Search results for ""Lawrence Wishart Ltd""

A collection of political writings by the radical socialist and feminist geographer, Doreen Massey, edited by David Featherstone and Diarmaid Kelliher.

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Who were the women who fought back at Grunwick and Gate Gourmet? Striking Women gives a voice to the women involved as they discuss their lives, their work and their trade unions. Striking Women is centred on two industrial disputes, the famous Grunwick strike (1976-78) and the Gate Gourmet dispute that erupted in 2005. Focusing on these two events, the book explores the nature of South Asian women’s contribution to the struggles for workers’ rights in the UK labour market. The authors examine histories of migration and settlement of two different groups of women of South Asian origin, and how this history, their gendered, classed and racialised inclusion in the labour market, the context of industrial relations in the UK in the two periods and the nature of the trade union movement shaped the trajectories and the outcomes of the two disputes. This is the first account based on the voices of the women involved. Drawing on life/work history interviews with thirty-two women who participated in the two disputes, as well as interviews with trade union officials, archival material and employment tribunal proceedings, the authors explore the motivations, experiences and implications of these events for their political and social identities.

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Robin Murray: Selected Writings demonstrates the breadth of Murray's intellectual curiosity and his political commitment to finding new ways of organising the economy and society. A thinker at the heart of left-wing thought and contributor to the seminal 1968 May Day Manifesto, Robin Murray's pioneering work encompasses diverse areas including fair trade, waste management, and, crucially, the regeneration of London via the London Industrial Strategy of radical local authority the GLC in the 1980s. Much of Murray's work has striking contemporary relevance, for example his passion for ecological sustainability, co-operatives and fair trade, and his analysis of the developing 'attention economy' and its impact on a new era of digital platforms. This collection has been curated to showcase the many contexts within which Robin Murray's boundless energy, enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity saw him collaborating. Murray's work exemplifies how cooperation can bring about real social change; this book will appeal to students, policymakers and anyone interested in radical social transformation.

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Jeremy Corbyn is the epitome of the anti-leader: he would, by impulse, shy away from the very idea of `Corbynism’. Yet when a general election is called, Corbyn’s Labour promises to force a break with the current consensus every bit as historic as those of Attlee in 1945 and Thatcher in 1979. Corbyn is a phenomenon that has been purposely misrepresented and wilfully misunderstood, with supporters derided as `Corbynistas’, fans and cultists. This book of specially commissioned essays explores the true nature of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership; expectations of how Labour might fulfil its promise of a new kind of politics; and the limits to what Labour can achieve; as well as offering tools for transforming the party from the bottom up. Building on the work of Mark Perryman’s previous book The Corbyn Effect, this new collection is vital reading for all those interested in left politics and the future of the Labour Party. It presents a comprehensive account of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party: where it came from, how it has begun a process of radical change, and the party it promises to become.

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An account of the assault on the Union at Grangemouth in 2013, when workers were forced to accept cuts in their pay andconditions by the owner's threat of closure. Written by the Grangemouth convenor, The Battle of Grangemouth is a vital storyin trying times, and demonstrates why, now more than ever, being organised is vital for the defense of basic right at work. Published in association with Unite the Union.This book tells the story of the industrial dispute at Grangemouth in 2013, when the owner threatened to close a large part of the complex unless the workforce accepted severe cuts to their wages and conditions. The events at Grangemouth represented, in very acute form, the disaster of contemporary approaches to running the economy. What was once a publicly owned and well-run national asset has been allowed to fall into the hands of a company controlled by one man - Jim Ratcliffe - who thus has been able to exert immense power over the future of a vital national resource.Ratcliffe conducted a relentless campaign against the union at the site, with the intention of removing its main organisers, partly through exploiting the row in Falkirk Labour Party over candidate selection. Through these endeavours he succeeded in inflicting considerable hardship on a large number of people, but he did not destroy the strong union organisation at Grangemouth, which remains committed to defending the workforce and local community from his depredations.

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In one sense, of course, all of Stuart Hall's writing was political, but this collection focuses on the essays he wrote throughout his life that directly engaged with the political issues of the day. From the beginning, his analyses focused strongly on the central role of culture in politics, and his insights are evident across the whole selection, whether he is writing about Thatcher's authoritarianism or the double shuffles of Tony Blair. These essays come from three broad periods: the 1950s and 1960s, when Hall was involved in the New Left; the 1970s and 1980s, when he evolved his critique of Thatcherism; and from the 1990s until the end of his life, when he focused on the emergence of neoliberalism. The editors have brought together the best and most representative works of a writer with a unique and conjunctural approach to understanding politics, and have collected those works that have a general application to broader political questions. The collection is therefore valuable for readers interested in the politics of the past sixty years, in specific political questions, such as around political commitment, or the politics of empire, and specific political moments, such as the Cuban Crisis, or the actions of New Labour. But Hall's engaging writing and the connections here between his more obviously political writing and the other areas of his work-including identity politics and race-also make the collection an essential resource for those interested in politics more generally.

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2014 is WAF's 25th anniversary year, and this book maps the development of the organisation over the past 25 years, through the life stories and political reflections of some of its members. It focuses on the ways in which lived contradictions have been reflected in their politics. Their stories describe the pathways that led them to WAF, and the role WAF has played in their lives and in the different forms of politicial activism in which they have engaged. Discussing feminist activism from a wide variety of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, contributors highlight the complex relationships of belonging that are at the heart of contemporary social life - including the problems of exclusionary political projects of belonging. They also explore the ways in which anti-fundamentalism relates to broader feminist, anti-racist and other emancipatory political ideologies and movements. The personal stories at the centre of this book are those of women whose lives enact the complexities of multiple (if shifting and contingent) mutually constitutive axes of power and difference. Much of their concerns therefore relate to crossing the boundaries of collectivity and practising a 'dialogical transversal politics' that has developed as an alternative to identity politics.

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This book asks whether or not it is possible to combine the values of solidarity and belonging with curiosity and openness towards difference. Is it possible to create an 'Open Tribe'? As markets become global, and social welfare is cut back, many people feel exposed and vulnerable to the economy, and the response is to become defensive, to turn inwards, to look for comfort in 'people like us'. But we need both 'openness' and a sense of belonging in our conversations about change, and Sue Goss discusses these questions in a series of conversations with politicians, academics, campaigners and thinkers. Each conversation travels in a different direction, exploring the worlds of politics, work, community and the state. But powerful themes emerge across each discussant - about the 'battle for the human' - a different way of looking at ourselves and at each other - and a set of shared values from which to challenge and rethink all our social and economic institutions.

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Arthur Horner (1894-1968) was a miners' leader from the 1926 general strike to his retirement as general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1959. During his life, he played a crucial role in the fight for a national mineworkers union, and in the development of the National Coal Board; he was a champion of the Republicans in Spain; he was imprisoned several times for his views; and, he was in constant demand as a speaker. But it was his warmth, good humour and enthusiasm which made 'little Arthur', as he was affectionately known by his union colleagues, really memorable.

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This book brings together leading British and Spanish historians in an examination of key aspects and themes of the Spanish Civil War. Contributors discuss the politics of memory; recent revisionist historiography; biographies of international volunteers; the experience of nursing in Catalonia; the baptism of fire of Jarama; Britain's blocking of aid to the Republic; Soviet intervention in the conflict; and the crimes of Franco, both during and after the war.

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Published ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, this book is about the people, ideas and movements that created it. But it is also about its limits; how the Agreement's promise was frequently betrayed by an establishment that found it difficult to give up its dominance. Campbell documents the forces strongly resisting change, including those inside the police, military and secret services whose refusal to repudiate their long history of collusion prevented them from contributing to peace-making. Gender is woven into the texture of this story - from the men who sought to dominate the streets to the women who fought for the equality agenda.The book has an inspired sense of people making their own history, and is full of their stories. These are people whose contribution was from the grassroots - loyalist ex-combatant Gusty Spence, the PPU's Dawn Purvis, Unison's Inez McCormack, Thomas Donahue of the AFL-CIO, Father Aidan Troy of Holy Cross School, to name only a few. It is on the efforts of people such as these that the success of the new state will continue to depend.

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Morgan goes far beyond the question of Russian gold, to dig beneath a host of myths and misconceptions. He shows that Labour's parliamentary advance was itself inconceivable solely on the basis of the workers' and trade union 'pennies' with which it is usually identified. In addition to the virtual market that developed in Labour's parliamentary nominations, there was almost always a need to cultivate private benefactors - not excluding Russian ones. Thus, as Morgan shows, George Lansbury drew on a wide variety of financial sponsors to create the space both for his own political career and for Labour's daily newspaper, the Daily Herald. As for the communist party itself, Russian subsidies often gave rise to fierce internal conflict and controversy: it was certainly regarded as mixed blessing by many. Kevin Morgan has uncovered some fascinating new material on this period of left history, and through his insightful analysis a much more complex picture than hitherto emerges, both of Labour-communist relations and those between the CPGB and the Comintern.

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John Fisher describes the immense energy and activity associated with the union's education programme, and shows how it has contributed to the union's development over the years, especially in the sustenance it has given to the TGWU's strong shop steward tradition and to the union's internal democracy. As one TGWU leader put it, 'Money spent on education is always bread cast upon the waters. We can't make a tidy balance sheet, as we can with other union benefits. What we can do is show confidence in our members, and have faith in their ability to make good use of the facilities offered them'. This book makes a convincing case for the lasting benefits of such trust. Based on detailed archival and documentary research, Fisher charts the changes that have taken place in the union's programmes over the years. Perhaps more than anything this is a story of activism, of the motivation of thousands of students and hundreds of tutors, often for little or no financial gain, who believed that education played a central role in developing themselves, the union and the labour movement as a whole. In telling their story, Fisher also evokes the exhilaration which all those involved in trade union education have experienced, when trade union members begin to understand their own organisation and develop the confidence to take part in it - and in the longer run, to extend their control over it.

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Rosa Luxemburg holds an enduring fascination as a radical socialist committed to democratic values, and a woman whose charismatic personality and impassioned speeches inspired her followers without resort to bureaucratic organization. Her assistant and friend, Mathilde Jacob, was Luxemburg's mainstay during her years of imprisonment in World War I. Jacob provided material and emotional support, organized Rosa Luxemburg's clandestine communication with the outside world, and herself played a key role in the illegal work of the Spartacus group. When revolution broke out in Germany in 1918, she sought unsuccessfully to pretect Rosa in the tragic events that led to her death. Mathilde Jacob's memoir, written as a testimony of "love for a person and for a cause", and sent abroad for safe-keeping when she fell victim to the Nazis, was unknown to Rosa Luxembourg's early biographers. It paints a vivd portrait of the subject, and of the group of friends that made up the Spartacus leadership - Karl Liebknecht, Leo Kpgiches, Clara Zetkin and Paul Levi.

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'All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ...the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere' ...this was the Communist Manifesto's description of the global reach of capitalism. Globalisation, evidently, is not a new phenomenon; but on the eve of the new millennium, the processes that constitute the phenomenon of globalisation are intensifying, and being experienced in new ways. The immense scholarship and analytic powers of Marx mean that his writings on international capitalism and its effects remain of interest in current debates on globalisation. With this in mind, Lawrence and Wishart offer a new selection from the writings of Marx, in the hope that it will enrich current discussions. The selection includes extracts from The Communist Manifesto, Capital volumes 1-3, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and The Poverty of Philosophy Dave Renton teaches History at Edge Hill College and is the author of Fascism: Theory and Practice (Pluto, 1999).

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We live in a world where questions of truth and of falsehood are left increasingly unattended. Such questions are often replaced by a relativism which allows any group the right to assert their values with impunity. Should, however, stories from an event such as the Holocaust be given equal truth status to neo-Nazi claims that it never happened? This book is a polemical warning against a too easy rejection of the standards of truth and value in the modern world, and is a further sortie in Christopher Norris's prolonged battle with the wilder side of postmodernism. Christopher Norris makes a timely reassessment of the cultural theorist Louis Althusser, and also makes a political case for Jacques Derrida whose "deconstruction" techniques are described as a useful tool when up against the rhetorical gestures of those theorists, such as Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty, who are trapped in the postmodern playpen. The book should be of interest to any student of contemporary philosophy, critical theory and politics, and should be a contribution to the debate that is currently dominated by conservative thinkers. Christopher Norris is the author of "The Deconstructive Turn", Jacques Derrida", "What's Wrong with Postmodernism" and "Uncritical Theory: Intellectuals, Politics and the Gulf War".

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Part of the English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, this volume contains the correspondence between Karl Marx and Frederick Engels from the latter part of the 19th century.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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This volume contains the end of Marx's economic manuscripts of 1861-63 which concludes his analysis of the production process of capital, concentrating on problems of the reproduction and circulation of the aggregate social capital. The book is part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collabo ration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

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Drawing on examples from Rhodes's railways to the tragedy of Grenfell, The Broken Promise of Infrastructure takes readers on a journey through a cultural history of infrastructure development across Britain and its Empire.

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Grunwick was the strike that changed the rules of the game.It changed the way the unions thought about race, about their own core values, and about the best way to organise among the new immigrant communities coming to Britain in the 1970s. Moreover, it changed the way unions thought about the law, and raised big questions about their will to win.In the beginning, Grunwick wasn't a strike about wages - it was about something much more important than that. It was about dignity at work. And, for the small band of Asian women strikers, who braved sun, rain and snow month-in and month-out on the picket-lines, from August 1976 to July 1978, rights in the workplace and pride at work, were far more important than any amount of money.At the time, this book was the seminal account of the dispute, providing the workers' own story in their own words and told by two of the leading participants in the strike. Now, forty years later, its themes still resonate, making this book vital reading for all of those who seek to organise within their own communities and workplaces.

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This book makes sense of New Labour by interpreting its ideas and practices as symptoms of the times in which we live. Making Sense of New Labour is an in-depth study, interpreting a wide range of material, including party political broadcasts and other election material, Tony Blair's speeches, and internal policy discussion. Finlayson disentangles and analyses the different elements of New Labour's political philosophy, which he argues is in large part a reflection of the culture and politics of contemporary capitalism. As such the party inevitably finds itself managing a status quo rather than driving genuine change. The book considers: - Labour's marketing strategy and susceptibility to consumer culture - the rhetoric and practice of modernisation - the place of the Third Way in the context of recent British political and intellectual history - the meaning of the 'knowledge economy' and significance of welfare-to-work - Labour's conception, and management, of the state Alan Finlayson is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales Swansea.

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Interviews with left feminist academics on feminism.

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This book examines how Western photographic practice has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes, and demands that we recognise and disrupt the ingrained racist ideologies that have tainted photography since its inception in 1839. Decolonising the Camera trains Mark Sealy’s sharp critical eye on the racial politics at work within photography, in the context of heated discussions around race and representation, the legacies of colonialism, and the importance of decolonising the university. Sealy analyses a series of images within and against the violent political reality of Western imperialism, and aims to extract new meanings and develop new ways of seeing that bring the Other into focus. The book demonstrates that if we do not recognise the historical and political conjunctures of racial politics at work within photography, and their effects on those that have been culturally erased, made invisible or less than human by such images, then we remain hemmed within established orthodoxies of colonial thought concerning the racialised body, the subaltern and the politics of human recognition. With detailed analyses of photographs – included in an insert – by Alice Seeley Harris, Joy Gregory, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and others, and spanning more than 100 years of photographic history, Decolonising the Camera contains vital visual and written material for readers interested in photography, race, human rights and the effects of colonial violence.

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This is the story of the historic 21 week equal pay strike at Trico-Folberth in Brentford, West London, in 1976. TRICO - A Victory to Remember is indispensable to understanding how the 1970s marked a turning point in making women's rights a central focus for the labour movement, casting aside the minor role women were allocated in the mainstream. No longer could women's rights be given mere lip service. The strike was trail-blazing in many ways. It was the first time American-style picket-busting convoys of lorries and scab labour had been used against strikers who were mainly women. The employer, Trico, relied on legal loopholes in the new Equal Pay Act in presenting the case to a tribunal, which was boycotted by the strikers' trade union, the AUEW. However, despite the tribunal ruling in favour of the employer, the union nevertheless successfully negotiated equal pay. This achievement was unique, and led towards the Equal Pay Act being amended in 1983. The story of the strike, illustrated with stunning archive photos mostly unseen for over forty years, charts the women's campaign from its beginnings to their final victory, including anecdotes from some of those involved. There is a brief history of the struggle for equal pay in Britain, and a chapter on the relevance of the Trico dispute to today's society. Author Sally Groves worked at Trico from 1975 - 1980 on assembly and then as a trainee tool setter. She was one of the women on strike in 1976, and became the Trico AUEW Strike Committee's Publicity Officer. This book will inspire women everywhere; trade unionists and anyone suffering as a result of the gig economy. It will be of particular interest to those studying and researching issues of women's equality.

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This biography tells the extraordinary story of Mary Turner (1938- 2017), the Brent dinner lady and trade union activist who rose to become president of the GMB union and chair of the Labour Party. Proud, fiery and determined when it came to standing up to exploitative employers, the privileged and the powerful; practical, compassionate and nurturing when it came to her members, the disadvantaged, or the victims of injustice: Mary Turner (1938-2017) was president of the GMB union for twenty years. This book tells the story of her life and, through it, charts the recent history of the British labour movement: from the People’s Marches for Jobs in 1981 and 1983, through the miners’ strike, to more recent struggles against cutbacks in local government, the depredations of multinational corporations, and the scourge of austerity. The book outlines Mary Turner’s instrumental role in the survival of the GMB as an independent union, and its unprecedented growth in membership after 2005 . This is an essential text for those interested in trade union history and the British labour movement, and will be of interest to anyone seeking inspiration from the life of this committed activist and campaigner – a woman whose first thought and prime concern was always the happiness, security and betterment of her members and all those whom she served.

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In For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US Jorge Tamames offers a stimulating comparative study of Spain’s Podemos and the Bernie Sanders movement in the US. Left populism emerges as a potential powerful antidote to rising inequality in both Europe and America. Recent years have witnessed dramatic challenges to established politics across Europe and America. Opposition to business-as-usual has not been limited to the radical right: left populist movements with transformative agendas offer a very different – if equally radical – response to the status quo. Focusing on left populist movements in the contrasting political landscapes of Spain and the US, For the People brings together insights from Karl Polanyi, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to offer a bold new explanatory framework for today’s left populism. The book will be a key text for activists, students of politics, and anyone interested in the current political landscape of Europe and America. It grounds its insights in a careful excavation of recent political history in the two countries, tracing the emergence and advance of left parties and movements from the early days of neoliberalism in the 1970s, through the political landslides that followed the 2008 financial crisis and the post2011 protest cycle, up to the present day. In the age of Trump and Brexit, For the People offers an indispensable mix of theoretical, historical and practical insights for all those interested in and inspired by the radical potentials of left populism.

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The British Women's Institute is more often associated with jam and Jerusalem than radical activity, but in this book Maggie Andrews explores the WI's relationship with feminism from the formation of the organisation in 1915 up to the eve of British feminism's renaissance in the late 1960s. The book aims to challenge, not only common sense perceptions about the Women's Institute but also those about feminism, interrogating preoccupations with domestic spaces and skills. This makes it is valuable reading for those interested in both historical and contemporary feminism, as well as, more broadly, the history of the twentieth century. Attention is given to the female cultural space and the value system provided by the WI, and the campaigns that articulated the needs of rural women and attempted to meet them. In this 100th anniversary year of the founding of the WI, this celebrated text is re-published in a new and completely revised edition. Maggie Andrews's new afterword considers the resurgence of interest in the WI amongst young women in the twenty-first century, and the relationship between this and the contemporary cultural enthusiasm for the domestic. There is also a new chapter on the formation of the WI in the First World War and substantial additions to existing chapters, including discussions of the WI involvement with radio in the inter-war years, and with evacuation in the Second World War.

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My Life's Battles is one of the first true working-class autobiographies, the story of Will Thorne, who helped to make a better world for ordinary people. Thorne's life story is a journey from tenements and factories to the corridors of power and the barricades of the Russian Revolution. Thorne began his working life as a six-year-old child labourer. His politics were shaped by his adventures with the tramping navvies, and forged among the roaring furnaces of the Beckton Gasworks in East London. As a semi-skilled industrial labourer, he founded the Gasworkers' Union, campaigned on behalf of the unemployed and fighting for the Eight Hour Day. Eleanor Marx helped him learn to read and write. He eventually became the General Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers union, and was an East London MP for forty years. Along the way, Thorne experienced the street fights and bitter strikes that represented the struggles of British Socialism and that gave rise to the Labour Movement. He oversaw the development of these battles into the creation of the Welfare State. Thorne's is a story of success, and one for celebration, but it is most importantly about one individual's achievements for the many, rather than for his own worldly gain. Sometimes fact is more fantastical - and liberating - than fiction.

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Ada Salter's pioneering role in the socialist politics of the early twentieth century has, in past accounts of the period, been marginalised in favour of the work of her husband Dr Alfred Salter. Yet years before the 'Bermondsey Revolution' Ada had worked out nearly all of its ideas from her experience in the women's movement and as President of the Women's Labour League. Afterwards, it was Ada on the LCC who spread ground-breaking ideas on urban development all over London and, as Chair of the National Gardens Guild, all over Britain. By foregrounding Ada - more rooted in the movement than her husband - Graham Taylor is better able to explore and interpret 'ethical socialism' and the revolutionary work of this remarkable woman, both previously overlooked. He shows how Ada's experiences as a 'Sister of the People' in the London slums led her to Keir Hardie's ILP, and to the belief that achieving democracy and social justice in Britain required a grassroots alliance between the labour and women's movements. Although other women in the ILP had similar ideas, only Ada actually took political power, implemented her derided 'utopian' ideas, and won elections by huge majorities. Based on original research, including unpublished memoirs, the author argues that successful social revolutions percolate upwards from grassroots activity in local communities to the highest reaches of government. In that way Ada's ethical socialism brought her into alliance with Ramsay Macdonald, Herbert Morrison and Bertrand Russell, and into conflict with Churchill, Asquith and Lenin. Finally, the author shows how the ideas of ethical socialism have now returned to contemporary politics. Finally, the author shows how the ideas of ethical socialism have now returned to contemporary politics, making Ada Salter a remarkable figure of topical historical interest.

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Introduction by Paul Preston with a foreword by Rodney Bickerstaffe This scrapbook, kept by a 17-year-old children's nurse in South Yorkshire, offers an insight into the political and emotional impact that the Spanish Civil War had on a generation who lived through the agonising defeat of the Spanish Republic. Elizabeth Pearl Bickerstaffe's cuttings reveal the extent of human suffering in the war in Spain - and likewise in China - in which civilians were the main casualties. They also tell of the vain efforts in Britain and by the International Brigade volunteers in Spain itself to prevent this latest triumph for the fascist powers in Europe. And we sense the fierce commitment to the cause of the Spanish Republic felt by the newspaper correspondents and photographers who witnessed this unfolding tragedy. The role of the foreign correspondents in Spain is discussed in an introduction by Paul Preston, the foremost historian of the Spanish Civil War. In his foreword, Rodney Bickerstaffe underlines the important part played both by the events in Spain and by his mother's scrapbook in shaping his political values. This point is amplified in Jim Jump's preface explaining more about the creation, context and consequences of Pearl Bickerstaffe's compelling scrapbook of one of the major episodes in twentieth-century history.

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This edition of letters by Antonio Gramsci vividly evokes the 'great and terrible world' in which he lived, a description he used a number of times in his correspondence. The letters show Gramsci beginning to form the theoretical concepts that come to fuller fruition in the Prison Notebooks, but they also give an essential and rounded picture of Gramsci's development, politically, intellectually and emotionally - the latter especially through letters to his family and wife. Broadly speaking, the letters are of three types: early letters to Gramsci's family; overtly political letters from Turin, Moscow, Vienna, and Rome; and letters to the Schucht sisters, including Jul'ka, whom he married while in Moscow. The political letters constitute a fascinating insight into the period, both with regard to the Communist International and, more often, to Italian politics. The volume also includes the famous letter of 1926 in which Gramsci, writing in the name of the Italian Party's Political Bureau, criticises the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party for their handling of internal opposition. The book follows a broadly chronological structure, and includes a general introduction, a guide to the main personalities involved, and additional contextual information for each chapter. It also includes some little-known photographic material.

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The Green London Way is an alternative approach to the exploration of London. The book describes a hundred mile walk circling the capital, but, uniquely, also offers insightful histories of London's people and a commentary on its abundant local wildlife. The walk, divided into manageable sections, each with maps by Graham Scrivener (the 'urban Wainwright'), traverses London's tow paths, woodlands and commons, examining links between local human history and the landscape on which it is founded. This updated version of the text also incorporates discussion of the rapid developments in London in the past twenty years, analysing the features which have recently changed the face of the city. Bob Gilbert provides a wealth of information about the plant and animal life of London, including some surprising instances of rare species. In terms of wildlife, landscape and history, The Green London Way is full of discoveries for any walker or reader, and provides a new awareness of Greater London.

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The policies pursued in Brussels are unremittingly conservative, the product of the technocratic right's dominance of EU institutions and most national capitals. These essays propose a clean break with the right's hegemony and suggest a radical agenda for change and reform. Instead of supporting the disruptive distraction of a referendum, the UK left should work with other European progressives to create a programme for economic, social and ecological renewal for Europe in the world. In this volume, contributors - all leading MEPs and senior EU officials - discuss austerity's throttling of Europe's growth prospects; how to respond to the return of poverty and rampant inequalities; and how to challenge unaccountable corporate power. They also engage critically with Europe's environmental policies, which have been long on promise and short on delivery; its short-sighted immigration management; and its sacrifice of fair trade in the name of an ideological commitment to unbridled globalisation.

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Colin Ward was one of the most significant thinkers and activists of the British anarchist movement in the twentieth century. He was a prolific journalist who had a profound impact on political thought, most notably through his works on urban life, housing, squatters, children and criminology. Contributors focus on Ward's life and works, including analyses of: his contribution to the resurgence of anarchist journalism through War Commentary and Freedom; his impact on other activists; the relationship between his form of anarchism and the evolving New Left; how Ward's 'practical anarchism' was influenced by the works of Peter Kropotkin; Ward's Englishness; the contributions he made to British social policy in the post-war period; and his endorsement of the seemingly incompatible movements of social anarchism and lifestyle anarchism.

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Suburbs and the relationships that sustain them have been subject to tremendous changes in the last fifty years, with changing work patterns, changing family lives, changing patterns of home ownership and a massive shift in the structural relationships between inner cities and their surrounding urban environment. But this transformation has been largely overlooked, and the suburbs have lived on in the collective imagination as places that are homogenous and/or boring. But suburbs have always come in many shapes and sizes, and this book documents widely varying forms of suburban life to construct a compelling narrative of suburban diversity and variety. Huq demonstrates conclusively that those who still fondly imagine the suburbs as the preserve of maiden aunts on bicycles, the domain of archetypal Englishness - or less fondly as places of stifling conformism and stagnation - are wide of the mark. In this sense her re-imagining of the suburbs is also a re-imagining of Englishness.

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Regeneration focuses on the question of intergenerational justice. Defining the world's young people as those born after 1979 - a hugely symbolic moment in the history of globalisation - it reflects on the massive growth in generational protest across the globe thirty years later. At its heart is an analysis of politics though the prism of generation. The incapacity of the major political parties in Britain to think beyond their short-term electoral interests is, by definition, particularly harmful for those at the beginning of their lives. It has led to a failure to act on climate change, savage cutbacks in education and training, an acute shortage of housing, big cuts in youth services, and, for many, the prospect of an old age without pensions. Things have deteriorated to the point where many young people are finding it impossible to find the wherewithal to settle down and have families - the classic marks of adulthood. But, as Shiv Malik argues in his preface, a diagnosis of the problem does not absolve the young from taking responsibility for developing solutions. We need more than 'a whinge of epic proportions'. And, as he also points out, the young are well placed to develop alternatives: 'we are the most well-educated, innovative, dynamic and open generation in human history'. This means that this book also has plenty of ideas for changing the future.

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John Saville (1916-2009) was one of the leading socialist academics of his generation, and one of the most influential figures in British labour history. This new collection of essays offers a variety of perspectives on his lifetime's work. A first section - commitments - assesses Saville's activities, at different times during his life, as a communist, as a founder of the New Left, and as editor (with Ralph Miliband) of the long-running Socialist Register. The middle section - themes - looks at key themes which mattered for Saville, from revolutionary anti-imperialism in India to the politics of Cold War and debates in labour history. In part three - interventions - contributors discuss Saville's contributions to contemporary historical understanding of Chartism, British labourism and the Cold War. The aim is to offer critical analysis and reflection in the tradition which Saville himself did so much to establish.

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This book is an attempt 'to think in a Gramscian way' about the curious political phenomenon of New Labour. It is written partly in retort to those people at the heart of the New Labour project who have cited Gramsci as a source of inspiration for their ideas. Pearmain argues that New Labour makes a far better object than agent of Gramscian analysis.

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