - again at the Red Shed - a meeting on TOLPUDDLE AND THE FIGHT FOR TRADE UNION RIGHTS TODAY.
Here is a short piece on Richard Lilburne, one of the most prominent Levellers:
John Lilburne was born in Sunderland, the third son of RIchard Lilburne, a minor country gentleman. His mother was daughter of Thomas Hixon, master of the King's Wardrobe at Greenwich Palace.
He was educated in Newcastle (probably at the Royal Free Grammar School) and educated also in Bishop Auckland.
In the 1630's he was apprenticed in London to Thomas Hewson, a wholesale clothier and Puritan. Through him he got to know John Bostwick, a campaigner against Episcopacy.
Soon Lilburne was himself involved in the printing and distribution of unlicensed Puritan books and pamphlets. It led to him being arrested in December 1637 and being taken before the Court of Star Chamber.
He was sentenced on 13 February 1638. In addition to being fined £500 he was also to be whipped at cart-tail from Fleet Prison to New Palace Yard, Westminster. There he was to stand in pillory. Then he would be imprisoned until he "conformed and admitted his guilt."
Languishing in prison, he wrote the first of many pamphlets publicising the injustices against him. And when King Charles reluctantly summoned the Long Parliament in 1640 Oliver Cromwell MP seized the opportunity to highlight Lilburne's case. Parliament duly ordered his release.
When the first Civil War broke out Lilburne enlisted as captain in Lord Brooke's regiment of foot and fought at the battle of Edgehill.
He resigned his commission in April 1645 however and was imprisoned that summer for having denounced MPs who lived in comfort whilst common soldiers fought and died for Parliament.
In July 1646 he was in trouble again. He was sent to the Tower for having denounced his former commander Earl of Manchester as a traitor and Royalist sympathiser. There he continued to write pamphlets -smuggled out and published by friends and supporters- that drew attention to examples of hypocrisy, corruption and profiteering in high places.
Lilburne wanted a new form of accountable government and whilst still in prison was associated with the drafting of the "Leveller Manifesto: An Agreement of the People."
Released on bail, he hurried to support Leveller mutineers at Corkbush field and then went to London to try build up Leveller organisation.
He and other Leveller leaders were arrested however in March 1649. He'd already attacked the new republican government in "England's New Chains Discovered." But he was still found not guilty of high treason and of inciting mutinies.
Lilburne died in 1657. As highlighted, Lilburne had faced along series of trials throughout his life and became known as "Freeborn John" because of his defence of rights such as that to hear the accusation, face one's accusers and not to incriminate oneself. Indeed he is seen as having inspired the 5th Amendment to the American Constitution and is cited by many constitutional jurists and scholars.
By: Alan Stewart, Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group
How It Went...
Forty one people packed in to the meeting room at Wakefield's Red Shed on Saturday 13 February to hear three speakers talk about two 17th century radical movements, THE LEVELLERS AND THE DIGGERS.
Ian Brooke, author of "England's Lost Revolution", argued that the Levellers were the "first political party of the English people." They believed in religious tolerance including for Catholics. They opposed armies being sent to Ireland and argued that the Irish should be treated as equals.
Shaun Cohen from the Ford Maguire Society emphasised that the Levellers and Diggers were two quite separate groups. We should be careful not to conflate the two. He argued also however that "we need to remember their ideas." They are "part of our history" and "part of our tradition."
The third speaker, Steve Freeman from the Republican Socialist Alliance, went on to relate the ideas of the Levellers and Diggers to events today. There is a "democratic crisis in this country." Power is concentrated in the institutions of the Crown. We need a republican party and a democratic revolution.
An hour of lively discussion followed after the speeches. Points were raised about the class nature of the Levellers, press freedom, reclaiming public spaces and resisting current government policies.
Ian Brooke, author of "England's Lost Revolution", argued that the Levellers were the "first political party of the English people." They believed in religious tolerance including for Catholics. They opposed armies being sent to Ireland and argued that the Irish should be treated as equals.
Shaun Cohen from the Ford Maguire Society emphasised that the Levellers and Diggers were two quite separate groups. We should be careful not to conflate the two. He argued also however that "we need to remember their ideas." They are "part of our history" and "part of our tradition."
The third speaker, Steve Freeman from the Republican Socialist Alliance, went on to relate the ideas of the Levellers and Diggers to events today. There is a "democratic crisis in this country." Power is concentrated in the institutions of the Crown. We need a republican party and a democratic revolution.
An hour of lively discussion followed after the speeches. Points were raised about the class nature of the Levellers, press freedom, reclaiming public spaces and resisting current government policies.
On Saturday 27 February, Wakefield Socialist History Group, are holding a meeting, "William Morris: Revolutionary Socialist or Utopian Dreamer" at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1. The event starts at 1pm. Admission is free and all are welcome.
William Morris was born in Walthamstow in 1834 - a place he described as then being a "suburban village on the edge of Epping Forest." He told friends that his father was a businessman in the city and that his parents were able to send him to Marlborough, a "new and very rough school."
Just before he went off there though his father died. However latterly his father had been indulging in lucrative mining speculation and the family were very well off.
In 1852 Morris sat a matriculation examination to Exeter College, Oxford. He went up the following year. There he fell under the influence of the HIgh Church or Puseyite School. He and friend Edward Burne -who he met at Oxford- both seemed destined for ecclesiastical careers.
Yet Morris was also exposed to -and inspired by- the arguments of those critical of the prevalent materialism of the age. He heard Carlyle's denunciations of the "dehumanising effects of the cash nexus." And he read Ruskin postulate that art is a "public concern." It is a "measure of a nation's wellbeing rather than a hobby for the elite."
Morris himself was now writing poetry and whilst still a student he set up a literary publication, "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine." When he finished studies he was briefly articled to G.E. Street, the architect, but soon embarked -Leopold (2003) says- on a career combining "decorative art and creative writing." His firm -Morris and Co.- would go on to do pivotal work with stained glass, embroidery and painted furniture. Plus the first of his distinctive wall paper designs were registered in 1864.
His active involvement in politics dates from 1876. Disraeli had sanctioned an alliance with the Turks to wage war on Russia despite Turkish atrocities committed on the Balkan people. Morris became Treasurer of the Eastern Question Association and in April 1877 addressed his pamphlet, "Unjust War" to "the working men of England."
By 1880 he saw that the Liberals were just as bad. Gladstone had reneged on promises of radical reform at home. Plus abroad his coercion of the Irish was appalling too. Morris, who'd read Marx's CAPITAL, in French, was being increasingly drawn to socialist ideas instead.
================================================
"There's tons going on at the Working Class Movement Library..."
It’s Queer Up North? Working Class Men and
Same-Sex Desire in the North of England
This coming Saturday, 6 February at 2pm Helen Smith from the
University of Lincoln will be giving our LGBT History Month talk, with readings
by Mike Joyce.
The event will delve into the lives and loves of working
class men in the north throughout the 20th century. Through her research Helen
has uncovered many stories that had been lost and because of this, gives an
alternative history of same-sex desire.
Admission free; light refreshments afterwards. This event is part of LGBT History Month.
National Festival of
LGBT History
The above event acts as a curtain-raiser to the National
Festival of LGBT History which takes place at the People's History Museum on
Saturday 27 February. The programme includes talks, discussion, tours, theatre
and music. Highlights include talks from
musician and broadcaster Tom Robinson, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell
and Prof Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History. The full programme is at
http://www.phm.org.uk/whatson/the-national-festival-of-lgbt-history/. There is also an LGBT history tour on Friday
26 February, 1.15–2pm.
No Power on Earth
Living History play performances
The 30-minute free performance of our Living History play
about WW1 conscientious objector James Hudson on Saturday 5 March will be at
12.30pm, not at 2pm as noted in the previous e-bulletin. Sorry about that.
That's a day to bring your butties, because once you've
watched the play you can stay on for our International Women's Day talk which
is at 2pm that day... See details below.
No Power on Earth, a monologue telling the story of an
ordinary school teacher at the start of the First World War who finds himself
at odds with the popular mood, can also be seen at Salford Museum and Art
Gallery on Sunday 21 February at 2pm, and at the Library on Wednesday 2 March
at 1pm.
We are delighted to announce that Joel Parry (to be found on
Twitter at @parry_joel) will be playing the part of James Hudson.
The performances accompany the Library's current exhibition
To End All Wars, thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Remembering Mary
Barbour - International Women's Day event
On Saturday 5 March at 2pm the Library's IWD event welcomes
Catriona Burness who will give a talk, 'Remembering Mary Barbour - social
reformer, rent strike leader, women's peace crusader and pioneering woman
councillor'.
Mary Barbour worked tirelessly to change laws to help
families in poverty. Her capacity to
mobilise working class families, especially women, to challenge the power of
landlords and the state during the 1915 Govan rent strike led to the passing of
one of Europe’s first rent restriction acts.
She also fought for free school milk, children’s playgrounds, municipal
wash-houses, and an end to slum housing.
This event will also feature a discussion on current related
issues. Admission free; light refreshments afterwards.
This event is part of Wonder
Women, Manchester’s annual feminist festival. From 3-13 March 2016, we celebrate
the women’s movement born in our city through film, art, music, walking tours,
gallery takeovers, comedy and debate, asking how far we’ve come in 100 years –
and how far we have yet to go. Visit creativetourist.com/wonderwomen - and
browse the full events listings at
Wars of position:
Communists on the media in 1930s Britain
A talk by Dr Ben Harker, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century British
Literature at the University of Manchester, takes place tomorrow, Tuesday 2
February, at the John Rylands Library from 12-1pm.
Newspapers were central to the identities of the
Soviet-inspired Communist Parties in the 20th century, seeming to provide a means
to expose the capitalist system and to organise the revolutionary forces in
opposition. Communists in the West,
however, increasingly found themselves operating in a thickly layered and
rapidly changing media landscape of national radio, newsreels, mass-circulation
tabloid and picture newspapers and emerging television. This talk asks how Communists in Britain
navigated that landscape in the 1930s.
The Research Forum takes place in the Christie Room at the
John Rylands Library. Entry is free and open to all - just turn up on the day.
Resistance to World
War One - conference
There is a conference at the University of Leeds from 18 to
20 March, Resistance to War 1914-1924. This international conference brings
together scholars from more than eleven nations and community groups from
across the UK to explore aspects of opposition to the First World War during
and in the aftermath of conflict.
You can register for the full 3-day conference or for the
Conscientious Objectors event on Saturday 19 March.
Our mailing address is:
Working Class Movement Library
51 The Crescent
Salford, M5 4WX
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Class Inequality: Narratives from the inside
New Anarchist Research Group
Saturday 27 February 2016
MayDay Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1 DH 2.00- 4.30 pm
While the 1% rule, poor neighbourhoods have become the subject of public concern and media scorn, blamed for society's ills. My research focuses on their stories from the inside. Having lived on a council estate most of my life I use my ‘insider’ status to tell the stories of working class people. My recent book 'Getting By' is set in St Anns a council estate in Nottingham however over the last two years I have been undertaking ethnographic research in East London specifically focused upon class cleansing and gentrification
Lisa Mckenzie is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, working on issues of social inequality and class stratification through ethnographic research. Lisa brings an unusual and innovative approach to research by means of her extensive experience of bringing the academic world and local community together.
- See more at:http://www.policypress.co.uk/display.asp?K= 9781447309956#sthash.KpwpB0MR. dpuf
Please note... new venue, The MayDay Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH. The nearest tube station is St Paul's, but there are others close by. For more details about the MayDay Rooms and how to get to there (including a map) go to there website: http://maydayrooms.org/rooms/visiting/
Tuesday 9th February 2016, 6.30-8pm,
Institute of Archaeology,
Room 6.12
31-34 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PY.
London
WC1H 0PY.
And of course our own next meeting.
==============================================
Call for Papers: British Communism and Commitment
Day-school, 9th June 2016. Manchester
Day-school, 9th June 2016. Manchester
‘I am not ready to join the party’, wrote the novelist Harold Heslop to leading CPGB party theoretician, Rajani Palme Dutt in 1936, recognising the forbidding level of activism expected. The mandatory Communist hyper-commitment repelled potential recruits and actual members alike, especially in the early years. But others who joined the party then and later found through Communist commitment a meaningful way of life and a framework for understanding the world.
Bringing together academics from a wide range of disciplines and former party activists, this day-school analyses the complexities of commitment in the British Communist Party over its seventy-year history (1920-1991). Papers (20 minutes) might cover, but aren’t restricted to:
Bringing together academics from a wide range of disciplines and former party activists, this day-school analyses the complexities of commitment in the British Communist Party over its seventy-year history (1920-1991). Papers (20 minutes) might cover, but aren’t restricted to:
- The motivations and trajectories of party ‘hardliners’ who dutifully observed party discipline and the party line, regardless of misgivings;
- Communism as a way of life;
- Expulsion and the fear of it;
- Autobiographies written by former Communists;
- Figures who struggled to reconcile vocational, professional or artistic commitments with their Communism;
- ‘Loyal dissidents’ who remained fundamentally committed to the party while often challenging and seeking to enlarge its assumptions, procedures and priorities;
- Those who challenged what they saw as dominant party perceptions that ‘race’, gender and sexuality were secondary to class as sites of oppression;
- Activists who considered their ultimate commitment as being to Communist principles from which they believed the party to have deviated, and who challenged the party on those grounds;
- Those who transferred their abiding Marxist commitments to different currents or organisations—Trotskyist, New Left, Maoist—and the complex relations with the CPGB that followed.
Part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Wars of Position: Communism and Civil Society’, the day-school will be held in the Reading Room of the Labour History Archive and Study Centre in the People’s History Museum, Manchester, and will include a tour of the CPGB archive holdings. It will mark the opening to researchers of a new tranche of significant CP archive material relating primarily to the 1950-91 period (the papers of John Attfield, Monty Johnstone and Paul Olive). The event will conclude with a round-table discussion about Communism, commitment and the archive chaired by Professor Kevin Morgan and featuring Francis King (historian, former CP activist and archivist, editor of Socialist History), and John Attfield (historian and former secretary of the Communist Party History Group).
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be e-mailed to Ben Harker (ben.harker@manchester.ac.uk) by 1/4/16. radicalstudiesnetwork | 28/01/2016 at 5:01 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/p2fvW0-6s
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