Treason

An Occasional Publication from The Socialist History Society

Treason: Rebel Warriors and Internationalist Traitors
Edited by Steve Cushion and Christian Høgsbjerg

During the Mexican-American war, following US military court-martial, Irish defectors were executed for treason and hanged en masse in 1847.

The publication will tell the story of some courageous individuals and groups who put their commitment to a progressive cause before any consideration of loyalty to a nation state, in particular people who have acted from principle when they consider that the country of their birth is acting in a repressive or unjust manner. We are particularly interested in those who have taken up arms against their “own side”, soldiers who side with the oppressed, rather than following orders to kill and subjugate, as well as civilians who actively resisted their own authoritarian governments during times of war.

Table of contents:

Introduction – Rebel Warriors (Steve Cushion and Christian Høgsbjerg)
Soldiers of Misfortune: Napoleon’s Polish Deserters in the West Indies (Jonathan North)
The Saint Patrick’s Battalion (David Rovics)
Deserters, Defectors and “Diehards” – The British men who fought and died for Irish Freedom (Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc)
Resistance to the Nazis from 1933 from within the German workers’ movement (Merilyn Moos)
Walter Pätzold – German Soldier and Italian Partisan (Irene Recksiek & Irena Fick)
Major Karl Plagge and Sergent Anton Schmid (Steve Cushion)
German and Italian Volunteers in the French Resistance (Steve Cushion)
Ilio Barontini (Tobias Abse)
Supporting the Enemy in the Death Agony of French Colonialism (Ian Birchall)

Available for £5 + p&p [£1.50 in UK, £5 to Rest of World] – for more details please contact Steve Cushion on s.cushion23[a]gmail.com – you will be able to pay by bank transfer, paypal or cheque.
Free to members of the SHS

Book Launch 14th November 2019
Bookmarks Bookshop
1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE

CFP - People's History?

People’s History? Radical Historiography and the Left in the Twentieth Century

Saturday and Sunday, 15 and 16 February 2020 at the School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Organised and hosted by UEA School of History in conjunction with the journal Socialist History and the Institute of Working Class History, Chicago.

History has always played a crucial role in the making of the modern left, both in Britain and around the world, providing a vital tool for theoretical rationale, social critique and direct action. Whilst offering an important source of intellectual stimulus, it has equally been the cause of hot debate, controversy and division, never more so than during the twentieth century. Over the course of those ten tumultuous decades, history became the ground upon which the left struggled to define and redefine itself in response to dramatically changing times. Critique was, and continues to be, all-encompassing, from debates on historical interpretation, method, pedagogy and application, to questions addressing the very nature – or possibility – of historical knowledge itself.

This conference seeks to explore all aspects of the status and uses of history in modern left imagination.

We are seeking papers of 5000 to 10000 words to be presented at the conference. Conference themes may include, but are not limited to: 

• History, Marxism and international socialism
• History, class and class consciousness
• History, philosophy and critical theory
• History, gender, race, sexuality
• History and (post)colonialism
• History and/as activism
• History, pedagogy and empowerment
• National and international histories
• Party histories
• History and the role of the historian as public intellectual

Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted here. The deadline for submitting proposals is Friday 29 November 2019. We shall inform all applicants as to whether their proposals have been accepted as soon as possible after that date. The deadline for receiving completed papers from successful applicants will be Monday 3 February 2020. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Socialist History. Attendance at the conference for both presenters and audience will be free of charge, but we ask that anyone wishing to attend registers in advance.

https://shspeopleshistory.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Laura Grace Ford Presents An Act of Unforgetting

At @OpenCityDocs 2019, artist and writer Laura Grace Ford (@LauraOF) will host 'An Act of Unforgetting': a programme of archival TV documentaries centred around social and political upheaval in London during the summer of 1990:
http://bit.ly/LauraGraceFordOCDF


Laura Grace Ford (formerly Oldfield Ford) is a London based artist and writer concerned with spatial narratives, contested space, architecture, fiction and memory. Drawing on cognitive mapping and the dérive Ford interrogates place by mapping the psychic contours of the city. She has developed a multidisciplinary practice where spectral languages erupt as fictions and dreamings, a reconnection with emancipatory forces embedded in the city.  Ford has curated a combined programme of archival TV documentaries, placing Battle of Trafalgar (1990) alongside an episode of Summer on the Estate (1991) and will be present to discuss and contextualise the programme

Date Sat 07 September, 20:40

Location Curzon Soho

For more info and tickets see here: 

https://opencitylondon.com/events/laura-grace-ford-presents-an-act-of-unforgetting/