ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Ramsay sycophancy
PAUL DONOVAN observes how the first Labour parliamentarians were merely malleable pillars of the establishment
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 Wild Men
David Torrance
Bloomsbury, £20
THE main achievement of the first Labour government of 1924 proved to be demonstrating that they were not “wild men” at all.
The Establishment clearly saw the mixture of working-class representatives, elected in 1923, as a potential revolutionary threat to its existence. The British version of the Bolsheviks in Russia. What David Torrance clearly demonstrates is that they were anything but.
There were the initial niceties of dress, certain suits for different occasions. The prime minister had personally to fund the furnishing of Downing Street. The lack of trust of the first Labour administration is amusingly illustrated with the story of four splendid silver candlesticks, which reappeared in the Colonial Office, as Labour minister Jimmy Thomas left.
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