MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Book Review: Telling the Mayflower Story by Danny Reilly and Steve Cushion
A timely antidote to the myths of the founding fathers as the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing in America approaches
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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
Telling the Mayflower Story: Thanksgiving or Land Grabbing, Massacres and Slavery?
by Danny Reilly and Steve Cushion
(Socialist History Society, £4)
THE still widely held belief that the Mayflower settlers laid the foundation for “freedom and democracy” in the US is the stuff of classic textbook histories of the Puritan settlements in New England.
With the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing looming in 2020, this pamphlet by Danny Reilly and Steve Cushion re-examines the history behind that belief.
An understanding of the development of European settlement there demands an account of the genocide of the indigenous population, along with New England’s role in slavery and the slave trade and the pamphlet details the full history of the colonisation of north America as a “three-cornered” process, involving not only the Mayflower settlers but also First Nation peoples and African slaves.
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