Kirjahaku

This is the biography of Sylvia Pankhurst. A promising art student, she became involved in the Suffragette movement and was especially keen to take the cause to the East End of London. Much of her life was devoted to the causes of anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and the independence of Ethiopia.

The outbreak of war in August 1914 was devastating for many people. None more so, however, than the British socialists who strongly believed, despite 'German menace' warnings, that war was a nightmare of the past and socialism was growing steadily around the globe. The Drums of Armageddon is a detailed and poignant exploration of the last peacetime and the first five wartime months of 1914 as presented on the pages of the three longest established socialist weeklies - Justice, the Clarion, and Labour Leader. It begins by looking at worries about war in the Balkans, at the activities of militant suffragettes, serious strike threats and a near civil war situation in Ireland. And once war was declared, the widening split in socialist ranks.Its main focus is on the divide between the Clarion which accepted the necessity for the war and the largely 'anti-war' Independent Labour Party (ILP). And within the British Socialist Party (BSP) between the self-styled 'Old Guard' with a 'pro-Ally' stance who found themselves besieged by more recent recruits taking an 'internationalist' line. These early months of the war also saw the formation of two important new organisations, the Union of Democratic Control by Labour and Radical Liberal MPs and others, and later the mainly pacifist No-Conscription Fellowship. This complex and fascinating period of British history is well-documented and the author has done a meticulous job in interpreting the day-to-day reality of its impact on British socialism.

During the period between the two world wars, the Independent Labour Party was the main voice of radical socialism in Great Britain. Founded in 1893, the ILP had affiliated to the Labour Party in 1906, when that party formed, although relations between the two had often been marked by conflict. In the decade following World War I, as the Labour Party edged nearer to its 1929 electoral victory, the ILP found its own identity under siege. On one side stood those who wanted the ILP to subordinate itself to the increasingly cautious and conventional Labour Party. On the other side were those who felt that the ILP should throw its lot in with the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain and affiliate with the Soviet Communist Party. In 1932, the ILP chose instead to disaffiliate from the Labour Party in order to pursue a "revolutionary policy"—a policy that ultimately led to much debate and disunity. At the time it broke with Labour, the ILP boasted a membership five times that of the CPGB, as well as a sizeable contingent of MPs. By the return of war in 1939, the party had all but dissolved.Despite its reversal of fortunes, during the 1930s—years that witnessed the ascendancy of both Stalin and Hitler—the ILP demonstrated an unswerving commitment to democratic socialist thinking. Drawing extensively on the ILP's Labour Leader and other contemporary left-wing newspapers, as well as on ILP publications and internal party documents, Bullock examines the debates and ideological battles of the ILP during the tumultuous interwar period. He argues that the ILP made a lasting contribution to British politics in general, and to the modern Labour Party in particular, by preserving the values of democratic socialism during the interwar period.

Over two decades have passed since the collapse of the USSR, yet thewords "Soviet Union" still carry significant weight in thecollective memory of millions. But how often do we consider the truemeaning of the term "Soviet"? Drawing extensively onleft-wing press archives, Romancing the Revolution traces the reactionsof the British Left to the idealized concept of Soviet democracy.Focusing on the turbulent period after the 1917 Russian Revolution,author Ian Bullock examines the impact of the myth of Soviet democracy:the belief that Russia was embarking on a brave experiment in a form ofpopular government more genuine and advanced than even the best formsof parliamentarism. Romancing the Revolution uncovers theimprint of this myth on left-wing organizations and their publications.