History

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.

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.

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.

Hadrian and the limits of empire

29 July 2008
Insurrection in the cities of Iraq. Mass resistance across Palestine. Foreign troops bogged down and facing defeat. A crisis for western imperialism in the Middle East.

Socialists and history: a battle for the past

06 May 2008
Why did you decide to write a book about world history?

How did capitalism come into being?

01 April 2008
Revolution, we are usually led to believe, is either impossible or undesirable. Yet the capitalist world in which we live today was brought about by revolution.

Empire of the Eagles: the myth of Rome

04 March 2008
Modern leaders looking for a ‘civilised’ way to dominate the world refer to the Roman Empire. Historian Neil Faulkner explained the brutal reality to Ken Olende

3. Building revolutionary parties

02 October 2007
John Riddell, the pre-eminent historian of the Communist Third International, continues his series by looking at the Comintern's attempt to build a worldwide party while avoiding the mistakes of the Second International

0. The Communist International - Socialist Workers major nine part series

21 August 2007
Historian John Riddell writes on the Communist International, known as the Comintern - an organising centre for revolutionaries formed in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The barbarity with no equal

27 January 2001
The Holocaust is the greatest crime in European history. There have been other horrors-terrible wars, mass killings, the dropping of the atomic bomb and the forced movement of peoples on all continents. But the Nazis' systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others during the Second World War is barbarism without parallel. They used up to date industrial techniques to set about annihilating the entire Jewish population of Europe.