Deborah Lavin

From David Morgan of the Socialist History Society on facebook:

IT is with deep sadness that I have to inform everyone of the death of our comrade and friend, Deborah Lavin, a very active member, a serious historian and excellent speaker, who organised some excellent lecture series in recent years at Conway Hall. She will be much missed. Longer tributes will follow. RIP Deborah.  


Deborah Lavin was an actress, stand up poet, playwright and most importantly for our purposes an independent historian, interested in the interface of radicalism, socialism and feminism in the 19th century.  Deborah’s short book Charles Bradlaugh contra Karl Marx, Radicalism vs Socialism in the First International was published by the Socialist History Society in 2011 and a review of the work in the LSHG Newsletter by Keith Flett can be read here:

http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-review-bradlaugh-contra-marx.html

A number of talks by Deborah are available via youtube - see for example, her 2016 talk "Charles Bradlaugh and the Early Years of the National Secular Society" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-mgKtUJ88g

RIP Deborah and condolences from the London Socialist Historians Group to her family, friends and comrades.

Her website with more details of her life and work are here - 

http://deborahlavin.co.uk/

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/

CfP: CPGB 100 in Manchester

CPGB 100 Conference in Manchester

Call for papers

Call for Papers

Title: Workers of the world? The Communist Party of Great Britain as a global party

Dates: Friday 18 – Saturday 19 September 2020

Venue: People’s History Museum, Manchester

Organised by the CPGB Archives Trust and the journals Socialist History and Twentieth Century Communism and hosted by the People’s History Museum.

In the summer of 1920 the Communist Party of Great Britain was formed as the British section of the Communist International. Although the Comintern was dissolved in 1943, internationalism and the sense of belonging to a world movement would remain one of the defining characteristics of communist politics. Links with the USSR and communism’s ruling parties have proved an enduring source of interest and controversy for historians. At the same time, in recent years there has been a broadening out to other fields of transnational activism and association and the forms of political identity to which these gave rise. As increasingly attention turns to the writing of a global history of communism, historians of the party in Britain have been turning their minds to the multiple strands and histories of the CPGB can be located within it.

The People’s History Museum holds the archives of the CPGB and in making these publicly accessible has played a major role in stimulating a critical historiography of the communist movement in Britain. This conference will offer the opportunity to take stock of one of the key themes in this historiography on the centenary of the party’s foundation.

We are seeking papers of 5000 to 8000 words to be presented at the conference. Conference themes may include, but are not limited to:

⇒the CPGB as section of the world communist movement
⇒communists, the empire and anti-imperialism
⇒communists, the USSR and ‘actually existing socialism’
⇒transnational activism and solidarity networks
⇒delegations, study tours and political tourism
⇒Britain’s ‘Cominternians’
⇒emigres and political exiles in Britain
⇒communists, anti-fascism and the war in Spain
⇒Eurocommunism
⇒communists, maoism and the PRC
⇒culture wars, translations and publishing enterprises

For further details and updates please visit the conference website on https://cpgb100.wordpress.com. Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted by e-mail to the organisers on cpgb100phm@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting proposals is Monday 30 March. 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 Friday 2 September 2020. Selected papers will be published in the journal Socialist History.
The conference registration fee, which covers lunch and light refreshments, will be £15.
Contact Info:
Francis King, School of History, UEA, Norwich NR4 7TJ

https://cpgb100.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

LSHG Seminar - Tom Mann in Australia - postponed

LSHG Seminar

Rhys Williams on Tom Mann in Australia (1902-1910)


This seminar has now been postponed to later in the year due to the Coronavirus

Malcolm Chase

Socialist Historians pay tribute to Malcolm Chase, (1957-2020), leading historian of working-class Teesside & Chartism

The London Socialist Historians Group which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, has paid tribute to the historian Malcolm Chase who has died aged 63.

A Leeds University obituary is here:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/news/article/1503/professor-malcolm-chase

Malcolm Chase published in 2007 arguably the best history and certainly the best researched history of Chartism yet seen. He continued to encourage new research into Victorian working-class politics.

He spoke at the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research on Chartism after the publication of his history.

The historians say that Malcolm Chase did much to frame and encourage twenty-first century research into Chartism and post-Chartism.

He had been at Leeds University’s Middlesbrough outpost from 1982 and LSHG convenor Keith Flett then living part-time in the town was encouraged by him to research aspects of the post Chartist history of working-class Teesside. One published result was ‘The early history of Stockton Co-op’

Cleveland & Teesside L.H.S., Bulletin No. 59, 1990.

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett: I last heard Malcolm Chase speak at the Newport Rising event in November 2019 having known him for the best part of 40 years. Although he had clearly been very ill the hope was that his appearance signalled the road to full recovery.  Sadly it was not to be. His legacy is not just his impressive published work but the encouragement he gave to others to dig around in the archives and produce new research. He was also of course a great socialist beard wearer.

Race, Class, 1619 and 1620

[From LSHG Newsletter No. 69 Spring 2020]

Race,  Class,  1619 and 1620

It has been little discussed in the UK but the New York Times 1619 project about the origins of modern America has sparked a massive debate in the US.

A summary is at the link below but there is a lot more to be said. Issues of race, racism, class and patriotism, progressive or not have been at the centre of the debate with well known radical and socialist historians critical of the project.

In the UK there is an important counterpoint around 1620 and the sailing of the Mayflower where issues of race and racism are also to the fore. The link is below

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arch ive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619project/604093/ http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk /?p=707

We hope to organise a roundtable discussion on the issues and the history later in 2020.

Black History in 2020

[From LSHG Newsletter No. 69 Spring 2020] 

Black History in 2020 

2020 is the 150th anniversary of the death of William Cuffay, the black leader of London Chartism in 1848. He was transported to Tasmania after a rigged trial but continued to be a labour movement activist in Australia to his death.

The LSHG plan to mark the anniversary and encourage others to do so.

Below is a letter that appeared in The Guardian (13 January 2020) from Marika Sherwood, who the LSHG have worked with regularly over many years. In the age of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump and a rising acceptability of racism black history is more important than ever.
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The Black and Asian Studies Association began campaigning about this missing history almost 30 years ago (Black British history syllabus devised for diversity in schools, 9 January). We even met the then education minister, whose ignorance of this history was as profound as that of 99% of teachers. If we want to understand our “nation” we have to look at how multicultural/ethnic it has always been. Africans, as far as we know, arrived in large numbers as a regiment in the conquering Roman armies. Some settled here, and undoubtedly some would have fathered children by native women. Two fairly recent books on black people in Tudor Britain tell us about the increase in the black population. This, of course, grew as the trade in enslaved Africans increased, and again when freedom was granted to the enslaved in the colonies in 1833.

So we should be teaching about Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans, about the wars encouraged by the Europeans to obtain prisoners of war, who were declared slaves and sold to the Europeans, and about Africans here – their treatment, work, protests about slavery and contributions to society for so many years.

It is not only the school curriculum that has to be changed, but the training of teachers. And inservice training should be provided for all existing teachers as their ignorance, one could argue, is one reason why many black pupils do badly as school. Peter Fryer’s book Staying Power, still the best on this history, should be available in all school libraries.

Marika Sherwood
Research fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London