’Mon the Workers’. Celebrating 125 Years of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, ed. Daniel Gray with photography by Alan McCredie, Luath Press Edinburgh, 2022, pp271, 978-1-80425-033-4 Reviewed by Jenni Gunn ‘Mon the Workers hascome at an important flash point for the workers movement. ‘Hot Strike Summer’ is leading into the new ‘Winter of Discontent’ as […]
Catherine Flynn (ed.) The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, Cambridge, 2022, £30, pp988, 9781316515945 and Sam Slote, Marc Mamigonian and John Turner, Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses, Oxford, 2022, £125, pp1424, 0198864582 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan. A hundred years have passed since Sylvia Beach, the owner of the Shakespeare and […]
Roger Seifert, UNITE History Volume 2 (1932-1945): The Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU): No Turning Back: The Road to War and Welfare, Liverpool University Press, 2022, ppxii+165, £6.99 (e-book), 9781802076981. Reviewed by Dave Sherry 2022 marks the centenary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union – a predecessor and constituent part of UNITE, Britain […]
Eileen Turnbull, A Very British Conspiracy – The Shrewsbury 24 and the Campaign for Justice, Verso, 2022, £16.99, pp384, 9781804290149 Reviewed by Stephen Smellie Every now and then you read a book that you immediately want to tell other people about, that you believe is important and that what you have learned from reading it […]
L. Douds, J. Harris and P. Whitewood (eds.) The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation 1917-41, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020 Brendan McGeever Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 2019 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan Russia’s liberatory 1917 revolution became, within two decades, more dictatorial than the system it had overthrown. For the right, this […]
Ben Tarnoff Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future, Verso, 2022, pp272, £8.99 Reviewed by John Wood A new and highly informative book by leading tech writer and activist, Ben Tarnoff, responds to a dilemma that the world is waking up to and which we must confront together: that the internet has […]
Neil Davidson, James Foley, and Ben Wray Scotland After Britain: The Two Souls of Scottish Independence, Verso, 2022, £12.99 pb Reviewed by Gordon Morgan The authors have attempted a massive task. First, to set out a theoretical framework of nationalism’s role in the post-crash 2008 world and tie this to earlier theories like Marx and Lenin. The […]
Jeff Sparrow Crimes against Nature – Capitalism and Global Heating, Scribe, 2021, pp240, £16.99 Reviewed by Charlotte Ahmed Jeff Sparrow is an Australian writer, broadcaster and journalist. This, his latest book, is a collection of polemical essays detailing examples of how capitalism has imposed ecological disaster on the worlds’ population in the name of growth. […]
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, The World For Sale: Money, Power And The Traders Who Barter The Earth’s Resources, Random House, 2021, £9.99, pp416, 9781847942678 Reviewed by Will Podmore. Blas and Farchy are journalists at Bloomberg News. Previously, they covered commodities for the Financial Times. They have produced a fascinating account, based on more than […]
Mike Phipps, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, OR Books, 2022, 9781682193693, £13, pp230 Reviewed by Dexter Govan. When the storm cleared after the 2019 general election, there was wreckage in its wake. Much of it now is the flotsam accounts of prominent individuals from the labour left, published as monographs, and often accusing former crewmates […]