Colin Turbett The Anglo-Soviet Alliance: Comrades and Allies during WW2, 2021, Pen & Sword Military, pp216, 1526776588 Reviewed by Michael A MacLeod As a schoolboy, I interviewed an uncle for a school project regarding WW2. There, I heard first hand of the Arctic Convoys where my uncle had served as bosun on a Merchant Navy […]
Eve Livingston Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions, 2021, Pluto, pp160, 0745341624 Reviewed by John Wood For some, there is a rare feeling of positivity in the union movement at the moment, as unions prepare to take strike action in Glasgow and beyond, and with a wave of encouraging personnel changes in the senior […]
Jane Holgate Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence, 2021, Pluto, pp272, 074534402X Reviewed by Michael MacNeil Holgate charts the historical rise and fall of union power but this is no dry or dreary account of the past. The book is structured to build bridges between the new unionisms of the 1880s and the situation facing […]
James McEnaney Class Rules: The truth about Scottish schools, 2021, Luath, pp240, 1910022608 Reviewed by David Watt Class Rules is an engaging tour through Scotland’s contemporary education landscape. It maps out some of key issues in Scottish schools in the early twenty-first century and is recommended for those who wish an up-to-the-minute, broadly-based critique of […]
Rob Gibson Reclaiming our Land, 2020, self-published, pp324, 9781527281813 Reviewed by Magnus Davidson This is a book about land reform, providing through it a valuable resource for those looking to better understand the history of the SNP and those interested in parliamentary process. Gibson, with a long history in the SNP, was MSP for the […]
Neil Findlay (ed.) If You Don’t Run, They Can’t Chase You: Stories from the frontline of the fight for social justice, 2021, Luath, pp184, 1910022438 Reviewed by Iain Ferguson October 2021 marked the third anniversary of the historic 48-hour strike for equal pay by 8,000, mainly female, Glasgow council workers, members of UNISON and the […]
John Wood reviews two books about the environmental emergency. As the climate crisis comes into sharper relief by the day, it is no exaggeration – if perhaps something we have heard in previous years – for the UN to describe 2021 as ‘make-or-break’ for our planet’s future. Glasgow’s COP26 should focus the minds of global […]
Hall, E. (ed.) New Light on Tony Harrison, Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2019, pp246, £45 (hb), 978-0197266519, and Hall, E. Tony Harrison: Poet of Radical Classicism, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, pp248, £45 (hb), 978-1474299336. Reviewed by Sean Sheehan Edith Hall is at the heart of two books about the aesthetics of resistance in the […]
Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, Finntopia: What we can learn from the world’s happiest country, Agenda Publishing, £18.99, 9781788212151 Reviewed by Mike Danson This book is barely ‘okay’. To anyone accessing Nordic Horizons online, on Facebook or Twitter there is nothing surprising nor new in this publication and they will probably find the massive data […]
Fotheringham, B., Sherry, D. and Bryce, C. (eds.) Breaking up the British State: Scotland, Independence & Socialism (Bookmarks, 2021, 436pp, £12) and Stott. P. and Taaffe, P. Scotland & the National Question: A Marxist Approach (SPS Publications, 2020, 145pp, £8) Reviewed by Murray Armstrong Two books address the same two questions: why should socialists support […]