Articles
Here you will find articles by our contributors. To filter the articles by ‘type’ use the menu below. Articles, as well as most of the content on this site, are also grouped by Subjects, Tags (keywords) and Projects.
Bold Defiance
The Spitalfields Silk Weavers: London’s Luddites? Pretty much everyone has heard of the Luddites, although many people still have a misconception about the reasons why they destroyed machinery. The weavers of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire smashed machine looms not because they were blindly opposed to progress, or afraid of new technology, but because the introduction of machinery was undermining the livelihoods of themselves and their communities. They viewed new […]
Why The Hillsborough Panel Has Not Reported The Truth
On April 15, 1989 I was sitting in the North Stand at Hillsborough with a perfect view of the Leppings Lane end. Along with 40,000-odd other people I witnessed what has now been described as the biggest cover up in modern British history. How can you cover up something which is witnessed by over 40,000 people? As a 19-year-old, I returned to college after the spring break to read and watch reports of events which I knew to be false. It was not just The Sun. False reports were published by the […]
Getting ‘Jerusalem’ Wrong
By Roger Ball
A Review of 'Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law' by E.P.Thompson ‘Christ died as an unbeliever’ [William Blake] ‘Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! we have Hirelings in the Camp. the Court. & the University: who would if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War’ [William Blake] Watching the Olympic opening ceremony the other night I noticed that the hymn Jerusalem so beloved of public schools, […]
a glorious Liberty
By A L Morton The Ranters formed the extreme left wing of the sects which came into prominence during the English Revolution, both theologically and politically. Theologically these sects lay between the poles of orthodox Calvinism, with its emphasis on the power and justice of God as illustrated in the grand scheme of election and reprobation, with its insistence upon the reality of Hell in all its most literal horrors and upon the most verbal and dogmatic acceptance of the Scriptures, and of […]
State Intervention and the Abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme
The Bristol Experience
Now and again certain key industrial disputes serve as a reminder that the state not only plays a central role in struggles between capital and labour, but that its interventions tend to be heavily biased towards employers. One such dispute concerned the abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) in 1989, and the return of casual employment. In this case, state intervention was not only decisive in curtailing the ability of trade unions to take strike action but also delivered to the […]
