PETER MASON applauds the revival, 39 years later with the same team and cast, of Manfred Karge’s version of Brecht’s 100-year-old play, Mann Ist Mann
The common cause
RICHARD MURGATROYD welcomes the modern relevance of a history of the expropriation of common lands for private profit
LANDMARK PROTEST: 80th anniversary of of the 1932 Mass Trespass in the Peak District: Singer and broadcaster Mike Harding (centre), flanked by (from left to right) Kate Ashbrook, President of the Ramblers; Dame Fiona Reynolds Director General of the National Trust; Broadcaster Stuart Maconie and Harry Rothman, son of trespass leader Benny Rothman
MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds a fearless attempt to bring to the stage the 1984 toxic gas disaster in Bhopal, India
ALEX HALL applauds the account of a dogged, traumatic and punishing campaign for justice that has lasted from 1998 to the present day
NICK WRIGHT laments the political bias of an epic attempt to tell the history of the liberation of France from the Nazis, that excludes both the decisive contribution of the Soviet Red Army, and of the French communist party itself
JOE GILL traces the ideology and method of contemporary imperialism back to the greed, hubris and violence of the late 15th century Portuguese
The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism
By Ian Angus
Monthly Review Press, New York, £18.99
A GOOD history book makes you think about the present.
On the day I finished Ian Angus’s The War Against the Commons I visited my local station ticket office. The queue was long and I had time to look around and reflect. Once all this great building, this marvel of engineering, this vital service, had been publicly owned, part of the modern “commons.” Even now in its privatised state there remained some good elements – like the expert and helpful staff in the ticket office which the train-lords and rentier bankers were planning to evict!
So, Angus’s book is timely indeed.
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