So (finally) the UK government has been legally forced to pay £19.9 million compensation to 5,228 victims of torture, rape, sexual abuse and maiming by British colonial forces during the ‘Mau Mau’ rebellion in Keyna in the 1950s. The compensation works out be a pitiful ‘£3,000 per victim and applies only to the living survivors of the abuses that took place’. The pure number of victims suggests that the argument normally trotted out by the British state in these situations, that is, ‘a bad […]
The Strange Paradox of ‘Ding Dong’: “political correctness gone mad”
Last night I bought a copy of the Daily Mail (for the first time in my life) as I am into surrealism in a big way. I just had to do it. There several headlines which took my fancy: "BBC 'Witch' Song Insult to Maggie" (front page) "....and now even a police sergeant tweets meassages of hate" (front page) "I hope Thatcher's death was degrading and painful, tweets sick Scotland Yard sergeant" (page 7) ...and unbelievably on their website headlines: "'They danced in the streets when Hitler died […]
Vasquez: All right, we got seven canisters of CN-20. I say we roll them in there and nerve gas the corpse just to make sure. Hicks: That's worth a try, but we don't know if it's gonna affect her. Ripley: I say we fire the corpse into low earth orbit and nuke it. It's the only way to be sure. Hudson: Fuckin' A! Burke: Hold on a second. Thatcher's history has a substantial dollar value attached to it. Ripley: They can bill me. Burke: Okay. This is an emotional moment for all of us. I know that. […]
Running down Whitehall with a black flag. Memories of anarchism in the 1960s Di Parkin was a revolutionary activist from the early 1960s to the 1980s. She was employed as a community worker and an Equal Opportunities Adviser. Her PhD was on opposition to the myth of National Unity in Second World War Britain and she published a book on the history of a militant coal mine (Betteshanger) in Kent Now retired, she devotes most of her energy to the Bristol Radical History group: working on recording […]
Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Race, Class and Gender in the 60s U.S. This talk is based upon a series of books that have recently appeared covering the hidden history of the white working class radical community groups who formed the 'Rainbow Coalition' with the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Native American and Japanese American revolutionary groups in 1969. The white radical organisations comprised displaced 'Southern' white working class people who were challenging […]
Elaine Titcombe. History PhD Student, The University of the West of England, Bristol. In 1984 the doomsday clock reached three minutes to midnight. This was the closest recorded time to global destruction defined (at that time) as imminence to nuclear war, since 1953. This crisis arose as a result of an escalation of militarism between the East and West Superpowers, following the NATO decision in 1979 to modernise their theatre of nuclear weapons in response to the perceived superiority of the […]
Pilar Lopez’s performance about the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936 aims to draw inspiration from these amazing times, sharing the beauty and relevance of those events and making links with what's currently happening in Spain. In 1936, after a partially unsuccessful military coup and by popular demand, the libertarian unions took control of the organisation of society in many parts of Spain. In no time large portions of land and industry had been collectivised and belonged to the workers. This […]
Di Parkin has been a left activist since the 1960s. She is a historian and published “60 years of struggle” history of Betteshanger, a militant Kent pit. She will be speaking about the actions on the Economic League in the 1970s, providing blacklisting information to employers and the impact on militants in places such as Cowley car works and Kent coal field. An electrician who has worked in the construction industry for 40 years will talk about his experiences of victimisation and the campaign […]
Kings Cross Tube Fire 25 years on
Today (18th Nov 2012) is the 25th anniversary of the fire at Kings Cross tube station which killed 31 people and injured over 100 (see ) . The fire was 'blamed' at the time on a lit match which fell below the escalator and began the deadly inferno. The fire and subsequent inquiry led to the banning of smoking in stations, the phasing out of wooden escalators and forced London Underground to invest in heat and smoke detection systems, automatic sprinkler systems, CCTV and improved public address […]
Update (October 2013): the article seems to have reappeared on The Spectator website. On October 16th 2004 The Spectator published an unsigned editorial by Boris Johnson (aparently with a little help from Simon Heffer) in which he stated that Liverpool fans were wallowing in self pity when they themselves were responsible for the Hillsborough disaster. This article has since gone missing from The Spectator online archive. In an attempt to prevent it being airbrushed from history, here are the […]
