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Family Letters

My grandfather was one of 6 brothers all involved in different theatres of the First World War: one was in the navy at Jutland, another in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and the rest were scattered around France and India. They all wrote home to their mother who unsurprisingly kept their letters. In the course of time my mother inherited them. In the 1970s my mother persuaded the Imperial War Museum to copy and transcribe the letters, and she then edited selections from the transcriptions and turned […]
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Remembering The Real WW1

2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. In line with Bristol’s long radical traditions we want to ensure that there are events locally remembering the reality of this war. The British government plans to spend £55 million on it’s own commemoration plans. Comments from David Cameron calling for a ‘truly national commemoration’ stressing our ‘national spirit’ suggest what he has in mind. He has even compared the government’s plans with last year’s Diamond Jubilee […]
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Some Hidden Histories of the British State Revealed in 2013

By Roger Ball
Republican mural drawing attention to the complex web of organisations involved in the counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Ireland
In ten years we'll leak the truth By then it's only so much paper According to the U.S. punk band the Dead Kennedys it takes about 10 years before our 'democracies' decide to "leak the truth" about activities of secret arms of the state. In the current world of social media and the information highway there seems to be a perception that no secret is safe and that "it will get out somehow". This suggests the cosy idea that somehow the internet is leading us to a more open society with rapid […]
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Mythical Battle Over WW1

By Randell Brantley
A few days ago Dan Snow wrote a piece entitled Lions and donkeys: 10 big myths about World War One debunked on the BBC website. The tone of the article was strange, in that it seemed to be implying that World War 1 was not as bad as everybody thinks and that and that a lot of working class soldiers quite enjoyed it while upper class officers were martyred. The 10 myths were: It was the bloodiest war in history to that point. No, it was our civil war in the mid 17th century Most soldiers died. […]
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Remembering the Real WWI

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2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The British government plans to spend £55 million marking this occasion (and the centenary of other stages of the war). Comments from David Cameron calling for a 'truly national commemoration' stressing our 'national spirit' suggest what he has in mind. He has even compared the government's plans with last year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. For the majority of people in Europe, whether directly involved or not, the war was one […]
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Remembering the Real WWI: Public meeting #3

This is the third meeting in Bristol to discuss opposition to David Cameron's 'truly national commemoration' of WW1 stressing our 'national spirit'. Nationally there are plans to ensure that attention is given to the real causes and effects of the war, rather than an opportunity for our government to re-habilitate this war in particular or war in general. Bristol has long radical traditions and we know there are groups and individuals across the city who will want to ensure that there are events […]
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Introducing Chipping Norton’s Real Heroes

By Randell Brantley
The events in December to mark the 100th anniversary of the Bliss Mill stike in Chipping Norton have made this weekend's addition of The Morning Star. Chipping Norton, a small picturesque Cotswold market town in deepest Oxfordshire, will be associated in the minds of those who don't know it with a few notorious names. Those would be its local MP, one David Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of News International and the pompous television petrolhead Jeremy Clarkson. Needless to […]
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HOOF New Year’s Message

By Randell Brantley
New Year 2014 message from Rich Daniels, Hands Off Our Forest (HOOF) chairman. THREE years ago, on January 3, 2011, more than 3,000 of us gathered during a blizzard the field at Speech House to send a message to the Government: the Forest of Dean belongs to us, all of us, and we will not allow it to be sold off, disposed or transferred to private hands. Never! Six weeks later, we were told they’d got the message and the Government performed a ‘mea culpa’. “We’re sorry. We got it wrong.” But we […]
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