ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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An outstanding history of the CPB
PHIL KATZ recommends an accessible and painstakingly researched history written by an educator, agitator and organiser
A huge crowd gathered outside the British Museum, to hear Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, make a speech about Aid to Russia, 1941
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
The gleam of socialism: Britain’s Communist Party 1920-2020
Robert Griffiths, Praxis Press, £25
ROBERT GRIFFITHS is the first general secretary of a Communist Party to write a party history.
The book aims to do three things: to speak to the growing number of new joiners; to deal in facts, which are sometimes uncomfortable for the party but always very uncomfortable for the ruling class; and to locate the party in a historical continuity which demonstrates that Marxism is a world outlook of the working class, that also has deep roots in British popular history.
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