History

William Morris: Victorian artist and revolutionary

05 January 2010
william Morris is known today for his exquisite patterned wallpapers, his famous chair design, and his rule, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Llanelli 1911: war on the railways

08 December 2009
The wave of strikes in Britain between 1910 and 1914 saw millions of workers fight over wages and conditions with the most militant methods. The period became known as the Great Unrest.

Stalin’s unholy alliance with Hitler

01 September 2009
When German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow in August 1939 to meet his Russian counterpart, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin turned out to greet him.

Outbreak of the Second World War: Who were the ‘guilty men’?

01 September 2009
Prime minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast that Britain was in a state of war with Germany at 11.12am on 3 September 1939. The Second World War had begun two days earlier when the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland.

The peasants’ revolt shook England's rulers

01 September 2009
The Climate Camp descended onto Blackheath in south east London last week. Activists chose this piece of common land because of a tradition of radical events taking place there, most famously the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Revolutions led to a new kind of society

21 April 2009
England and Holland emerged as powers representing a new capitalist logic of production by the end of the 17th century.

The struggles that shook the old feudal order

14 April 2009
The changes that took place within feudalism between the 10th and 14th centuries created the basis for a different logic of production – one based on commodity exchange rather than an immediate consumption.

Feudalism and the growth of the market

07 April 2009
Supporters of capitalism tell us that, no matter how bad the current economic crisis gets, the system cannot be changed.

The fall of Rome

17 March 2009
With the world economy in freefall, it is not such a great leap of imagination to consider what the collapse of society might look like today.

Brian Pearce 1915-2008: Historian of the rank and file

06 January 2009
Brian Pearce, who died recently, was a socialist intellectual and activist over eight decades, having joined the Communist Party (CP) in 1934.

Scotland’s solidarity with Republican Spain

15 December 2008
"If I don’t go out and fight fascism, I’ll just have to wait and fight it here." That was how John Patsy McEwan explained his decision to leave Dundee to go and fight in the Spanish Civil War – alongside hundreds of others.

The First Crusade: for faith and plunder

15 December 2008
The princes, knights, peasants and pilgrims who answered the pope’s call for the First Crusade in 1095 were driven by many different motivations, writes Conor Kostick

Armistice day, remembrance and the 'glorious war'

11 November 2008
George Bush and Tony Blair – leading architects of a war that has killed more than a million people in Iraq – appear side by side. Bush wears a stars-and-stripes lapel badge, a symbol of belligerent nationalism and the self-declared "war on terror". Blair wears a poppy.

Taking Liberties: documenting the hard fight for civil liberties

04 November 2008
When you walk into the British Library and through the door to the Taking Liberties exhibition, the first thing you come face to face with is a copy of Magna Carta.

Oliver Cromwell’s legacy

02 September 2008
The British establishment doesn’t often, even inadvertently, remind us of our revolutionary past. So every visitor to central London should be aware of a hidden treat that the area contains. Deep in the heart of modern government, half way down Whitehall, lies the Banqueting House.