Common criticisms of Marxism are that it is a theory that argues everything is determined by economics and that it offers a crude explanation of ideology.
The House of Saud’s long career in the service of imperialism began in 1913, when King Abd al Aziz, the ruler of the Najd area of the Arabian peninsula, came seeking a British subsidy for his kingdom. His first request was unsuccessful, despite winning the backing of the British government’s India office.
A new book by Leon Kuhn and Colin Gill uncovers the hidden history of London’s many statues and landmarks — shedding light on the brutality of the British political elite at home and abroad.
Frederick — the "grand old Duke of York" immortalised in the nursery rhyme, was the son of George III and the brother of George IV. Frederick combined gluttony with a disastrous military career.
When Victoria came to the throne in 1837 it was like a breath of fresh air to the middle class compared with her extravagent, arrogant and stupid uncles, two of whom had preceded her as kings.
When George III was declared mad in 1811 his eldest son became prince regent. The future George IV celebrated by inviting 2,000 guests to a banquet that cost a quarter of a million pounds — at least £20 million in today’s money.
Haig was the spitting image of the upper class officers portrayed in the film Oh What a Lovely War — decades behind advances in military technology, useless at strategy and preferring, in the words of AJP Taylor, "an unsuccessful offensive under his own command to a successful one under someone else’s".
Peel was made chief secretary for Ireland at the age of 24. His main "achievement" was founding the Royal Irish Constabulary, an English-run body protecting landlords from desperate peasants and preventing nationalist rebellion. Peasants became the main targets of the "peelers", as the new police came to be known.
Our book Topple the Mighty involves two parts of a whole. The first part goes through some of London’s statues, using them as a "coat hanger" to talk about what these people really did and who they were.
The only explanation Tony Blair will tolerate for the atrocities in London is an empty one that serves himself. They are, he says, simply the product of an "evil ideology" that, in some mysterious way, has burst in to an otherwise tranquil world.
We need to remind ourselves of a number of fundamental principles in order to put the question of democracy in its real framework of progress. We cannot speak of democracy as separated from the rest of the questions in the Middle East region, or any region in the world.
Last week’s announcement that the IRA has ordered an end to its military operations was greeted by a predictable display of hypocrisy from Tony Blair.
