LEO BOIX applauds an audacious, self-questioning film about grief, friendship and film-making
Minnie Pallister: The Voice of a Rebel
Alun Burge
Parthian Books, £20
AN ADOPTED daughter of Wales, a dimly remembered heroine of the labour and peace movement, and a renowned broadcaster and journalist makes for the fascinating tale of the life of Minnie Pallister. Alan Burge’s biography of Pallister is a story of the labour movement itself.
One of three daughters born to Durham coal miner William Pallister, who became a Wesleyan Methodist minister and took his young family to live in Haverford West in Pembrokeshire in 1899. The young Minnie was the middle daughter and became a confirmed socialist and pacifist and campaigned against the Great War alongside her friends Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald.
HENRY BELL salutes a fine portrait of a revolutionary who remains a deeply significant and provocative figure
ALEX HALL welcomes a history of the Bund, and its emphatic demand for working-class solidarity across racial and ethnic difference
RON JACOBS welcomes the political lessons for today, about organisation and withdrawal from conflict, made by an erudite and conversational biography
KENNY MacASKILL reminds us of the unprecedented political career of a Scottish miner’s militant son who stayed the course and true to his roots



