VIJAY PRASHAD examines why in 2018 Washington started to take an increasingly belligerent stance towards ‘near peer rivals’ – Russa and China – with far-reaching geopolitical effects
The plot that was not
MAT COWARD takes us back 230 years to the inglorious era of George III and a treasonous plan by the London Corresponding Society, in which all was not as it seemed…
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ATTEMPTING to neutralise dissidents by accusing them of serious crimes is a trick governments never get tired of.
Older readers will remember (though they may wonder if they dreamed such a bizarre episode) the time that Peter Hain was tried at the Old Bailey for robbing a bank. Now a respectable Labour peer, but then a radical Young Liberal and leading anti-apartheid campaigner, Hain was framed in 1976 by agents working for the South African government with the approval of the British secret police. He was only acquitted on a majority verdict. Even during a period of strange political trials, that one was sufficiently farcical to stand out.
At least the crime Hain was falsely accused of actually occurred. Unlike The Pop-Gun Plot...
More from this author
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
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MAT COWARD offers a roll call of refuseniks – some for political reasons, others for quirky reasons of their own
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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
Similar stories
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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
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MAT COWARD explores how the ‘Tory-Radical’ Christian minister became a fiery opponent of the Poor Law, advocating armed resistance against its brutal cruelty against the emerging working class
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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
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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