The proxy war in Ukraine is heading to a denouement with the US and Russia dividing the spoils while the European powers stand bewildered by events they have been wilfully blind to, says KEVIN OVENDEN
Remembering John Ball and the 1381 English Uprising
The peasants’ leader has inspired centures of reformers and revolutionaries since his execution in the Middle Ages following the failed revolt with his vision of an England freed from the Church and aristocracy, writes JAMES CROSSLEY
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THIS summer marks the 640th anniversary of the 1381 English uprising, often known as the Peasants’ Revolt.
The uprisings in the south-east have become the most famous. On their arrival in London, the (largely) disciplined rebels selected political, legal and ecclesiastical targets associated with the ruling class.
Remarkably, rebels managed to get into the Tower of London and decapitate some of the most powerful people in England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (and Chancellor of England), Simon Sudbury.
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JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis
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Marxist theologian PROFESSOR JAMES CROSSLEY looks at how the story of the birth of Jesus was created from multiple sources and how the political class use and abuse it today
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The sight of Lib Dem politicians engaging in a patronising gesture to Muslim voters by jumping on the Ramadan fast really hollows out the meaning and content of the term ‘solidarity', observes JAMES CROSSLEY
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A new movement of socialist fight-sports clubs is smashing misconceptions that the left is a muddle of middle-class milquetoasts, writes JAMES CROSSLEY
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ELAINE MCFARLAND and JIM WHISTON introduce a collection of essays published in honour of Professor John Foster
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GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
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MAT COWARD traces how ill health and voracious reading transformed a military man into the Father of Reform, championing American independence, universal suffrage and secret ballots against Establishment resistance