SHS Conference: Not Such a Lovely War

Saturday 1 November 2014

The Socialist History Society are holding a Day conference on:
 the origins and consequences of the First World War
" that will present a view very different from that officially celebrated by the media and government."
Speakers confirmed so far: 
Kevin Morgan on 'Class cohesion and spurious patriotism: trade union internationalism in the First World War',
Stan Newens on 'Imperialist Rivalries and the Origins of the First World War'; 
Keith Flett on 'So Bloody Much to Oppose - grassroots opposition to World War One', 
Helen Boak on '"Down with the war! We don't want to starve any longer.": German working-class women and the First World War'. 
Helen Toomey on ‘The arms trade before, during and after the First World War’.

Venue: 
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R 4RL. 
11.00 am to 4.30 pm. (NB: time as originally listed was incorrect) 
Free attendance.

Also from the SHS events list:

Tuesday 4 November 2014	Stop the First World War. Pietro Dipaola on "1914 and the Schism in International Anarchism"; Tony Zurbrugg on "Not Our War" Venue: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R 4RL. 7.00 p.m.
Tuesday 11 November 2014	Stop the First World War. Ian Birchall on "From Slaughter to Mutiny"; Christopher Read on "WWI and the Russian Revolution to 1923" Venue: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R 4RL. 7.00 p.m.

What is libertarian history?

A differently formatted and illustrated version of this (half) article is published in

Black Flag, Issue 232, 2010/11, pp.28-29, under the title ‘The history of history itself.’

Part 2 is due to appear in the next issue of Black Flag in May 2011 (watch this space).

There are a number of historical contexts which might be expected to attract a libertarian historian looking for a research topic, those times when significant numbers of people did appear to be acting collectively to take control of their lives and inaugurate a fairer, non-authoritarian form of society: the Paris Commune of 1871, workers’ councils in the Russian Revolution, Spain 1936-37, and Hungary 1956 spring to mind. A lot of good work has been done on these and there is room for plenty more, not only to draw the lessons – that what was achieved once could be possible again; what went wrong and why – but as a corrective to the disinformative history that the opponents of libertarianism tend to propagate. In the case of Spain, there are still books being produced which manage almost entirely to ‘disappear’ the anarchists. 

Hungary Revolution 1956

It has been well observed that history is written by the winners, and libertarians have not won in the long run (yet), although the proposition is less tenable now that your actual working historians are a comparatively large and varied set of people and many amateurs have access to a range of resources for research and communication. Historians of medicine sometimes tell the story of the brain surgeon who said ‘I think I’ll take up history when I retire’ to a historian, who replied ‘Good idea. I’m retiring soon too, maybe I should take up brain surgery!’ It doesn’t quite work, though: while taking the point that history can claim to be a serious occupation rather than a hobby and a bit of study and training in techniques is likely to be useful, it isn’t really rocket science, or brain surgery, and there is some sense in the idea that anyone  can decide to do it. This article will look at some ways in which it has been done, and at some of those who have done it, and consider whether a case can be made for a distinctive libertarian contribution to the theory of the subject as well as to its content.