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MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
A Centenary for Socialism challenges preconceptions and explodes myths
ROBERT GRIFFITHS previews a new single-volume history, A Centenary for Socialism: Britain’s Communist Party 1920-2020
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
It’s been a long time coming. Studies of Communist Party history in Britain have been published on a substantial scale over recent decades. Four volumes of “official history” by party members James Klugmann and Nora Branson took the story from before the foundation of the party in 1920 up to 1951.
These were informative if somewhat orthodox accounts, written by historians in a position to reveal more but who chose to present the facts and defend them against the party’s right-wing and far-left detractors.
Books by John Callaghan and Geoff Andrews were presented by their publishers as a continuation of the series. Unfortunately, however, the former tried too hard amidst a welter of useful information to portray a tired party in inexorable decline, either wrong or thwarted sooner or later at almost every turn.
The less said about Andrews’ one-sided apologia for the destructive impact of Eurocommunist revisionism, the better. He has composed a semi-fictional odyssey which ends with Odysseus slaying Penelope in a mercy killing.
More from this author
From McCarthy’s prison cells to London’s carnival, Jones fought for peace and unity while exposing the lies of US imperialism, says ROBERT GRIFFITHS, in a graveside oration at Highgate Cemetery given last Sunday
In the second of two articles on Labour’s weak Budget, ROBERT GRIFFITHS argues that Britain’s massive private wealth and offshore tax havens show clear potential for radical redistribution through progressive taxation
In the first of two articles, ROBERT GRIFFITHS argues that despite a parliamentary majority, Labour’s timid Budget fails to seize a historic opportunity and lacks the ambition needed to address Britain’s deep social and economic crises
As the People's Republic turns 75, ROBERT GRIFFITHS details how British communists championed Chinese sovereignty against imperialism, weathering the political storms of the Sino-Soviet split and collapse of the USSR to rebuild relations for the modern era
