With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
Doing battle with war: the Luton Peace Riots 1919
MAT COWARD delves into the riots that saw ex-soldiers ransack a banquet, commandeer a piano and torch the town hall, enraged by tone-deaf officials’ elitist armistice celebrations
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WE’VE heard of bread riots, race riots, and even cheese riots — but the category of “peace riot” must surely be a pretty select one.
It sounds a bit like a joke, but the Luton Peace Riots, which took place between July 19-21 1919, weren’t funny at all: there were many injuries, hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of damage was done to the town centre, the town hall was burned down and subsequently demolished, and eventually only a military occupation ended the uprising.
And all of this was over the handling of the armistice celebrations.
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MAT COWARD battles wayward pigeons in pursuit of a crop of purple sprouting broccoli
Despite his wealthy background and membership of a secretive aristocratic occult club, the radical politician forged an alliance with the working class to fight for democracy and free speech against the Georgian elite, writes MAT COWARD
![](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/PA-22539218.jpg.webp?itok=oNq0OYE-)
MAT COWARD offers a roll call of refuseniks – some for political reasons, others for quirky reasons of their own
![](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/11%20-%20Dickens%20Christmas_0.jpg.webp?itok=MmkV6CMd)
Charles Dickens was facing a return to the destitution that had blighted his childhood, and it was this which drove him to write the remarkable best-seller which changed the politics of Christmas forever, writes MAT COWARD
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From swimming pool soviets to piano factory occupations, early 20th-century radical organiser Lillian Thring chose street battles and mass action over the electoral path, writes MAT COWARD
![](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/m_coward_forest_piece_webpic.jpg.webp?itok=oIehmAG-)
It's hard to think of any single piece of legislation enacted on this island since November 1217 that was more radical in spirit or in practice than the Forest Charter, writes MAT COWARD
![](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/10%20-%20I%20vow%20to%20thee.jpg.webp?itok=02zvqDmm)
MAT COWARD unearths Gustav Holst’s radical roots, from meetings at William Morris’s house to pamphlet-printing and agitation with the Red Vicar of Thaxted — and laments that he is remembered today for the entirely wrong reason
![](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/9%20%E2%80%94%20the%20Corn%20Exchange%201808.jpg.webp?itok=RyPTKsB_)
MAT COWARD tells the story of how rising food prices in 1800 sparked six days of protests at the Corn Exchange, as Londoners demanded affordable food and challenged mind-bogglingly stupid government policies about bread