New book - Anti-Nazi Germans

Enemies of the Nazi State from within the Working Class Movement
by Merilyn Moos
German Volunteers in the French Resistance
by Steve Cushion

It is a commonly held myth that there was little resistance in Germany to the Nazis except for one or two well known instances. But, regularly ignored or forgotten is the level of opposition from Germans, and in particular from the German working class movement. This book examines that resistance in two parts, starting with the internal resistance. Here are forgotten stories of brave men and women who organised against the Nazis in German towns and villages, as well as in the concentration camps and the armed forces.

The second part chronicles how German refugees contributed to fighting the Nazis in France. From spreading anti-Nazi propaganda in the German Army and attempting to organise mutiny and desertion, through to extensive involvement in urban terrorism and the rural guerrilla struggle.

We are unequivocally on the side of the German anti-Nazi resistance. Perhaps this should not even need to be said, but such is the power of nationalism, that many people feel uncomfortable with those who are prepared to undermine their own country’s war effort or take up arms against the nation of their birth, even if that nation were Nazi Germany. We have no such qualms and take an internationalist stand that places class before nation.

We examine at the actual activities of the rank and file anti-Nazi militants and in the process we shall be rescuing the memory of some heroic fighters who otherwise risk being lost from history.

Published by
Community Languages in association with the Socialist History Society

Special Offer

As the launch of the book Anti-Nazi Germans will now not take place until the autumn, you can get a copy post-free from the authors.

£10  [By post add £1:50 p&p [£5 p&p overseas]]
more details from: s.cushion23[a]gmail.com

http://community-languages.org.uk/

The Christopher Hill Memorial Lecture 2020

The Christopher Hill Memorial Lecture in London will take place on the evening of Thursday 27 February at the Swedenborg Hall, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, Holborn, WC1A 2TH at 6pm. I do hope you can join us. The evening will be chaired by Professor Penny Corfield
and the lecture will be given by Norah Carlin on the subject of her new book,
Regicide or Revolution, What Petitioners Wanted September 1648-February 1649. The book is a fascinating examination of popular politics as the revolution reached its decisive moment.

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

Historians regret decision to hold Hobsbawm book launch at University of London despite boycott

Press release - 7 February 2019

The London Socialist Historians Group, which has organised the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in central London for 25 years, says it regrets the decision by the Institute of Historical Research and Birkbeck's Department of History, Classics and Archaeology to proceed with a launch of Richard J Evans new biography of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm at the University of London’s Senate House on Thursday.

Outsourced workers, members of the IWGB, who are in dispute with the University had asked the organisers to move the venue in support of a boycott of Senate House and related central University buildings which is supported by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell amongst many others.

The socialist history seminar at Senate House is suspended in support of the IWGB boycott.

The historians say that they hold Richard J Evans, who has spoken at socialist history seminars at Senate House in the past, in the highest regard and don’t doubt his biography of Eric Hobsbawm officially published on 7^th February is both highly competent and very interesting on the historian’s life, work and politics. However they consider the decision not to move the book launch despite reasonable notice to be regrettable

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said: Eric Hobsbawm was one of the great post-1945 Marxist historians whose work focused on the labouring poor and their struggles against capital. To hold a launch of a biography of his life and work at a location that is the subject of a boycott by outsourced workers is not something any socialist should feel comfortable with.

For more information please contact Keith Flett on the address above.

Telling the Mayflower story

Launch of the Socialist History Society publication: "Telling the Mayflower Story, Thanksgiving or Land Grabbing, Massacres & Slavery?" by Danny Reilly and Steve Cushion.

Fri 30 November 2018

17:30

UCL Institute of the Americas

51 Gordon Square

London

WC1H 0PN

In the autumn of 1620 the ship Mayflower, with 102 passengers, landed in North America and started the colonisation of the area that became known as New England. The Mayflower had landed in a region where the Sachem of the local Wampanoag Nation was Massasoit, who subsequently helped them survive. In the autumn of 1676, following the defeat of a war of rebellion led by Massasoit’s son Metacomet (King Philip), the ship Seaflower set sail from New England with a ‘cargo’ of Indigenous American slaves bound for the English Caribbean colonies.

The creation of the New England colonies by thousands of English colonists in the seventeenth century involved the rapid decline in the indigenous population, the violent seizure of territory and slavery. However, the 400-year anniversary commemorations in the UK seem to be overlooking this. 

The Mayflower journey was part of Early English Colonialism:
• The invasions of Virginia, New England and the Caribbean were accompanied by land seizure wars against the Indigenous peoples of North America
• The economic success of New England depended on trade with the slave colonies of the Caribbean, and included the trafficking of slaves
• The colonists established a pattern of ‘extravagant’ violence in the wars they conducted against Indigenous Nations that was continued for 300 years
• The establishment of a tradition of sanitizing the story of English colonialism in the Americas that has lasted 400 years

Danny Reilly is a support tutor working in higher education and a volunteer ESOL teacher who has worked in a voluntary capacity for several refugee support groups. He has been an anti-racist activist for many years, a founder of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and worked at the Institute of Race Relations from 1977 to 1993 as information officer.

Steve Cushion is author of "The Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory", "Killing Communists in Havana: The Start of the Cold War in Latin America" and "Up Down Turn Around: The Political Economy of Slavery and the Socialist case for Reparations". He is joint author, with Dennis Bartholomew, of "By Our Own Hands: A People’s History of the Grenadian Revolution". His current research is on German and Italian volunteers who fought in the French Resistance.

Attendance to this event is free of charge but registration is required- use link below

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-telling-the-mayflower-story-thanksgiving-or-genocide-and-slavery-registration-50731080026

Socialist History Society events

“The Labour Party in Historical Perspective”

Launch of a Socialist History Society Occasional Publication

Speakers: Graham Taylor, David Morgan and Duncan Bowie

Housmans Bookshop, King’s Cross
On Tuesday 7th August, 6.30pm

Entry fee £3 redeemable against purchase.

Seminars.....

2pm September 22nd 2018

The Political Victims of the Nazis

with Merilyn Moos

2pm November 17th 2018

Reflections on the Legacy of 1968

with Mike Makin­Waite and David Parker

MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

37a Clerkenwell Green EC1R 0DU

nearest tube Farringdon

FREE TO ATTEND –ALL WELCOME

http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/?p=620

'By Our Own Hands' - A People's History of the Grenadian Revolution

“By Our Own Hands” - A People’s History of the Grenadian Revolution

Steve Cushion and Dennis Bartholomew

Monday 22nd January 2018, 17:30
London Socialist Historians Group
Seminar Room N304, Third Floor, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Much ink has been spilt over the final days of the  Revolution in Grenada (1979-83), while much less research has been done on the preceding four years. By concentrating on the final implosion and discussing in infinite detail who was really to blame, there is a danger that many social advances will be forgotten. Caribbean Labour Solidarity has produced a pamphlet on the achievements of the Grenada Revolution intended to provide an easily accessed source of information on the achievements of the Grenadian people during the Revo’ and to counter the prevailing negative narrative arising from the tragic end of this exciting period in Caribbean history. The social and political achievements of the people of this tiny island, which was still suffering the legacy of slavery, colonialism and dictatorship, should inspire us all.

Steve Cushion is secretary of Caribbean Labour Solidarity. He is a committee member of both the Socialist History Society and the Society for Caribbean Studies. He is a retired university lecturer and is branch secretary of the London Retired Members’ branch of the University and Colleges Union. He is author of “A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution” and ” Killing Communists in Havana”.

Dennis Bartholomew worked in the Grenada High Commission during the period of the Revo’. He was a member of Cause for Concern, a UK-based group that supported the New Jewel Movement prior to 1979. Following the US invasion he has worked to promote the ideas and successes of the Grenadian Revolution.

Other upcoming LSHG seminars and events

Monday 5^th February - Kevin Morgan, 'Communism and the Cult of the Individual: Leaders, Tribunes and Martyrs under Lenin and Stalin'

Monday 19^th February - Marika Sherwood, ‘They were not communists they were independistas! The beginning of the Cold War in Ghana and Nigeria in 1948.’

Monday 5^th March - Keith Flett, Monday 10^th April '1848 revisited'

All at 5.30pm, Room 304, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. Free without ticket.  For more information please contact Keith Flett on the address above.  

Socialist History Society publication on 1917

1917 - The Russian Revolution, Reactions and Impact
New publication
Socialist History Society, Occasional Publication 41, price £6.00.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 changed the world forever. For once, it appeared that the oppressed workers were within grasp of the levers of state power and for a while the prospect of permanently ending exploitation seemed a real possibility. The revolutionary mood swept across continents and its impact was felt far beyond the parties of the left and the organised labour movement. The revolution inspired writers, poets, intellectuals and philosophers as much as it did workers and activists. With this special Occasional Publication the Socialist History Society commemorates these momentous events of one hundred years ago with a series of specially written articles that examine the reactions to the revolution and its impact in different areas.

Contents
Evaluating the lessons of October, including their British resonance
by Willie Thompson
Against ‘vacillation, lies and rottenness’: the Russian revolution and the rift in world socialism
by Francis King
1917’s Several Lenins
by Mike Makin-Waite
‘What they can do in Russia, so can we’: the impact of the Russian Revolutions of 1917 in Germany by Helen Boak
Italy and the Russian Revolution of 1917
by Tobias Abse
Clara Zetkin on the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1934
by John S Partington
Secular Ecstasies and the Revolutionary Women Poets in 1917
by Greta Sykes
Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Sigmund Freud and his circle from fin-de-siècle Vienna to revolutionary Russia
by David Morgan

Edited by David Morgan
Available from the SHS
http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/

Book Launch -
On Saturday 21st October
Venue: Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R,
Start time 2.00pm.
Free to attend, all welcome.
Speakers will include
Tobias Abse, Willie Thompson, David Morgan, Greta Sykes, Francis King and John Partington

Book Launch: 1956

Dear All

I’m inviting you to the launch meeting for the new book which John McIlroy and I have edited — 1956: John Saville, EP Thompson and The Reasoner.

It’s on Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 19.00, at Housman’s Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX.

There is a £3 entry fee, which is redeemable against any purchase.

1956: John Saville, EP Thompson and The Reasoner contains the full text of all three issues of John Saville and EP Thompson’s magazine from 1956, The Reasoner, related Communist Party documents, and an introduction and critical essays by the editors.

More details here < http://www.merlinpress.co.uk/acatalog/1956.html >.

Housman’s events website < http://www.housmans.com/events.php >.

Best wishes

Paul Flewers

Book launch - October 1917 - workers in power

October 1917

​ - ​

​
workers in power
Book launch with Paul Le Blanc

​

​Hosted by Resistance Books​

​

Friday 24 February, 7pm
Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Rd, N1 9DY
Drinks and snacks provided

Paul Le Blanc is Professor of History at La Roche College (USA) and author of works on the labour and socialist movements, including Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, From Marx to Gramsci, and Leon Trotsky.  An editor of the eight-volume International Encyclopaedia of Revolution and Protest, he is currently helping to oversee the Verso Books edition of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg.

​---------------------------------------------​

October 1917 – workers in power
Published by Merlin Press, Resistance Books

and the IIRE

​.

Available from www.resistancebooks.org
RRP £15.95; Publication: November 2016
Paperback; 234x156mm; 258pp;

​---------------------------------------------​

What they say about the book

‘This collection, containing both texts by participants and retrospective historical analyses, defends the achievements of the Revolution while honestly recognizing its limitations, and will stimulate informed discussion.’
Ian Birchall, socialist historian.

‘This is an important collection celebrating the legacy of the Russian Revolution in its centenary year.  Paul Le Blanc’s Introduction provides rich historical context for past events.  But the book is really about the future.‘
Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University; editorial board member, International Socialist Review.

‘A fascinating and unexpected collection of material that shines a needed light on the workers revolution of 1917. All in all, a spirited defence of the October revolution at a time when many people would like to forget all about it.’
Lars Lih, author of Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context, Haymarket 2008.

London Socialist Historians seminars, Spring Term 2017

 London Socialist Historians seminars, Spring Term 2017

5.30pm Room 304 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. Free without ticket

Monday 16th January  - John Lindsay, Alan Turing’s Apple. Towards a history of ‘data science’

Monday 30th January - Geoffrey Bell, Hesitant Comrades: the Irish Revolution & the British Labour Movement

Monday 13th February - Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down. From Rock Against Racism to Red Wedge

Monday 27th February - Mike Haynes, The Peculiar Career of  Colonel John Ward MP from the SDF and General Unionism to the Russian Counter-Revolution

Monday 13th March, - Ian Birchall, Lenin’s Moscow by Alfred Rosmer​ (postponed)

For more information please contact Keith Flett on the address above... 

Book launch - Rocking Against Racism 1976-1982

Free Event: Rocking Against Racism 1976-1982

Monday 5th December @ 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm – Conway Hall

Book Launch

Weblink: https://goo.gl/6uYk08

 

Celebrating a movement of both Cultural and Political importance in the UK’s history, Reminiscences of RAR – Rocking Against Racism 1976-1981 hears from a number of collaborators, rockers and fighters. The launch event will host talks, readings and, of course, music, not only looking back at the events of 40 years ago, but also looking at the struggles and fights we face in Britain today.
…………….
Rock Against Racism (RAR) came into existence in the autumn of 1976 in response to a rise in racist attacks, and the continuing growth of the Nazi National Front. In August a racist tirade by blues guitarist Eric Clapton from the stage in Birmingham led to a letter, jointly signed by the compilers of this book, to the music press critical of Clapton’s racism and asking for readers to support an anti-racist campaign through music. The response was overwhelming and a movement was born.
For the next six years RAR was at the centre of a cultural movement against racism and the NF. From 1978 it was partnered with both the Anti-Nazi League and School Kids Against the Nazis. Together they had broken the National Front by 1979 and continued the fight against racism with RAR’s Militant Entertainment Tour, and in 1981 the fourth and final Carnival in Leeds.

With 65 contributors this book brings together the reminiscences of activists and supporters during the period. From many backgrounds and ages, musician and audience, punk and Rasta, street fighter and pogo dancer, united with a single aim: to Rock Against Racism.

Book via eventbrite here 

 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rocking-against-racism-1976-1982-tickets-29301528661

Launch of a Socialist History Society Occasional Publication Killing Communists in Havana The Start of the Cold War in Latin America Speaker: Steve Cushion Author of     A HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION Socialist History Society Public Meeting Saturday 26th November 2016 2.00pm MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY 37a Clerkenwell Green EC1R 0DU nearest tube Farringdon FREE TO ATTEND – ALL WELCOME

The Cold War started early in Cuba, with anti-communist purges of the trade unions already under way by 1947. Corruption and government intervention succeeded in removing the left-wing leaders of many unions but, in those sectors where this approach failed, gunmen linked to the ruling party shot and killed a dozen leading trade union militants, including the General Secretary of the Cuban Sugar Workers' Federation. Based on material from the Cuban archives and confidential US State Department files, this SHS Occasional Publication will examine the activities of the US government, the Mafia and the American Federation of Labor, as well as corrupt Cuban politicians and local gangsters, in this early episode of the Cold War.      FREE TO ATTEND – ALL WELCOME

LSHG seminar - Simon Hall on 1956: The World in Revolt

London Socialist Historians Group seminar 

Monday November 7^th  - Simon Hall: '1956: The World in Revolt'

Room 304 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, WC1, at 5.30pm. Free without ticket - no need to book in advance.

Other seminars coming up - venue / time same as above

Monday November 21st - John Boughton (Municipal Dreams blog), 'High Hopes - Labour and the rise and fall of High Rise housing'.  

Monday December 5th - Merilyn Moos: 'Breaking the Silence. Voices of the British Children of Refugees from Nazism'

For more information please contact LSHG convenor Keith Flett on the email address above...

SHS meeting - William A Pelz on A People's History of Europe

Socialist History Society PUBLIC MEETING

 
William A. Pelz (Institute of Working Class History, Chicago) speaks on A People's History of Europe (also the title of his latest book, Pluto, 2016).

Time: 7.00 pm. WEDNESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER

 Venue: Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU.

FREE TO ATTEND

http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/news.htm

LSHG Seminar - Steve Cushion on women workers and the Cuban Revolution

London Socialist Historians Group Seminar - 

Monday 10 October, Room 304 (third floor) at 5.30pm in the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU 

 

Steve Cushion, 'A Working Class Heroine Is Also Something To Be: Where women workers fit into A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrilla Victory'

When researching the biographical details of working class women, we are not only faced with that "enormous condescension of history" which EP Thompson criticized when writing about the history of working class movements, we also find that working class women are doubly "hidden from history" by the assumption that organised labour is male. However in Cuba in the 1950s, there were many important strikes which were initiated and sustained by women workers.

When a group of office workers from the central Cuban town of Camagüey, the principal hub of the railway network covering the eastern part of theisland, first heard of their employers' intention to impose wage cuts and redundancies, these women launched a wave of resistance by picketing the train drivers and maintenance engineers. The story of the railway women of Camagüey encourages us to look more closely into other working class struggles to seek the contributions made by women.

The paper, based on research for his recently published book, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrilla Victory (Monthly Review 2016), will examine the part played by working class women in the fight against the Batista dictatorship.

In addition to the women of Camagüey, we can find examples of militant activity from shop workers who started at least two town-wide general strikes and female office workers in the electrical supply industry who led demonstrations in a fight over trade union democracy. Sugar and dock workers' families organised vital solidarity action in the face of police violence, while women frequently took over picketing when their menfolk had to go into hiding to avoid being forced to return to work at gunpoint.

The paper will argue that working-class women, while only 10 percent of the Cuban workforce in the 1950s, played a part in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship out of all proportion to their numbers.

Steve Cushion is author of:

A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrilla Victory and

Up Down Turn Around, the Political Economy of Slavery and the Socialist Case for Reparations

as well as the forthcoming:

Killing Communists in Havana, The Start of the Cold War in Latin America

He is Secretary of Caribbean Labour Solidarity and a branch secretary of the London Retired Members Branch of the University and Colleges Union. He is a committee member of the Society for Caribbean Studies and the Socialist History Society.

 Other Upcoming Seminars

All seminars take place in Room 304 (third floor) at 5.30pm in the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU and entry is free although donations are welcome.

Monday 24 October - Ian Birchall: Lenin’s Moscow - postponed now due to illness - apologies

Monday 7 November - Simon Hall:1956, The World in Revolt

Monday 21 November - John Boughton

(Municipal Dreams blog)

High Hopes:

Labour and the rise and fall of High Rise housing

Monday 5 December - Merilyn Moos

Breaking the Silence:

Voices of the British Children of Refugees from Nazism