Labour Affairs Magazine

This is an on-going project, starting with the oldest material available. And note that some articles appear under two or more headings, when they fit both.

More recent articles can be found at our current site, https://labouraffairs.com/.

Socialist History and Theory
Socialist of the Past
The Soviet Collapse
British Political History
British Politics
The British Labour Party
The Conservative Party
Trade Unionism
United Nations and International Law
Ireland
The Rest of Europe
Iraq and the West
Islamic World (other than Iraq)
China
Other International
World History
Economics
Culture
Science and Technology
Other

Socialist History and Theory

Socialist of the Past

Interview with Barbara Castle. In Place of Strife was a lost opportunity. This and refusing various other schemes paved the way for Thatcher.
1991 interview with Eric Heffer, considering Labour’s likely future. Tribute to Eric Heffer. Eric Heffer autobiography reviewed.
Ed Miliband and Ralph Milliband – an anti-state legacy.

Before the 1970s

Jack Jones on Ernest Bevin.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.
My Father Raymond Williams.
Raymond Williams in World War Two.

Clement Attlee, deputy to Churchill in World War One, and Prime Minister in the 1945 Labour Government.
Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947.

Anthony Crosland, prominent socialist intellectual and minister under Harold Wilson.

Orwell on Spain and Britain. Always against and with no positive ideas.
Orwell Looking Down on British Workers.
Orwell as a British Imperialist.

Why Trotsky’s politics achieved nothing solid.

Before 1930

Citrine and Bevin Part 1, Citrine and Bevin Part 2..

R. H. Tawney. Kier Hardy – Labour’s First MP.

Socialism & Society by Ramsay MacDonald (1). Ramsay MacDonald (2 of 2). Letter to the editor about Ramsay MacDonald, plus Reply.

William Morris On What Life Might Be.

The Soviet Collapse

Gorbachev’s Reforms

Remembering in 1988 the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (which with hindsight doomed the Soviet Bloc to stagnation and death).
Scepticism in 1987 about Gorbachev’s Reforms.
Thatcher and Gorbachev as Soulmates (in 1989, before both fell).
Flux in the Europe that Stalin Made (written before the Warsaw Pact collapse).
How Gorbachev Wrecked the Soviet Union. (written in 2018)
Gorbachev and Islam, reconsidered in 2010.
A 1988 view seeing Gorbachev’s economic reforms as failing.
Gorbachev ‘s Failure, Foreseen in 1990.
How Ideologies Collapsed Within the Soviet Union and Within Roman Catholicism.
How Marxism Redefined Human Society.

The 1989 Collapse of the Warsaw Pact

The collapse of East European Leninism, written in March 1989.
Fall of Romania’s Ceausescu.
Poland in 1991 With Lech Walesa as President.
The Post-1956 Failure of Pro–Moscow Communism.
Looking Back in 1991 at East Germany’s collapse.
The Failed Russian Coup of 1991.
Warning in 1991 About a War Against Serbia.
The East European Leninist Collapse of 1989-90,
1991 Vanishing of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Collapse (written just after the failed 1991 coup).

The Yeltsin Succession

Kleptocracy in Yeltsin’s Russia. (His failures described in 1992.)
Russia past and present (in 1992).
Yeltsin’s Final Election and the Near-Return of the Russian Communist s.
Yeltsin Becoming Dictatorial in Russia (1993).
Russia : The Incompetent Capitalist Revolution.

The Putin Era

Did Russia do the Nerve Gas Assassination?.
Boris Johnson and the ‘Russian’ Nerve Gas Attack.
Afterword About Gorbachev and Putin (from 2010).

British Political History

Recent

The UK economy in 2009.
Socialism, Inequality and Health (2009).
The Anglosphere in 2004 (Anticipating Brexit).
The Thatcherite Concepts of Classlessness.
Thatcher struck at the roots of Britishness.
Awed by the Amazing Twentieth?.
Fear of Socialism by the Labour Defectors of 2019.
Boris Johnson and the ‘Russian’ Nerve Gas Attack.
The West Lothian Question, Tory Promises in the 2014 Scottish Referendum.
Baby Boomers to Blame? Are the world’s current problems caused by the generation born from 1945 to 1964?
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
The Don’t-Care State. A criticism in 1995 of the attack on Welfare.
Letter on Democracy and Capitalism.
Democracy and one-party states.
British Citizens or UK Customers;
Letter on Education (1);

Parliamentary Notes: December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, April 2014, May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, September 2014, October 2014, November 2014, December 2014, February 2015, March 2015, April 2015, None for May, June 2015, July-August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015, 2nd for November 2015, December 2015, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016, July-August 2016, September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, December 2016, January- February 2017, March 2017, April 2017, May 2017, Not June 2017 (election), July 2017, August 2017, September 2017, October 2017, November 2017, December 2017, February 2018, March 2018, April 2018, May 2018, June 2018, July-August 2018, September 2018, October 2018, November 2018, December 2018 (1), December 2018 (2), February 2019, March 2019, April 2019, Parliamentary Notes for 5/2019, PN 6/2019, PN 7/19, PN 9/19, PN 10/19; PN 11/19 :

Diary of a Corbyn Foot Soldier: May 2016, June 2016, July-August 2016, September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, December 2016, February 2017, March 2017, Not for April, May 2017, June 2017, July-August 2017, September 2017, October 2017, November 2017, December 2017, None for February, March 2018, April 2019, May 2018, June 2018, July-August 2018, Diary of a Corbyn foot soldier for 9/2018, CFS – 02/19, :

It’s A Fact; Interesting Statistics: December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, April 2014, May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, September 2014, October 2014.

Before 2000

Before the 1980s

Workers Control – the Lost Chance of the 1970s. Available as PDFs, 1, The 1970s Debate on Workers Control: 2 (continued), 3 (continued), 4 (continued), 5 (continued), 6 Workers Control (completed).
Tribute to Max Levitas , veteran British Communist.

Before the 1960s

The 1945 Labour Government. Clement Attlee. Anthony Crosland. Hugh Dalton.
The Belfast ‘Yellow Jackets’ Of 1950;
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.

World War Two

The British Empire’s Accidental War With Nazi Germany.
What Churchill really meant by ‘The Few’. (It included bombing Germany.)
Britain’s 20th century wars.
Raymond Williams in World War Two.
Deaths Caused by Hitler.
Mussolini’s Links to the British Centre-Right.

From 1918 to 1939

Force-Labour Camps in 1930s Britain.
‘Bomber’ Harris in 1920s Iraq.
Poppies and Butcher Haig (poem).

World War One

The British Establishment Planned World War One. Germany was winning in peaceful economic competition.
Was the Brest-Litovsk Peace Unreasonable?
Haig’s Command.

Parliament and World War One; Debates in Parliament. Posted Monthly: May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, October 2014, November 2014, December 2014, February 2015, March 2015, April 2015, May 2015, June 2015, July-August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015 (1), November 2015 (2), December 2015, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016, July-August 2016, September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, December 2016, February 2017, March 2017, April 2017, May 2017, June 2017, July-August 2017, September 2017, October 2017, November 2017, December 2017, February 2018, March 2018, April 2018, May 2018, June 2018, July-August 2018, PWW1 for 9/2018; PWW1 10/18; PWW1 11/18; PWW1; 12/18, PWW1 – 02/19; :

Before 1914

British Democracy Began in 1884. Only then did a majority of British men get the vote. And no women till 1918.
How the British Empire Blighted Britain. Much of the country has lost population since the 19th century.
Needless Suffering in the 1840s Irish Potato Famine. Free-Market Dogma put ahead of human life.
Minterism: an English Vanity. (H. G. Wells on the Victorian self–made man.)
Bulstrode: the Complexities of English Hypocrisy.
Sociocide – Liberalism’s True History.
How William Cobbett went from Anti-Jacobin to supporter of rural protests . (The 1830 ‘Captain Swing‘ riots, violent enough to be called a Rural War.)
The 1831 Trial of William Cobbett. A key moment in establishing freedom to support popular discontent.
Balfour on Cobden and Progress. Why does Balfour Still Matter?. Balfour on Cobden and Corn Laws. Radicalism Beyond Cobden. Balfour on Political Economy. Balfour’s ‘Fragment On Progress’. How Balfour Saw Progress.
Mary Shelley’s misinterpreted Frankenstein. How it has never been presented as she saw it.
British and US Genocide.
Liberalism From Cromwell to Lloyd George.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.
How John Stewart Mill twisted the idea of liberty.

Before 1800

Adam Smith Had Alien Social Values.
Arkwright – How Money Conquered Work. The birth of the factory system.
Slavery in the British Empire. Most account concentrate on Britain’s role in ending it, ignoring how vital it was to 18th century success.
The Original Conspiracy Theory (Which Didn’t Include Jews). How a friend of Adam Smith began it, blaming Freemasons for the French Revolution.
The religious roots of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
William Petty Describing Real Capitalism. He wrote before Smith and was closer to reality.

Before 1700

1688 and Socialism.
Lost Chances in the English Civil War.
Mary Tudor and Elizabeth – almost a beautiful story. The two sisters were friends until dynastic issues forced them in rival directions.

British Politics

Why Labour needs Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour’s Poisoned Chalice; Brexit problems considered in March 2018.
Baby Boomers to Blame? Are the world’s current problems caused by the generation born from 1945 to 1964?
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
Taylor report on Industrial Practices; a muddled view from report from one of Tony Blair’s ex-policy advisors.
They’re All Corbynites Now!; Labour’s dramatic advance in the 2017 General Election.
Grenfell Tower; the weak response of Labour’s London mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Labour has the Young Voters (graphic of the 2017 election).
British Tories in 2017 relied on the Old and the Uneducated.
Theresa May’s 2017 Letter Beginning Brexit.
Charities and Organiser Salaries.
UK manufacturing declining in 2016.
Richmond Park by-election of 2016.
Immigration, the labour market and family policy.
Tories & Grammar Schools.
Letter about the Ghurkhas and their British pensions.
Ghurkhas left over from British Imperialsm.
The Nationalisation and Privatisation of English Education (April 2016).
Divisive Politics. How Cameron created the Brexit mess.
If Britain leaves Europe should we care? (March 2016).
Rail, Rents and Housing (Part 1); Rail, Rents and Housing (Part 2).
Open Letter to Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn on the Syrian Bombing.
The Resignation of Ken Livingstone; a sad loss.
Rush To Judgement (Nerve Gas Attack).
Is Britain’s Talent being wasted?
Not So Comic Cuts, – the beginnings in 2015 of Tory attacks on welfare.
Consumerism and Inequality.
Corbyn, An Honest Englishman.
The Don’t-Care State. A criticism in 1995 of the attack on Welfare.

Before Corbyn (September 2015)

The Anglosphere in 2004. Anticipating Brexit.
The “English Defence League” and Muslims, 2013.
Classes in Britain (2011).
Ken Livingstone Not Antisemitic.
Fewer Anti-Semites in Labour than Tories.
What Sort of People are British MPs? A look at the social composition of the House of Commons in 2014.
What Price Sovereignty? The threat of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. From 2014, and the danger has been revived with trade deals likely after Brexit.
Issues in the London Underground Dispute of 2014, remaining relevant.
UK should imitate Germany, which has superior economic policies.
Welsh Water, a bad Privatisation.
Editorial – The Great British Water Robbery.
Britain’s Unhealthy Economy, noted in 2014.
Letter on BBC Reporting World News, in 2014.
Manufacturing in Britain – a continuing decline.
The Entrepreneurial State, – innovation in the public sector.
Editorial: – Migrating to Britain, the issue of European Union workers in 2014.
British Public misled, on unemployment, number of Muslims etc.
British Economy: its decline predicted in 2012.
Creating Good Jobs; what Labour needs to do.
Kaufman on Gaza, Palestine & Israel;
Antisemitism in the Labour Party;
Review of ‘Prosperity and Justice: a plan for a new economy.
Brian Behan Remembered (Communist building-worker and militant);
Tax Evasion by the Rich (Paradise Papers);
Missile strike against Syria. : Britain’s Unjust Role in the Syrian Civil War.
MP’s Letters About the Syrian Bombing.
Corbyn’s Voting Record;
ADS Annual Dinner: Aerospace, defence, security, making friends with MPs.
Welfare and Work Reform Bill: Interview with Paul Morrison in February 2016.
Is this the Beginning of the End for the British State? Cameron won the 2015 election but lost the basis of the Union.
Workplace Learning, in 2015.
Election Mythology. The Tories won in 2015 with just 37% of the vote.
Key Constituencies in the South West. in the 2015 election.
Human Rights in the UK.

Before 2008

Before 2000

Brixton Riots of 1987.
Child Benefit.
British Spies.
Thatcherite Selfishness (Loadsamoney).
Education Reform.
Criticising Britain’s Green Party in 1989.
How to prevent school massacres (1996).
The British Monarchy (why socialists should tolerate it).
Why British socialist should not be hostile to the monarchy (criticising Christopher Hitchens).
British Literati bravely defending Rushdie in 1990 over Satanic Verses.
The 1990 Poll Tax Riot.
Evil in Return (causes of the 1990 Poll Tax riots).
Racism in London in 1990.
Full Employment – a lost ideal.
Churchill. (Book Review).
The Politics of Britain’s Bonfire Night.
Criminalising Holocaust Denial.
How John Major Almost Restored Conservatism; lost possibilities from 1991.
Tories Claim a Classless Society.
Blasphemy for Atheists? Why Bother?
The Post-1956 Failure of Pro–Moscow Communism.
Neglect of the Mentally Ill (in 1991).
British Government Under John Major Disrupts the European Union.
‘Marxist Today’ smugly winds itself up amidst the ruins of left-wing politics.
How New Labour Emerged from 1970s Labour Leftism.
Poppy Day after the Iraq War.
The Royal Bank “of Scotland”.
Ed Miliband and Ralph Milliband – an anti-state legacy.
Britain Needs Good Jobs. Looking back at a page of job advertisements from the Oldham Chronicle for 1979, jobs of the sort that were wiped out by Thatcherism.
Lost Employment in London; the damage done by Thatcherism.
Bad NHS Reforms (in 1993).
Weaknesses of the “Voluntary” Sector.
Crime and Morality. Litigation as the enemy of Welfare.
Incomes Policy.
Defending the Right to Silence.
Feminists Against Equality?
British balance-of-power games.
Working-class Public Schools?

Before 1964

Orwell on Spain and Britain. Always against and with no positive ideas.
Orwell Looking Down on British Workers.
Orwell as a British Imperialist.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.

Before 1945

Britain’s Mixed Feelings About Hitler in the 1930s.
What Churchill really meant by ‘The Few’. (It included bombing Germany.)
Raymond Williams in World War Two.
The Battle Of Cable St, 80th Anniversary Commemoration;

Before 1930

PDF: The Minimum Wage up to the First Labour Government.
Liberalism From Cromwell to Lloyd George.
Citrine and Bevin Part 1, Citrine and Bevin Part 2.

Parliament And World War One – Banning Bertrand Russell.

How John Stewart Mill twisted the idea of liberty.

Black ’47 – review of a film about the Irish Potato Famine.

The British Labour Party

The Brexit Defeat. Statement on the causes.
Labour’s Vote Held Up in the 2019 Defeat. How the vote in England was the biggest since Blair’s 1997 victory. The problem was a very high Tory vote, when they promised Brexit.
Exact figures for each lost seat.
Labour’s Lost Seats – Causes. In several of them, Labour got more votes in 2019 than 2015. We lost because Leave voters mostly voted Tory. Showing the number of English votes in each election from 1982.
Fear of Socialism (by the Labour Defectors).
Labour’s Defence Policy – still supporting Intervention.
What Should Labour’s Foreign Policy Be?; June 2018.
Labour’s Poisoned Chalice; Brexit problems considered in March 2018.
Local Government and the national Labour agenda; review of a talk by John McDonnell.
Favouring the Rich in Haringey (A bad new housing scheme, now scrapped.)
Corbyn’s Comeback and They’re All Corbynites Now!; Labour’s dramatic advance in the 2017 General Election.
Grenfell Tower; the weak response of Labour’s London mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Corbyn’s speech on Foreign Policy; David Morrison on Corbyn and Foreign Policy.
Labour has the Young Voters (graphic from 2017).
British Tories in 2017 relied on the Old and the Uneducated.
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
Left, right or centre: Where should Corbyn and Labour be?
Corbyn’s Voting Record.
What is a Real Opposition? Labour was not until Corbyn was chosen.
All Shook Up? Corbyn restoring Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn and the leaving of NATO.

The Anti-Semitism Smear

“Tunbridge Wells has a Drugs and Murder Problem”.
Israel As Europe’s Last Settler-Colony.
Kaufman on Gaza, Palestine & Israel.
Antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Fewer Anti-Semites in Labour than Tories.
Labour and anti-Semitism by Mark Cowling; Reply to Mark Cowling by Brendan Clifford;
An Appeal to Labour’s NEC by the Brecon & Radnor Constituency Labour Party about anti-Semitism.
Labour And Antisemitism; June 2018.
The Resignation of Ken Livingstone; a sad loss.
Ken Livingstone’s Unwelcome Truths about Antisemitism.
Ken Livingstone Not Antisemitic.
Jewish Socialist Group on Gerald Kaufman; Zionism within Labour.
Antisemitism in the UK.
Free Speech On Israel.
Blair Inc – The Power, The Money, The Scandals;
Jackie Walker interview; (Labour activist accused of Anti-Semitism.)
Labour Briefing on Anti-semitism.
Statement on ‘Labour’s problem with antisemitism’ from the Jewish Socialists’ Group.
Charles Clarke accusing Corbyn.

Before Corbyn (September 2015)

Votes on Iraq; Which Labour MPs voted for the war.
Welfare ‘Reform’; Which Labour MPs gave the Tories an open goal to extend the appalling Universal Credit system?
What Tony Blair did to the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Rules for election of Labour Party leader.
T-shirts were in! (Labour in Northern Ireland).
Wow it’s Jeremy! (March 2016).
MP’s Letters About the Syrian Bombing.
Corbyn’s Voting Record;
Five-To-One: a New Incomes Policy, urged for Labour in 2014
The TUC and Social Partnership. Labour urged to make it it an issue in the 2015 election, which of course they did not dare to do.
Politics In Flux; Labour before the 2015 seemed ashamed of possible deviations from the Thatcher model. We said that for most of the public, the Thatcher model no longer makes sense. Which was shown by the ‘Corbyn Effect’.
Looking For A Leader. Backing Corbyn back in July 2015.

Before 2009

March 2000: Editorial, A Spectre is Haunting Millbank…, on ex-Leftists in New Labour abandoning all principles.
August 2000 Leading Article: Liberals and Left-Liberals. New Labour has its roots in the Labour Party’s origin as an offshoot of the Liberal Party. How British Liberalism missed the chance to create a stable world order before 1914.
Criminalising Holocaust Denial.
David Miliband on Democracy.
Economics is About People, Not Money.
How we are still paying for fear of Corporatism in the 1970s.
New Labour undermined the NHS (part 1); New Labour & NHS Internal Market; (part 2) New Labour and the NHS – part 3. Corrections for “New Labour and the NHS”.
What Tony Blair did to the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The Don’t-Care State. A criticism in 1995 of the attack on Welfare.
Trade Unions – A Link with Reality for Labour.

Before 1993

Labour and the Bomb (in 1989).
Labour and the Atomic Weapons (in 1989).
Americanizing the Labour Party (in 1990).
Housing in Britain.
Sovereignty and a Single European Currency; considered in 1991.
1991 interview with Eric Heffer, considering Labour’s likely future. Eric Heffer (autobiography).
Green Policies for Labour.
Jack Jones on Ernest Bevin.
Black Sections in the Labour Party.
Labour and the Unions.
Labour Needs a Working Class Section.

Before 1980

Harold Wilson.
Interview with Barbara Castle. In Place of Strife was a lost opportunity. This and refusing various other schemes paved the way for Thatcher.

Before 1945

Kier Hardy – Labour’s First MP.
Debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the 1945 Labour government.
PDF: The Minimum Wage up to the First Labour Government.
British Democracy Began in 1884.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.

The Conservative Party

Tax Evasion by the Rich (Paradise Papers).
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
British Tories in 2017 relied on the Old and the Uneducated.
Funding the NHS (the sudden discovery of a ‘Magic Money Tree in July 2018).
Missile strike against Syria. : Britain’s Unjust Role in that Civil War.
Labour has the Young Voters (graphic from 2017).
Theresa May’s 2017 Letter Beginning Brexit.
Boris Johnson and the ‘Russian’ Nerve Gas Attack.
Tories & Grammar Schools.
Divisive Politics. How Cameron created the Brexit mess.
Not So Comic Cuts, – the beginnings in 2015 of Tory attacks on welfare.
Tories and Human Rights, in 2014.
The West Lothian Question, Tory Promises in the 2014 Scottish Referendum.
‘British Values’ – A Trojan Horse? Complaining in 2014 about Islamophobia.

Before 2009

The Thatcherite Concepts of Classlessness.
Thatcher struck at the roots of Britishness (1998).
The Anglosphere in 2004. Anticipating Brexit.
Britain Needs Good Jobs. Looking back at a page of job advertisements from the Oldham Chronicle for 1979, jobs of the sort that were wiped out by Thatcherism.
Lost Employment in London; the damage done by Thatcherism.
The Don’t-Care State. A criticism in 1995 of the attack on Welfare.

Before 1993

British Government Under John Major Disrupts the European Union.
How John Major Almost Restored Conservatism; lost possibilities from 1991.
The economic destructiveness of Thatcherism, noted in 1990.
Thatcherism in 1989 coming apart at the seams.
Thatcher’s Rise to Power, considered in 1989.
How Thatcher Repeatedly Rewarded IRA Violence.
How Thatcher boosted Welfarism.
Tories Claim a Classless Society.
William Hague and the 2001 General Election.
Economics is About People, Not Money.
How we are still paying for fear of Corporatism in the 1970s.
Enoch Powell’s Odd Defence of the Gospels.

Before 1980:

What Churchill really meant by ‘The Few’. (It included bombing Germany.)
How Churchill was Close to Fascism.
Why Churchill Admired Mussolini.
How the Tory Party aided Hitler’s Rise.
Hitler’s English Inspirers.
The British Empire, the USA and Hitler.
Churchill. (Book Review.)
Liberalism From Cromwell to Lloyd George. (Modern Toryism includes a lot of this sort of liberalism.)

Before 1914

Balfour on Cobden and Progress. Why does Balfour Still Matter?. Balfour on Cobden and Corn Laws. Radicalism Beyond Cobden. Balfour on Political Economy. Balfour’s ‘Fragment On Progress’. How Balfour Saw Progress.
British Democracy Began in 1884. Tories were not originally a democratic party.

Black ’47 – review of a film about the Irish Potato Famine;a disaster caused by Market Economics.

Edmund Burke’s Beliefs. The founder of 19th century Toryism was a Deist and Whig.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.

Trade Unionism

Interview With Frances O’Grady, TUC General Secretary: The TUC and Industrial Democracy in 2014.
The TUC and Social Partnership. Labour urged to make it it an issue in the 2015 election, which of course they did not dare to do.
Workers on Company Boards,
Bob Crow: A Tribute from 2014.
The Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union in 2014.
Brian Behan Remembered (Communist building-worker and militant);
The Wapping Dispute of 1986 (Print Workers)
Labour’s Industrial Strategy in 2017.
Worker Representation in Companies.
Making worker representation on company boards a reality.
Industrial Democracy and Social Partnership.
Workplace Learning, in 2015.
Addressing Power Imbalances in the Workplace by Frances O’Grady.
Industrial Relations.

Before 2009
Construction Safety,
Revitalising Social Europe by Francis O’Grady.
The TUC And Industrial Democracy.
Trade Unions – A Link with Reality for Labour.

Before 1993
The Building Industry and the role of Trade Unions in it.
1990 interview with Jimmy Knapp, General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen.
Letter on Frank Chapple and the Electricians Union Scandal of the 1950s.
The US Teamsters Union.
1991 interview with Jack Jones.
1991 interview with Bill Morris.
Trade Unions – Industrial Democracy.

Jack Jones on Ernest Bevin.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.
Citrine and Bevin Part 1, Citrine and Bevin Part 2.

Walter Citrine in the Soviet Union in 1925. Part 1. Citrine, Part 2. Citrine, Part 3.

United Nations and International Law

Missile strike against Syria. : Britain’s Unjust Role in that Civil War.

Before 2009

The United Nations as a 20th Century Myth.
The United Nations War on Iraq in 1991.

Before 1993

Nations in Conflict (a round-up of the conflicts happening round the world in 1988).
War Crimes Trials – Only for the Defeated.
Iraq and International Law (from 1990).
War Without Law (following the 1991 war on Iraq).
The United Nations and the 1991 Gulf War – unjust, but working just as its creators intended.
America’s unjust hegemony (as it was in 1991).
The USA’s New World Order.

Before 1939

The British Establishment Planned World War One.
Nation States existed long before the Peace of Westphalia.

Ireland

Northern Ireland: Britain’s Responsibility;
Labour in Northern Ireland; refusing to organise there.
Biting the state that feeds it: the Apple corporation avoiding tax in Ireland.
T-shirts were in! (Labour in Northern Ireland).

Before 2009

Ireland and Irish-Americans.
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
The IRA as the most British thing in Ireland.

Before 1993

Belfast and the French Revolution.
The IRA as criminals or warriors?.
Sovereignty and a Single European Currency; considered in 1991.
How Thatcher Repeatedly Rewarded IRA Violence.
A Misleading History of Ireland.
The Irish Labour Party.
How Charles Haughey Transformed Ireland.
The Irish State in 1990.
PDF: The 1986 Irish Divorce Referendum.

Industrial Schools in Ireland; a sad history.

PDF: Ireland under the British Minimum Wage System.

Before 1917

Needless Suffering in the 1840s Irish Potato Famine. Free-Market Dogma put ahead of human life.

Black ’47 – review of a film about the Irish Potato Famine.

The Rest of Europe

Recent

Ukraine – Kiev’s Five-Day War Machine. The dirty politics of the Second Orange Revolution.
Ukraine and legality – the removal of Viktor Yanukovych broke Ukraine’s constitution.
Parliament’s Willingly Deceived, the United States in 2014 wanted NATO and the EU right up against Russia’s borders.
Variable Eternal Truths about Serbs and Germans.
Kosovo and Crimea: the West’s Double Standard in 2014.
America’s Euro-Colonies – areas they still control with the Cold War over.
German Social Democracy; its current crisis.
Europe is Built on Corpses and Plunder by Andre Vitchek.
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
Parliamentary Notes: British Military Aid for Ukraine in April 2015.
Mondragon Cooperative in Spain (part 1), Mondragon (part 2).
The BBC & World War One – what about the German side of things?

Monthly News From France: December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, April 2014, May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, September 2014, October 2014, November 2014, December 2014, February 2015, March 2015, April 2015, May 2015, June 2015, July-August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015, December 2015, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016, July-August 2016, September 2016, October 2016, None for November, December 2016, January- February 2017, March 2017, April 2017, May 2017, June 2017, July 2017, August 2017, September 2017, October 2017, November 2017, December 2017, February 2018, March 2018, April 2018, None for May, June 2018, July-August 2018, September 2018, None for October, November 2018, December 2018, February 2019, March 2019, April 2019, Froggy for 5/2019, Froggy 6/19, Froggy 7/19, Froggy 9/19, Froggy;10/19, Froggy 11/19

Monthly News From Italy: May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, September 2014, October 2014, November 2014, February 2015, March 2015, April 2015, May 2015, June 2015, July-August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015, None for December, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016, July-August 2016, September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, December 2016, February 2017, March 2017, April 2017, May 2017, June 2017, July-August 2017, September 2017, October 2017, November 2017, December 2017, February 2018, March 2018, None for April , May 2018, June 2018, July-August 2018, Listening to Italy 09/2018, Listening to Italy 10/2018, Listening to Italy for 11/2018, Listening to Italy; 12/2018; Italy 02/19; :

Before 2009

Looking Back in 1991 at East Germany’s collapse.
The Failed Russian Coup of 1991.
Italy & the British Press in 1993.
Report from Lithuania (1). Lithuania (2 of 2).
Workers Control in Germany (in 1993).

The Fall of Yugoslavia (from 1987)

Hitler’s Fondness For Croats.
Serbs and Croats – who was anti-Nazi?
Serbs in 1991 Allowed to Crush Albanian Kosovo.
Warning in 1991 About a War Against Serbia.
Secession – Different Rules Applied in Yugoslavia.
Britain and Yugoslavia (Bosnia) in 1993,

Before 1993

Poland in 1991 With Lech Walesa as President.
Sicilian Godfathers in Fact and Film.

Before 1945

Deaths Caused by Hitler.

Before 1939

Orwell on Spain and Britain. Always against and with no positive ideas.
Why the Left lost the Spanish Civil War.

Before 1918

British Distortions of German Motives in World War One. How Pan-Germanism was not what British writers claimed.
The British Establishment Planned World War One.
Was the Brest-Litovsk Peace Unreasonable?

Before 1900

The 1789 French Revolution and Its Unstable Politics.
The original guerillas of Spain. (Napoleonic Wars, and how Coleridge and Wordsworth were among the first to notice.)
Nation States existed long before the Peace of Westphalia.

Iraq and the West

Before 2009
Reflections on the Start of the Iraq War (2003).
The World View behind the 2003 Gulf War. (Bobbitt’s The Shield Of Achilles.)
Poppy Day after the Iraq War.
US Shysterism in Iraqi in 2004.
Bill Clinton’s Injustice Towards Iraq.
Iraq and The West (in 1993).

Before 1993
‘Bomber’ Harris in 1920s Iraq. (Saddam copied the methods of this British commander.)
The West in 1987 saved Saddam Hussein after his failed war on Iran.
Iraq – just after the Invasion of Kuwait. Warning that Iraq could not be ruled except by someone just as brutal as Saddam Hussein.
Further 1990 warnings Against a Gulf War.
Iraq and International Law (from 1990).
Morality of a Gulf War (from 1990).
Warning Against a Gulf War (in January 1991).
The First Bad Gulf War (March 1991).
The USA Forced a War Over Kuwait.
Saudi Arabia Encouraged the Gulf War.
Iraq Tricked Into Invading Kuwait.
The United Nations and the 1991 Gulf War – unjust but working just as its creators intended.
Gulf War Lies & Callousness to Arabs.
Iraq and International Law.
The United Nations as a 20th Century Myth.
The United Nations War on Iraq in 1991.
Encouraging Iraqi Rebels in April 1991.

Islamic World (other than Iraq)

Failing in Afghanistan (poem).
Missile strike against Syria. : Britain’s Unjust Role in that Civil War.
Open Letter to Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn on the Syrian Bombing.
Parliamentary Notes – Debate on Bombing Syria.
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Syria.

Before 2009

The “English Defence League” and Muslims.
US Reactions to 9/11.

Before 1993

USA in 1988 neglecting Afghanistan. (Before the emergence of the Taliban and other Sunni Islamic extremists).
Gorbachev and Islam, reconsidered in 2010.
A 1988 view seeing Islam as a new Ideology Of Progress.

The 1989 row over Islam and ‘Satanic Verses’

Multiculturalism and the Rushdie Dispute,
Protecting Islam Within Britain (History ),
The Social Origins of Islam.
British Literati bravely defending Rushdie in 1990 over the Satanic Verses.

China

Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping (Since 2004)

People’s China as a New Civilisation. Also available as a PDF.
China’s Future: Comrade X and a Man Called Xi.
China rejecting the Western political system.
Reviewing Martin Jacques ‘When China Rules The World’.

Deng and Jiang Zemin (1977-2003)

Chinese demonstrations in 1987 that anticipated of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest.
The Tiananmen Protests (predicting in 1989 that Communist Party rule would continue for many years).
Communist China’s 1989 Fight for Survival.
Communist China’s survival after the Tiananmen Crackdown.
The Hainan Island incident of 2001.
Opium City – the story of Hong Kong. (Written in the year 2000.)

The Mao Era (1949-1976)

Mao’s Economic Success. Why Western books never give overall growth for 1949-1976.
China 1949: Fixing a Broken Society,
China: Blue Ants and Dangerous Reds.
How Mao Greatly Strengthened China.
Mao’s Achievements – success in two out of three ‘impossible tasks’.
Reviewing ‘Mao: the Unknown Story’.
China’s ‘Three Bitter Years’, 1959 to 1961.
How Mao Modernised Chinese Thinking.

Before 1949

China’s Blue Republic, 1912-49,
China: Nurturing Red Stars,
Smedley: an American Woman Who Loved China’s Red Army,
China: Agnes Smedley’s Battle Hymn Against Japan

Before 1912

China: Why a sophisticated Empire could not modernise.

Before the Opium Wars

How Tibet Emerged Within the Wider Chinese Power-Political Zone. Even its Buddhist faith was brought by a Tang-dynasty princess, Princess Wencheng.
Why The Ming Sea Voyages Led To Nothing. Imperial China had better ships than Columbus or Vasco da Gama, and sailed earlier. But nothing much changed.

Tibet As a Region of China

How Tibet Emerged Within the Wider Chinese Power-Political Zone.
The Strange History of the Dalai Lamas.
The Tibetan Race Riots of 2008.
Tibet and International Law.
Why the West should not be encouraging Tibetan separatism.
Falsehoods in ‘Seven Years in Tibet’.

Other International

Why the Anglosphere Can’t Impose Democracy;
What We Owe to Vietnam’s General Giap. How US defeat in their Vietnam War helped the West transform itself socially. How Counterculture got incorporated.
Israel As Europe’s Last Settler-Colony.
What Was The Minimum Number for Sovereign States?
Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism”.
Palestine and the International Criminal Court: – how they are excluded.
Military Planning (book review) – the future of war and weapons.
NATO and War by Mairead Corrigan.
Tax Evasion by the Rich (Paradise Papers).
Japan Doing OK.

Monthly Letter from New Zealand: November 2017, December 2017, February 2018, March 2018, April 2018, None for May, June 2018, July-August 2018, Letter; for 9/2018, Letter 10/18, Letter for 11/18, Letter; 12/18, Letter 02/19, :

Before 2009

Celtic, Germanic, Multicultural.
Sociocide – Liberalism’s True History (2002).
Trotskyist Origins of US Neo-Cons (2005).
History: the end of Fukuyama. A review of his 2006 book, After the Neo-Cons.
The World View behind the 2003 Gulf War. Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield Of Achilles.
Market Minorities Across the World.
The Decline of US Science. (2007, and worse now.)
How Mandela Unified South Africa: looking back from 2014.
Democracy and one-party states.

Before 1993

The wider Turkish world (in 1990).
How Vietnam Won the War But Lost the Peace.
Hoping in 1990 that South Africa under Mandela would work, contrary to what most people said. Making peace in South Africa (prospects in 1991).
‘Nae Passaran‘ – film about the 1973 coup in Chile;

Before 1945

Deaths Caused by Hitler.
How Hitler Might Have Had a Victorious Peace.

The USA (from 1776)

Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’.
Bewitched – Television from the 1960s USA.
Bill Clinton’s Injustice Towards Iraq.
Obama as Just Another Ineffective President.
US Reactions to 9/11.
US Shysterism in Iraqi in 2004.
‘Falling Down!’ – a Film About US Failure.
Colin Powell and Vietnam massacres.
Kennedy Assassination – Two Separate Plots?
The Space Shuttle, the ‘Right Stuff’ and Chuck Yeager.
How the USA Shifted Left after World War Two.
The US Teamsters Union (in 1990).

Roosevelt on Locusts and Financiers. How he saved what’s now called a capitalist system, by having no respect for standard capitalist values.

Both Sides Were Racist in the US Civil War.
Mark Twain, The Unfunny Underside.

Adam Smith Opposed the American Revolution.

World History

The West Fails in Five Civilisations.
Why ‘The Individual’ is a muddled idea.
The Anglosphere in 2004. Anticipating Brexit.
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
The many versions of democracy.
Awed by the Amazing Twentieth?.
Anti-Globalisation in 2001.
Are Top Salaries Really Justified?
David Miliband on Democracy.
Degraded Globalisation.
Should We Fear Alien Civilisations?.
Money and Gun-Power – Globalisation in the Year 2000.
David Hutton and “The State We’re In”.
Opium City – the story of Hong Kong.
Rationality and World History.
The Internet as Secret Policeman’s Friend.
What ‘Stakeholder’ Means.
The Web Is Always Insecure.
Olympic Sports for the Top Four in 2016.
The World After 9/11.
Ukraine – Kiev’s Five-Day War Machine.
Liberalism From Cromwell to Lloyd George.
Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism”.
NATO and War by Mairead Corrigan.
Europe is Built on Corpses and Plunder by Andre Vitchek.
Letter on Democracy and Capitalism.
Democracy and one-party states.
The Moral Void in Star Wars. What it tells you about modern politics.
Bias in the Nobel Peace Prize.
Corporations Good, Corporatism Bad?
Japan Doing OK.
US Reactions to 9/11.
US Shysterism in Iraqi in 2004.
Variable Eternal Truths about Serbs and Germans.
Rejecting the ‘New World Order’ (in 1993).

Before 1980

Does the ‘Right Stuff’ exist? (Are Astronauts Really Special?).
What We Owe to Vietnam’s General Giap. How US defeat in their Vietnam War helped the West transform itself socially. How Counterculture got incorporated.
How Everything Changed in 1979.
What Was The Minimum Number for Sovereign States?
How the USA Shifted Left after World War Two.
1950s British War Crimes in Kenya.
How Ideologies Collapsed Within the Soviet Union and Within Roman Catholicism.
How Marxism Redefined Human Society.
Mussolini’s Links to the British Centre-Right.

Before 1945

Hitler: the 13th Chancellor
The British Empire’s Accidental War With Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s English Inspirers.
How Churchill was Close to Fascism.
Why Churchill Admired Mussolini.
How the Tory Party aided Hitler’s Rise.
The British Empire, the USA and Hitler.
What Churchill really meant by ‘The Few’. (It included bombing Germany.)
Britain’s 20th century wars.
Deaths Caused by Hitler.
How Hitler Might Have Had a Victorious Peace.
Fascism & Social Nationalism. How it was a produce of failure by the Moderates
Roosevelt on Locusts and Financiers. How he saved what’s now called a capitalist system, by having no respect for standard capitalist values.

Walter Citrine in the Soviet Union in 1925. Part 1. Citrine, Part 2. Citrine, Part 3.

Before 1919

British Distortions of German Motives in World War One. How Pan-Germanism was not what British writers claimed.
The British Establishment Planned World War One.
The Morality of World War One. A US debate held in 1915.
Was the Brest-Litovsk Peace Unreasonable?
Woodrow Wilson’s Deceptive ’14 Points’.
Poppies and Butcher Haig (poem).

Before 1900

Britain’s Exterminating Sea Empire. Jews as ‘Collateral Damage’ in its fall.
British and US Genocide.
Arkwright – How Money Conquered Work.
Real Economic Growth Was Not Based on Adam Smith’s Ideas. (Friedrich List’s alternative was much more like what actually happened.)
William Petty Describing Real Capitalism. He wrote before Smith and was closer to reality.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.

Before 1800

The European Enlightenment’s Limited Light.
Review of Pinker’s ‘Enlightenment Now’; how he misunderstands the issues.
The Original Conspiracy Theory (Which Didn’t Include Jews). How a friend of Adam Smith began it, blaming Freemasons for the French Revolution.

Before 1700

Nation States existed long before the Peace of Westphalia.

Before 1500

Why The Ming Sea Voyages Led To Nothing. Imperial China had better ships than Columbus or Vasco da Gama, and sailed earlier.
Crusaders, Nomads and Conquistadors. Conquerors Before Modern Imperialism.
Civilisation Alley: A Band of Pre-Industrial Empires from Britain to Sri Lanka.

Ancient

How Humans Became Citizens – the origins of civilisation.
Religions as Imperfect Human Understanding. An historic view.
How Historic is Homer’s Troy? Looking at what archaeology tells us.
When Wheels Entered History. It happened in the Bronze Age, because load-bearing wheels are not simple. The Potters Wheel might have come first.
Elites In History Today’s millionaires are the heirs of the slave-owning elites of early civilisations
Multi-Millionaires as a Blight on Civilization, Why the very rich have never been a real Meritocracy.

Economics

The Merits of a Mixed Economy.

Roosevelt on Locusts and Financiers. How he saved what’s now called a capitalist system, by having no respect for standard capitalist values.
Market Winners Rob the Rest of Us.
Replacing Capitalism by Capitalism.
Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism”.
Why Profit Needn’t Mean Wealth Creation. Adam Smith’s Misleading Claim.
Where new products really come from. Inventions need not be based on the profit motive.
Trickle-Down Never Happened.
The errors of New Right economics.
Are Top Salaries Really Justified?
Degraded Globalisation.
Money and Gun-Power – Globalisation in the Year 2000.
What ‘Stakeholder’ Means.
Opium City – the story of Hong Kong.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, reviewed.
Market Minorities Across the World.
The Usefulness of Group Thinking.
Awed by the Amazing Twentieth?.
Capitalism Within Culture.
Capitalist ‘Managerial Science’ is Highly Collectivist.
Economics is About People, Not Money.
How we are still paying for fear of Corporatism in the 1970s.
The Unnatural Nature of Commerce.
Corporations Good, Corporatism Bad?
British Citizens or UK Customers;

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
New Right Ideas – Hayek and Ayn Rand.
Errors of Friedrich Hayek.
Milton Friedman and his Errors.

Recent History

How to fix Climate Change and keep Modern Civilisation.
Texas: Deregulated Electricity Hurts Its Customers.
The UK economy in 2009.
Business Success a Mix of Skill and Luck.
Classes in Britain (2011).
The Royal Bank “of Scotland”. (The 2007-8 crisis.)
Five-To-One: a New Incomes Policy, urged for Labour in 2014.
Tory Plans for Pensions in 2014, and the overall issues that still apply.
Issues in the London Underground Dispute of 2014, remaining relevant.
UK should imitate Germany, which has superior economic policies.
Welsh Water, a bad Privatisation.
Editorial – The Great British Water Robbery.
Britain’s Unhealthy Economy, noted in 2014.
Manufacturing in Britain – a continuing decline.
The Entrepreneurial State, – innovation in the public sector.
Creating Good Jobs; what Labour needs to do.
Tax Evasion by the Rich (Paradise Papers).
Is Britain’s Talent being wasted?
Not So Comic Cuts, – the beginnings in 2015 of Tory attacks on welfare.
Consumerism and Inequality.

Before 1993

The economic destructiveness of Thatcherism, noted in 1990.
Sovereignty and a Single European Currency; considered in 1991.
Britain Needs Good Jobs. Looking back at a page of job advertisements from the Oldham Chronicle for 1979, jobs of the sort that were wiped out by Thatcherism.
Lost Employment in London; the damage done by Thatcherism.

Before the 1980s

Feed-the-Rich Economics. How the Mixed Economy won the Cold War, and then was denounced when the rich felt safe.

Before 1900

Needless Suffering in the 1840s Irish Potato Famine. Free-Market Dogma put ahead of human life.
Arkwright – How Money Conquered Work.
Black ’47 – review of a film about the Irish Potato Famine; caused by Free Market dogmatism.
Real Economic Growth Was Not Based on Adam Smith’s Ideas. (The rival views of Friedrich List was much more like what actually happened.)

Adam Smith

Adam Smith and the New Right.
Adam Smith Faked His Most Famous Claim.
Adam Smith Had Alien Social Values.
Adam Smith Opposed the American Revolution.
Adam Smith Undermining Social Values.
Adam Smith and Fragmented Work.
Adam Smith Misunderstanding State Power.
Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand.

Before 1800 (Other than Adam Smith)

Slavery in the British Empire. Most account concentrate on Britain’s role in ending it, ignoring how vital it was to 18th century success.
How the British Empire Blighted Britain. Much of the country has lost population since the 19th century.
The Original Conspiracy Theory (Which Didn’t Include Jews). How a friend of Adam Smith began it, blaming Freemasons for the French Revolution.
The Core Falsehood of Capitalist Economics. Adam Smith laid the foundations for many heartless systems, down to and including our current New Right Doctrine. But he did it by a trick of language, assuming without evidence that profitability and wealth creation were the same.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.
Capitalism, a non-Christian theology of the Age of Reason.
William Petty Describing Real Capitalism. He wrote before Smith and was closer to reality.

Ancient

Rational Chimps, Hobbits and Starch-Eating Humans.
Natural Selection as ‘Survival of the Grandkids’.
Elites In History Today’s millionaires are the heirs of the slave-owning elites of early civilisations
Multi-Millionaires as a Blight on Civilization, Why the very rich have never been a real Meritocracy.

Culture

High Culture – Recent

Review of the French films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.
People of the Black Mountains (Book Review).
Against Modernist Architecture.
The novel ‘How Green Was My Valley’.
British Literati bravely defending Rushdie in 1990 over the Satanic Verses.
The Muon and the Green Great Dragon.
Notes on Asocialism (how we exist as social beings).
Post-Liberalism. Why we should speak of ‘Our Freedoms’ rather than ‘The Freedom’.
Genius and other mental abnormalities.
Is Giftedness Tied to Cultural Values?.
Morality and Modern Christian Failure.
Blasphemy for Atheists? Why Bother?.
Sicilian Godfathers in Fact and Film.
Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis as Rehashed Religion.

High Culture – Before the 1960s

Review of a Biography of Bertrand Russell.
Balfour on Cobden and Progress. Why does Balfour Still Matter?. Balfour on Cobden and Corn Laws. Radicalism Beyond Cobden. Balfour on Political Economy. Balfour’s ‘Fragment On Progress’. How Balfour Saw Progress.
Edmund Burke’s Beliefs. The founder of 19th century Toryism was a Deist and Whig.
Pascal, the Jesuits and Plato (2001). (Why ‘Jesuitry’ was not as bad as Pascal claimed.)
The European Enlightenment’s Limited Light.
Review of Pinker’s ‘Enlightenment Now’; how he misunderstands the issues.
Rival British Christianities of the 17th Century.
The religious roots of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
Nation States existed long before the Peace of Westphalia.
Mary Tudor and Elizabeth – almost a beautiful story.
How Ideologies Collapsed Within the Soviet Union and Within Roman Catholicism.
How Marxism Redefined Human Society.
Home Movies of the Soul. Why literature can get too personal.
Mark Twain, The Unfunny Underside.
Gollum as Stream-of-Consciousness.
Unexpected Things said in the Bible. Much of it contradicts itself.
Religions as Imperfect Human Understanding. An historic view.
What do we mean by ‘Evil’?
Socrates as a Wrong Turning in Greek Philosophy.
How Platonism Infected Christianity.

Popular Culture

The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
The World as a Global Night-Club (1997). (Written after the death of Princess Diana, and surprised by the intensity of most people’s reaction.)
Why I Call It a Global Night-Club (1997).
Money and Gun-Power – Globalisation as it is (2000).
Why ‘The Individual’ is a muddled idea (2007).
Why Motherhood Exists (Love at Goon Park).
Letter About Memes (Human names as an example, which contradicts Dawkins’s notion.)
Superorganisms – Ant Nests and Human Religions.
And So Say All of Me (Human Minds are Multi-Sectional).
Dark Skin, Blue Eyes – the Original Europeans.
Human Altruism and Psychopathy.
Natural Selection as ‘Survival of the Grandkids’.
The Anglosphere in 2004 (Anticipating Brexit).
Everyone and Anyone are Rival Simplifications of Human Nature.
The Usefulness of Group Thinking.
Sociocide – Liberalism’s True History (2002).
Does the ‘Right Stuff’ exist? (2003).
Racism as Anti-Racism.
Why Pornography does not cause Rape.
In Defence of Pornography.
Does Pornography Cause Violence?.
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Bewitched – Television from the 1960s USA.
How Modern Pagans Celebrate Christmas.
Gender-neutral language.
Evil in Return (causes of the 1990 Poll Tax riots).
The Politics of Britain’s Bonfire Night.
Hunter-gatherers in a world of machines.
Football as Culture.
How William Cobbett went from Anti-Jacobin to supporter of rural protests. (The 1830 ‘Captain Swing‘ riots, violent enough to be called a Rural War.)
The 1831 Trial of William Cobbett. A key moment in establishing freedom to support popular discontent.
Mary Shelley’s misinterpreted Frankenstein.
‘Falling Down!’ – a Film About US Failure.

The Operative Culture of Modern Society

Anti-Globalisation in 2001.
Degraded Globalisation.
How Everything Changed in 1979.
Money and Gun-Power – Globalisation in the Year 2000.
Olympic Sports for the Top Four in 2016.
Capitalism Within Culture.
Capitalist ‘Managerial Science’ is Highly Collectivist.
Economics is About People, Not Money.
How we are still paying for fear of Corporatism in the 1970s.
The Unnatural Nature of Commerce.
Letter on Assisted Dying.
What to do with non-BBC Accents.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.
Real Economic Growth Was Not Based on Adam Smith’s Ideas. (Friedrich List’s alternative was much more like what actually happened.)
William Petty Describing Real Capitalism. He wrote before Smith and was closer to reality.
Capitalism, a non-Christian theology of the Age of Reason.
The Illogic of English Spelling.
Elites In History Today’s millionaires are the heirs of the slave-owning elites of early civilisations
Multi-Millionaires as a Blight on Civilization, Why the very rich have never been a real Meritocracy.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Star Trek begun again in 1990.
Eyes and Illusions in Tolkien and Le Guin.
The Harry Potter Books (in 2000).
The Moral Void in Star Wars.

Tolkien

Power and Politics in Tolkien’s Work.
Tolkien and British History.
Tolkien as understood by Peter Jackson, Brian Sibley and Ralph Bakshi.
Tolkien in the language of film.
Gollum as Stream-of-Consciousness.
Eyes and Illusions in Tolkien and Le Guin.
Defending Tolkien Against Michael Moorcock’s Condemnation.

Science and Technology

Core Topics

The Space Shuttle, the ‘Right Stuff’ and Chuck Yeager.
Does the ‘Right Stuff’ exist? (A further study.)
Constellations – a Human Invention.
Humans On A Cosmic Scale.
When Wheels Entered History. It happened in the Bronze Age, because load-bearing wheels are not simple. The Potters Wheel might have come first.

Military Planning (book review) – the future of war and weapons.

Biting the state that feeds it: the Apple corporation avoiding tax in Ireland.

The Web Is Always Insecure.
The Internet as Secret Policeman’s Friend.

Human Minds and Human Dynamics

Breeding For Superior Beings – the Dangers of Eugenics
The Eugenics Congress, London 1912
Should We Fear Alien Civilisations?
Genius and other mental abnormalities (2004).
Everyone and Anyone are Rival Simplifications of Human Nature.
The Usefulness of Group Thinking.
Why Only Some Children Bounce Back From Bad Childhoods.
Blond Hair not Racial.
Cooking Made Us Human.
Rational Chimps, Hobbits and Starch-Eating Humans.
Why Motherhood Exists (Love at Goon Park).
Letter About Memes (Human names as an example, which contradicts Dawkins’s notion.)
And So Say All of Me (Human Minds are Multi-Sectional).
Dark Skin, Blue Eyes – the Original Europeans.
Human Altruism and Psychopathy.
Natural Selection as ‘Survival of the Grandkids’.
Hunter-gatherers in a world of machines.
Was Modern Industry a Mistake?
Being An Aboriginal European. (Why the ‘White Race’ does not exist.)

Other Mammals

Chimp DNA Changed More Than Ours.
Chimps Are Never Tame.
Big fierce animals are losers (how Natural Selection really works).
Fearsome dinosaur-eating mammals (deceased). (Tough organisms need not be the surviving species.)
Mice more evolved than humans.

Other Animals and Evolution

Darwinism – a Creed Needing Correction.
Evolution Prevented By Competition.
Superorganisms – Ant Nests and Human Religions.
The Evolution of Bees.
Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis as Rehashed Religion.

Physics and Other Science

The Large Hadron Collider in 2008.
The Decline of US Science. (2007, and worse now.)
Climate Change needing urgent action (written March 1990).
Why US Electronics Succeeded (written 1990).
The Muon and the Green Great Dragon. (Why subatomic physics is independent on how we think about it.)
Debate of the nature of numbers.

Other

Fascism and Nazism

Hitler: the 13th Chancellor
Why the Left lost the Spanish Civil War (2006).
Britain’s 20th century wars.
Deaths Caused by Hitler.
How Hitler Might Have Had a Victorious Peace.
The British Empire’s Accidental War With Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s English Inspirers.
How Churchill was Close to Fascism.
Why Churchill Admired Mussolini.
How the Tory Party aided Hitler’s Rise.
The British Empire, the USA and Hitler.
Britain’s Mixed Feelings About Hitler in the 1930s.
Hitler’s Fondness For Croats.
Fascism & Social Nationalism.
Mussolini’s Links to the British Centre-Right.

Memories of Hitler

Criminalising Holocaust Denial.
Ken Livingstone Not Antisemitic.
Fewer Anti-Semites in Labour than Tories.
Israel as a Western Colony.
Israel Taking Too Much.
Zionism as the Abolition of Jews.
Zionism’s Suicidal Militancy.

Religion

Morality and Modern Christian Failure.
Review of a Biography of Bertrand Russell.
Blasphemy for Atheists? Why Bother?.
The religious roots of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
Coleridge’s Alternative for the British Economy. Best known for his poetry, he was more famous in his lifetime as a general thinker.
The Left Redefined ‘The Normal’.
How Ideologies Collapsed Within the Soviet Union and Within Roman Catholicism. Hostile ideologies both moved in the 1950s.
Enoch Powell’s Odd Defence of the Gospels.
Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ Twists the Tale.
Unexpected Things said in the Bible. Much of it contradicts itself.
Religions as Imperfect Human Understanding. An historic view.
What do we mean by ‘Evil’?
Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis as Rehashed Religion.
Socrates as a Wrong Turning in Greek Philosophy.
How Platonism Infected Christianity.

Socialist History and Theory
Socialist of the Past
The Soviet Collapse
British Political History
British Politics
The British Labour Party
The Conservative Party
Trade Unionism
United Nations and International Law
Ireland
The Rest of Europe
Iraq and the West
Islamic World (other than Iraq)
China
Other International
World History
Economics
Culture
Science and Technology
Other

This is an on-going project, starting with the oldest material available. And note that some articles appear under two or more headings, when they fit both.

More recent articles can be found at our current site, https://labouraffairs.com/.

Socialist History and Theory

The Original Marxists

Original Leninism

The Stalin Era

Post-Stalin Leninism

Non-Marxist (Green)

Was Modern Industry a Mistake?
Green Policies for Labour.
Criticising Britain’s Green Party in 1989.

Non-Marxist (Other)

Against Modern Liberalism and Libertarianism

Socialist of the Past

Before the 1970s

Jack Jones on Ernest Bevin.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.
My Father Raymond Williams.
Raymond Williams in World War Two.

Clement Attlee, deputy to Churchill in World War One, and Prime Minister in the 1945 Labour Government.
Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947.

Anthony Crosland, prominent socialist intellectual and minister under Harold Wilson.

Orwell on Spain and Britain. Always against and with no positive ideas.
Orwell Looking Down on British Workers.
Orwell as a British Imperialist.

Why Trotsky’s politics achieved nothing solid.

Before 1930

Citrine and Bevin Part 1, Citrine and Bevin Part 2..

R. H. Tawney. Kier Hardy – Labour’s First MP.

Socialism & Society by Ramsay MacDonald (1). Ramsay MacDonald (2 of 2). Letter to the editor about Ramsay MacDonald, plus Reply.

William Morris On What Life Might Be.

The Soviet Collapse

Gorbachev’s Reforms

The 1989 Collapse of the Warsaw Pact

The Yeltsin Succession

The Putin Era

Did Russia do the Nerve Gas Assassination?.
Boris Johnson and the ‘Russian’ Nerve Gas Attack.
Afterword About Gorbachev and Putin (from 2010).

British Political History

Recent

It’s A Fact; Interesting Statistics: December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, April 2014, May 2014, June 2014, July 2014, September 2014, October 2014.

Before 2000

Before the 1980s

Before the 1960s

The 1945 Labour Government. Clement Attlee. Anthony Crosland. Hugh Dalton.
The Belfast ‘Yellow Jackets’ Of 1950;
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.

World War Two

From 1918 to 1939

Force-Labour Camps in 1930s Britain.
‘Bomber’ Harris in 1920s Iraq.
Poppies and Butcher Haig (poem).

World War One

The British Establishment Planned World War One. Germany was winning in peaceful economic competition.
Was the Brest-Litovsk Peace Unreasonable?
Haig’s Command.

Before 1914

Before 1800

Before 1700

1688 and Socialism.
Lost Chances in the English Civil War.
Mary Tudor and Elizabeth – almost a beautiful story. The two sisters were friends until dynastic issues forced them in rival directions.

British Politics

Before Corbyn (September 2015)

Before 2008

Before 2000

Before 1964

Orwell on Spain and Britain. Always against and with no positive ideas.
Orwell Looking Down on British Workers.
Orwell as a British Imperialist.
Ernest Bevin – Successful Labour Politics.

Before 1945

Before 1930

PDF: The Minimum Wage up to the First Labour Government.
Liberalism From Cromwell to Lloyd George.
Citrine and Bevin Part 1, Citrine and Bevin Part 2.

Parliament And World War One – Banning Bertrand Russell.

How John Stewart Mill twisted the idea of liberty.

Black ’47 – review of a film about the Irish Potato Famine.

The British Labour Party

The Anti-Semitism Smear

Before Corbyn (September 2015)

Before 2009

Before 1993

Before 1980

Harold Wilson.
Interview with Barbara Castle. In Place of Strife was a lost opportunity. This and refusing various other schemes paved the way for Thatcher.