Barbarossa and the Left after 80 years
This week marks the eightieth anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. It was one of the most successful military operations of modern times. German forces advanced deep…
Review: V2, by Robert Harris
Robert Harris is back. Having made his reputation with Second World War thrillers such as Enigma and Fatherland, Harris is on familiar territory here and knows how to tell a good story. I read the…
The statue wars
Some people – and by that I mean some Tories – have whipped themselves up into a frenzy over the issue of statues. The pages of newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express are…
Review: Stalin’s War: A New History of the Second World War, by Sean McMeekin
Sean McMeekin is an interesting historian and has written some fascinating books encouraging the rest of us to take a new look at things like the Russian Revolution or the Communist International. This door-stopper of…
Qatar: The strange case of Malcolm Bidali
Last summer, the international trade union movement was celebrating the news from Qatar. The country which is slated to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup had come under enormous pressure to respect the rights of…
Review: The Prophets’ Children: Travels on the American Left, by Tim Wohlforth
I first came across Tim Wohlforth probably around half a century ago. A couple of members of his group stood outside the gates of my high school in Queens, New York. They were chatting with…
The dark secret of the German occupation of the Channel Islands
The Sunday Times (30 May) featured a front page story with this headline: “Exposed: Horrors of Channel Islands concentration camps”. The article reported that official documents describing the German treatment of prisoners on Alderney —…
Review: Bringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways, by Derek Gow
Derek Gow has campaigned for years to reintroduce beavers into Britain. The animals were hunted to extinction centuries ago, and the case for reintroducing them is a compelling one. Basically, beavers’ building activities, including damming,…
Israel/Palestine: The crisis of leadership is only part of the problem
Over 80 years ago, Trotsky wrote that “the world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” I always thought that this was a rather…
Review: The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson
In the afterword to this book, author David F. Walker provides a rather nuanced view of the Black Panthers, and correctly sums it all up by saying that the conditions that gave birth to the…