Eighteenth of December 2013 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Bliss Tweed Mill strike in Chipping Norton. The years 1910 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 witnessed an upsurge in strike activity in Great Britain and Ireland involving many thousands of workers. By the summer of 1914, strikes, in the coal, cotton, transport, metal, engineering, shipbuilding and building industries, were viewed by the government as a crisis of severe proportions. This […]
The National Health Service founded in 1948 was inspired by a self-help system which Aneurin Bevan had participated in as a young man. After working as a coal miner in South Wales, he served on the hospital committee of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society which ran hospitals and convalescent homes for miners as well as employing family doctors and even providing benefits for the dependants of the members. Later as a Labour MP for Ebbw Vale he took up the idea which was familiar to him and, as […]
Supply Chains in Capitalism Today: From Foxconn to Wal-Mart
Date: Thursday 27th June Time: 7.30-9.30pm Location: Hydra Books, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ Price: Donation Speaker: Gifford Hartman Supply Chains in Capitalism Today: From Foxconn to Wal-Mart One of the forms in which the working class exists today is at the various nodal points along global commodity chains. Global production is based on a system of "factories without walls," where increasingly components are manufactured using an inventory-less subcontracting system that races around […]
So (finally) the UK government has been legally forced to pay £19.9 million compensation to 5,228 victims of torture, rape, sexual abuse and maiming by British colonial forces during the ‘Mau Mau’ rebellion in Keyna in the 1950s. The compensation works out be a pitiful ‘£3,000 per victim and applies only to the living survivors of the abuses that took place’. The pure number of victims suggests that the argument normally trotted out by the British state in these situations, that is, ‘a bad […]
In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were condemned to transportation to Australia for forming an early trade union. These 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' have become an iconic part of modern British history. But three years before the events in Tolpuddle, rural England was rocked with a massive upr1sing of farm labourers known as the 'Swing Riots'. Dr. Ball analyses why 'Tolpuddle' has lodged in popular memory and the far more significant events of 'Swing' have been distorted and forgotten. W.l. Hall, North […]
Werqin’ 9 to 5
Article: Werqin’ 9 to 5: cursory notes on antiwork politics from Dolly Parton to Shangela Laquifa Commet: Coincidentally, I have been reading Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the last days of the working class (J. Cowie 2010) which looks at the changes in labour relations that occurred between the 1960s and 1980s (i.e. the assault on the 'Keynesian' social contract by the US working class, the rightward shift of sections of the white working class in the late 70s, and the struggles over ethnicity […]
We face the greatest crisis in the history of humanity. Economic depression, imperialist war, climate catastrophe, and grotesque social inequalities threaten to tear the world apart. What is to be done? The lesson of history is that human beings make their own history. Launching his new book, A Marxist History of the World: from Neanderthals to Neoliberals, archaeologist and historian Neil Faulkner argues that history is open and contested. It is an active process of creation in which different […]
Tuesday 21st May 7.00pm Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St., Bristol, BS2 0EZ with Neil Faulkner We face the greatest crisis in the history of humanity. Economic depression, imperialist war, climate catastrophe, and grotesque social inequalities threaten to tear the world apart. What is to be done? The lesson of history is that human beings make their own history. Launching his new book, A Marxist History of the World: from Neanderthals to Neoliberals, archaeologist and historian Neil Faulkner […]
These are some of the headlines which started appearing in the Gloucester Citizen and Western Daily Press in the 1890s. This pamphlet will try and get behind the headlines and reveal what was really going on in the Blakeney area of the Forest of Dean at the time. THE BLAKENEY OUTRAGES “WORSE THAN IRELAND” - THE VICAR ASKS FOR EXCEPTIONAL LAW A REIGN OF TERROR - SPEECH BY MINERS AGENT ASSAULT ON THE POLICE IN BLAKENEY - THE RECENT OUTRAGES MORE LAWLESSNESS AT BLAKENEY - RESIDENTS ARMED ALLEGED […]
The Strange Paradox of ‘Ding Dong’: “political correctness gone mad”
Last night I bought a copy of the Daily Mail (for the first time in my life) as I am into surrealism in a big way. I just had to do it. There several headlines which took my fancy: "BBC 'Witch' Song Insult to Maggie" (front page) "....and now even a police sergeant tweets meassages of hate" (front page) "I hope Thatcher's death was degrading and painful, tweets sick Scotland Yard sergeant" (page 7) ...and unbelievably on their website headlines: "'They danced in the streets when Hitler died […]
