Why I wrote this book — and why this story matters. At first, this is not obvious. Spoiler alert: The August 1924 uprising in Georgia did not succeed in overthrowing Soviet rule. It took another…
I last visited Georgia a bit more than a year ago. National elections were just days away, and despite aggressive campaigning by the ruling Georgian Dream party, everyone I spoke to was convinced that the…
Last week I was contacted by the Brussels-based European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) about a possible campaign in the Netherlands. A local leader of the FNV, the national trade union centre, had been sacked after…
Two leaders of the union representing Serbian air traffic controllers were recently sacked as part of a union-busting campaign. Ranko Radovanovic (president) and Igor Hajderpašić (secretary), leaders of the Sindikat kontrole letenja (SKL), were dismissed…
It may sound hard to believe today, but there was a time when a lot of people really liked Israel. Large groups of young Europeans, mostly from the Nordic countries, would come over to the…
This appeared in Historia today — my 4th article for the online magazine of the Historical Writers Association (HWA): https://historiamag.com/serendipity-historians-weapon/
I learned two things this morning that came as a surprise. The first is that there are 1,700 primary schools in England that do not have a library. And second, under the law, every single…
My first article for Byline Times is here.
Do street protests matter? Many people in the UK are still stung by how gigantic demonstrations two decades ago could not stop Tony Blair from joining the US-led invasion of Iraq. And today in Israel,…
In the course of Labour’s first year in office, Keir Starmer has been very energetic and effective in one particular area: he’s very good at getting rid of people who fall out of favour for…