Frederick Taylor - Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945

After reading this detailed, balanced and incredibly well written account of the destruction of Dresden in 1945, I am left with no doubt in my mind that those who ordered the attack committed a war crime. Taylor's eyewitness accounts and his historical research bring home the full horror of the firestorm that engulfed the hitherto untouched city, leaving tens of thousands dead, thousands more injured and homeless, with relatively little military impact. I don't think I will ever forget reading about the hundreds of civilians who died after climbing into a reservoir of water to escape the flames. The hastily built tank had been made to supply water for potential firefighter operations, and didn't include any steps to leave. After treading water for hours these people must have drowned horribly in the most appalling of circumstances.

Because of stories like these, and rumors of other atrocities by the Allies during the attack on Dresden it has always been a political hot potato. Figures of casualties, sometimes as high as 450,000 have been given, which has ultimately meant that February 13 1945 came to symbolize the very worst of the Allies. Two groups seem to have been most responsible for this. The first is the far-right and the neo-Nazis. Unsurprisingly Hitler's regime made huge propaganda out of the Dresden raid. But since the end of the Second World War the far-right has used Dresden to suggest that the Allies were as bad as, if not worse than the Nazi dictatorship. The attack on Dresden was Germany's own Holocaust they suggest.

As the Cold War continued, the Eastern Bloc too encouraged a view of the attack as symbolizing the viciousness of the US and British, prepared to murder thousands of civilians in a pointless attack.

As a result, Taylor's book has to tread through much myth and falsehood. As with the debate about whether or not US planes strafed civilians shows, memory is often little help to understanding what took place. A number of eyewitnesses say that US planes committed these war-crimes, but Taylor makes it clear, drawing on several detailed studies, that this didn't take place. This is an unpopular position in Germany today, and historians have drawn tremendous fire for even suggesting that such recollections are inaccurate.

Taylor puts the Dresden attack into historical context. Firstly he gives us Dresden's fascinating history, though I am not sure he needed to go as far back as the Roman era. In part this is to show just what was lost historically and culturally in the attack. But also it is to challenge those who argue that Dresden was not a military city. By the Second World War the city was an important transport hub (even more so when the Russian's broke through Poland and were closer to Germany) and a center for the manufacture of important components for weapons (such as optics).

The author also traces the history of air-bombing. Again this helps to put the attack in context. In particular Taylor examines the strategies of Britain's Bomber Command during the war. Here the key issue is the Chief of the Air Staff, Arthur Harris' insistence that Germany could be defeated through massive destruction of towns to undermine the country's ability to wage war. As a strategy this was clearly failing, and Taylor makes it clear the limits to the bombing (in particular inaccuracy, and the ease at which industry and transport recovered). Harris doggedly held onto his strategy as the war progressed. But by the time of Dresden, it is clear that massive destruction of cities could no longer be justified as a valid way of waging the air war, if it ever was. Of far more importance was destroying Germany's dwindling oil stocks, something that was widely accepted by the military hierarchy but dismissed by Harris.

That said Harris is not the only one responsible. Others helped selected targets, and Taylor makes it clear that Churchill himself approved a renewed offensive against urban targets, even though the Prime Minister rapidly distanced himself from the attack on Dresden.

But Taylor makes it clear that Dresden was not unique. For many of us, it feels unique, precisely because it has been such a political football. Taylor's comprehensive analysis suggests are far lower casualty figure than other headline numbers, he concludes

The fairest estimate seems, therefore, to lie between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand. This makes the loss of life in the city less than the total for Hamburg (although Hamburg possessed at least twice Dresden's population), and as a proportion of the total population, less than that for towns such as Pforzheim or Darmstadt.

This is not to downplay what took place in Dresden, but to show that it was part of a much larger, and more systematic destruction of German cities that targeted the civilian population. We remember Dresden because of the firestorm, but Taylor makes the point repeatedly that this was a particular set of circumstances, and barely a few weeks later the Allies might well have done the same to Berlin, as they did in Hamburg. In fact their bombing strategy was deliberately designed to create destruction and slaughter through firestorms. In Dresden the fascist authorities are also to blame. Their lack of shelters, lack of experience and their deliberate attempts to suggest that Dresden would not be attacked resulted in thousands of deaths. The bravery of ordinary German's in the circumstances reflected everything positive about humanity, in complete contrast to the barbarity of the city's government.

There is much more in this excellent book including a history of the Jewish community in Dresden, and accounts by those who survived. Taylor also demolishes the inaccuracies of writers such as the right-winger David Irving who has written extensively on the Dresden attack.

In clarifying what actually took place on February 13 1945, and why, Frederick Taylor has in no way diminished the suffering of Dresdeners. What he has done is to put it into context of the "total war" of both the Allies and the Axis powers. The lessons are there for all of us.

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Anne Alexander & Mostafa Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution

The overriding image that many people have of the Egyptian Revolution that began on January 25 2011 is of the thousands of people gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square. This "Republic of Dreams" was indeed for many commentators the Egyptian Revolution. While Tahrir Square was inspiring, "uniting Muslim and Christian, secular and Islamist activists against Mubarak's regime", it is only part of the story, and in fact, not the most important part.

This important recent book discusses the crucial role of Egypt's enormous and powerful working class during the Revolution. Mubarak's fall came, not through the masses in the squares of the major cities, but through the strike wave that spread early in the revolution. That is not to belittle the mass demonstrations. Without those mass actions there would likely have been no strikes, but putting the workers at centre stage enables us to both understand the dynamics of the revolution, as well as the successes, so far, of the counter-revolution.

Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny lay out the 20th century history of Egypt, describing the growth of the working class and its victories and defeats. This history is important - the process that brought Mubarak to power, also helped shape a workers' movement that was effectively an appendage of the state. While there have been enormous changes to Egypt's industry and its working class, and the neoliberal era has seen many of these, industry remains central to the economy. The authors write that

the last thirty years have demonstrated that the industrial working class remains central to the strategy of accumulation pursued by the Egyptian ruling class in the neoliberal era. It is a working class that has been restructured, and suffered some heavy defeats in the process, but not a class that is in the process of disappearing.

It is also a class that has seen significant victories and, in the early years of the 21st century in reaction to the changes imposed by neoliberalism, as well as wider political questions such as the anti-war and pro-Palestinian movements began to flex its muscles. The authors note, for instance, the way that neoliberal "reforms" impacted on education helped to shape radical demands by teachers during and after the revolution.

Ministry of Education newly qualified teachers have found it difficult to obtain permanent contracts. Tens of thousands are employed in hourly paid work as supply teachers, or teach classes in public schools for no pay at all, in order to be allowed the chance to compete in giving private lessons to the same children after... fee-paying lessons are largely institutionalised and essentially compulsory... with the school administration and the Ministry of Education taking a cut of the profits.. the example of the teachers' strikes since the revolution - which consistently linked demands to improve teachers' pay and conditions to calls for the banning of private lessons- demonstrates that this process is not an insurmountable obstacle to collective action... in the process of taking collective action, the teachers transformed themselves from agents of the market into a powerful force leading the fight for an education system for all.

The fact that the existing unions were an extension of the state bureaucracy meant that as workers' struggles grew, new, independent unions sprang up. Often these were lead by activists who wanted new forms of organisation, free of the limits imposed by the state, lead by the rank and file with a leadership held accountable to the membership. The authors trace the growth of these important unions, noting however the difficulties in sustaining these models of work-place and industrial organisation when struggle subsided, or under the impact of the counter-revolution, or even the actions of the international NGO and union movement which helped to impose a western model on the movement.

"The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions supports the demands
of the people's revolution and calls for a general strike of Egyptian workers,"
Photo by www.arabawy.org

The revolutionary process frequently led to those "drawn into the orbit of the workers' movement, adopting forms of collective action and organisation", such as fishermen, hospital doctors, tourist Nile boat operators and even mosque imams. One notable emergent union group, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions formed in Tahrir Square, and the authors note that while "they formed only a small fraction of the huge crowds, activists from the tax collectors' union, with their banners and trademark blue baseball caps, were very visibly an organisation in the midst of a sea of individual protesters."

As the revolution subsided, the lack of independent political organisations of the working class meant that reformists of various shades were able to move to the revolution's head. The authors note the process by which this happened, and how revolutionary demands were first used and sidelined. In particular, the role of the Muslim Brotherhood is discussed in detail. Vague suggestions by Morsi that the MB would "improve the conditions of workers and peasants" led to a number of promises. But as the authors point out,

Careful reading of the policies of Morsi's 'Renaissance Project' revealed a different goal: the articulation of a neoliberal programme clothed in the rhetoric of reform.

It is this that brought the workers movement and wider revolutionary activists back into conflict with Morsi and his government. A key question was Tathir, the cleansing of the old system of Mubarak's corrupt bureaucrats and followers. Tathir from below in workplaces - the sacking of a Mubarak era manager, or the changing work place conditions, or temporary workers' control opened up an opportunity for workers to see themselves differently and to see a new way of organising the system. The authors give a number of impressive and inspiring examples of when and where this process began. But there was an emerging and growing contradiction, fueled by the lack of mass revolutionary, working class leadership

Participation in the revolution transformed millions of ordinary people from passive victims of history to its makers, but they state they confronted on 25 January 2011 remained essentially intact. Meanwhile the legitimacy of the largest former Islamist opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, had already been badly damaged by the failure to achieve meaningful political and social reforms.. .This deepening contradiction helps to explain why on 3 July 2013, the Armed Forces under the leadership of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi... was able to intervene decisively and turn the Muslim Brotherhood's crisis in the face of an explosion of popular anger to the advantage of the core institutions of Mubarak's state.

The revolution in Egypt has been setback. But the authors are also clear that it is not over. One of the most important gains has been that hundreds of thousands of people have engaged in a political and social process which has changed them. This echoes the experiences of those in some of history's greatest revolutionary movements. Like Russia in 1917 or Paris in 1871, the authors note that one of the most important experiences for Egyptians has been the way in a minority of workplaces workers experienced direct democratic control,

"Its organic expression in workplace struggles has largely been based on the idea that workers' leaders should be elected delegates, not representatives; it fuses executive and legislative authority and breaches the separation between political and social struggles enforced by bourgeois democracy"

The revolutionary movement in Egypt will rise again. A generation of workers learnt invaluable lessons between 2011 and 2013. But one lesson that we can all learn, is that revolutionary organisation must be built today. Alexander and Bassiouny finish with the importance of that organisation in Egypt, but for activists everywhere, the building of socialist organisation must remain an immediate task if we are to build on the movements that will continue to arise as capitalism tries to make ordinary people pay the price of bosses greed.

Gregory Benford & Larry Niven - Bowl of Heaven

Larry Niven's Ringworld was the original Big Dumb Object of science fiction. In that eponymous novel his characters explored a giant ring around a sum, encountering a variety of aliens species (some lethal, and some not) and, rather oddly in some of the sequels, offering to shag them.

Bowl of Heaven has a similar premise, if not the shagging. Perhaps under the influence of his fellow author Niven has curtailed his penchant for sex (Rishathra as Niven chose to call the practice) with aliens and instead their combined talents concentrate on the descriptions of the Bowl, the Big Dumb Object of Bowl of Heaven.

The spacecraft Sunseeker leaves Earth bound for a planet, oddly named Glory, in an attempt to colonise it. On their voyage they encounter the giant flying bowl. The bowl, with a surface area of millions of planets, travels along with its' sun towards Glory as well. Short of supplies, due to some unexplained gravity anomaly, the crew of the Sunseeker are forced to explore the Bowl. In doing so they encounter some unusually dangerous creatures who run the Bowl, apparently as a sort of intergalactic zoo. These bird-people don't Rishathra with aliens, but are obsessed with hunting and eating them.

The bird people are so intelligent they have created an enormous space-faring bowl which moves along with its own star. They have captured, genetically modified, and dominated countless species on their voyage. Yet they are outwitted by a small group of plucky earthmen and women, who use their intelligence and guile (and their unique brains) to outmanouevure the nasty aliens.

Frankly this novel is fairly terrible. I suspect that when I was fourteen I would have lapped it up. But almost thirty years later I wonder what the point is? The tragedy is that I will read the sequel, or part two as they publishers should title it, as volume one nearly finishes mid-sentence, if only to find out how the aliens stop their giant flying bowl when it gets to another solar system. But I'll be damned if I'll pay for the next book. Is there any good new science fiction out there? Or is it all just rehashed ideas from the bad end of the 1960s.

Its terrible, but frankly its not Larry Niven's worst. Gregory Benford should find someone else to co-author his next.

I don't award stars on this blog. But if I did, I'd give this one star.

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Juliet Barker - Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt has been much mythologised by the English. Part of the fault is Shakespeare's who used it to create an image of Henry V as a heroic, brave and above all, patriotic king. But there are others too, not least Churchill, who according to Juliet Barker, urged Laurence Olivier to make a film of Shakespeare's play to prepare the English people for the Normandy invasion. The removal from that version of the plot against Henry help create a sense of a unified country going to war against France in everyone's interest.

With her typical attention to detail and scholarship Juliet Barker restores the real story of Agincourt. Here are knights with armour rusted from a long march in the rain, trying to avoid engaging the French to early. Here are bodies stripped naked on the battlefield as victorious English soldiers took anything of value from them, before the local peasantry removed what remained. Here are also the English army who suffered so badly from dysentery that they cut their trousers off to improve matters before the battle, and Henry's massacre of French prisoners in the aftermath of the battle when thinking a French trumpet call meant counter attack was imminent.

In my reading of Barker's story, the English come across as incredibly lucky. On two major points popular knowledge matches with historical evidence. The English were lucky in their leader. Henry V was a brave, clever and experienced leader who was able to win his army's hearts and minds. He was also a clever strategist. Secondly the importance of the English longbow was a deciding factor. But Barker also emphasises the weaknesses of their opponents. The French were clearly too confident that their numerical strength would carry the day for them. This also caused a crisis of leadership as all the knights wanted to be in the thick of it. Few, if any, were prepared to stand back and lead. At a key point the French failed to take advantage of their battle field position and allowed the English to move forward, protecting their flanks from the French cavalry and bringing their enemies into bow-range. The heavy over-night rain might have rusted the English armour, and threatened the strength of their bow-strings. But it turned the field into a quagmire that disadvantaged the French mounted knights tremendously. Over-all Barker seems to imply that on a different day, in different weather, and with a slightly less self-obsessed French leadership, English history books would remember Agincourt as the day that the King was killed or captured. English pluck and genius played its role, but so did luck and the enemies' mistakes.

But the strength of Barker's book is not actually just in her description of the battle. The historical context she gives helps explain not just Henry's invasion, but the subsequent English occupation of France. A period she covers extremely well in her later book, Conquest. But she also shows the way that Henry's meticulous planning, his well planned mobilisation and the enormous scale of the invasion made this invasion very much a national event. Through their financial contributions, their involvement in the invading army, and their support for Henry's war the population were buying into the war in a very real way. The tremendous popular support meant that Henry's victory celebrations were both lavish and enormous, as ordinary people joined with him to celebrate and give thanks to god. But this also helps to explain why, when Henry's son Henry VI failed to maintain English possessions in France, the population grew enormously discontented.

Like all of Barker's books this is a well researched, but eminently readable account of a battle that had both a enormous historical impact and helped shape an English consciousness. Both at the time, and in later centuries. While historians and politicians may overlook Henry's more unsavory aspects, Barker isn't afraid of drawing them out. In doing so, she shows that Agincourt very nearly wasn't the English victory we were all taught at school, and that what we were told by our history teachers was only half the story.

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Christopher Dyer - Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520

The common perception of Medieval society is of an unchanging, backward economy, dominated by a peasantry who had little influence or desire for change and an aristocracy who were the reserve of intellect and political decisions. Christopher Dyer's important book challenges these myths at every stage, arguing that we shouldn't "belittle the achievements of the past and to assume in a patronizing way that medieval people were primitive and ignorant."

He continues,

Formal descriptions of medieval society imply the subordination of the masses. Yet even serfs had some use of property, and had some choice in the management of their holding of land, though they were of course restrained in many ways. One of the dynamic forces in medieval society... was not dictatorial decisions, but the opposite - the competition and frictions between different groups, not just between lords and peasants or merchants and artisans, but also between laymen and clergy, higher aristocrats and gentry, and subjects and the state, and individuals within those various groups. A society that appears to be governed by rigid laws and customs, in reality allowed people to take initiatives.

Much of this informative book looks in detail at the lives, and economic situation of different groups of medieval society as they change through the period. If at times the topics seem dry this is because of the immense amount of detail. This is not a popular history, though it is certainly accessible to the non-specialist.

The great theme of Dyer's book is that medieval society was constantly changing. Even during the later period which is traditionally seen as one of economic stagnation, there were innovations in how people lived, worked the land and organised themselves. There were also changes to social relations between different groups and classes.

In addition to the changes through time, there was also enormous geographical variation. Take agriculture,

The managers of some manors, such as South Walsham on the earl of Norfolk's estate, had by the 1260s given up fallowing entirely, and cultivated all their arable every year. Such intensive methods were adopted in north-east Norfolk, not just because the soil was naturally fertile, but also because the high population density allowed labour to be concentrated on the land, with repeated ploughing, weeding and spreading of manure and marl.

Medieval peasants and lords were extremely concerned with maximising the return from the labour on the land, and Dyer explains in detail the way this meant at different times and places thinking through the best way to use land. "The demesnes' main contribution to technology lay in the management of resources rather than in new inventions or mechanical devices... they could maintain and improve yields by finding ways to combine arable and pasture... through changes in rotation or combinations of crops".

Though we shouldn't dismiss medieval technology, which has been shown to have existed on a large scale - total English mills by 1300 perhaps surpassing 10,000 in number.

But of greatest interest here is the examination of the changing social relations. In particular the way that serfs and peasants gradually began to relate to their superior classes not through obligated labour, but through monetary relations, the paying of rent in kind. In turn we see how landowners moved away from a feudal relationship, encouraging peasants to give a proportion of their crops, and concentrated on maximising income from rents. Over many years this had a tremendous impact upon the population of the countryside, There were many reasons for this, but I was struck by the evidence that must have been apparent to every lord in the country, that those labouring for others tend to be less productive and efficient.

An average day's labour service produced one-third of a carload of hay, while a wage earner doing the same task yielded a half-cartload.... This helped them [the demesne managers] to decide that in some circumstances it was more profitable to let the tenants pay their commutation money - to 'sell' their works.... and to use wage earners instead. This decision was made in the light of the knowledge that the commutation money... did not cover the full cost of the hired workers.

But this was not a one-sided story. Dyer notes that the "aristocracy" were increasingly restricted. On the one hand the sate was limiting their ability to impose discipline through manorial courts and from below the tenants constantly attempted to strengthen their hand, to fight for their customary rights and to reduce their exploitation. This forced lords to find other ways to make money, such as building mills, which further changed social relations in the country. We must also be careful not to judge the aristocracy through the eyes of modern capitalism. They were "not just money-grabbers", status and reputation were also important. They was constant friction between them and their contemporaries, as well as other groups in society, and it was this that helped provide "one of the dynamic forces in medieval society".

External changes however had enormous impacts. In the mid-14th century England went through two enormous social crises, first major famine and then the Black Death. It is well known that this helped undermine medieval society further, by encouraging the movement of the population, driving wages upwards and leading to more lords asking rents, rather than feudal obligations. But Dyer emphasises the role of the lower orders in this change as well, writing that

the Black Death liberated the lower ranks of society; the elite were stimulated into a reaction, which soured relations and provoked rebellion. The revolts established a new balance, in which the authorities adjusted to the reality that the peasants, artisans and wage earners had improved their bargaining power. The fall in population created the environment in which these changes took place, but reduction in rent and the freeing of serfs did not happen 'naturally', The entrenched institutions would crack only if the lower orders developed ideas which contradicted those of their rulers, and asserted themselves in a coherent and organised way.

Dyer suggests that this process was much more complex that we have been lead to believe. Wages not rising as dramatically as we previously understood, but more importantly, the higher wages and reduced population changing demands for goods, which actually stimulated the economy. But the major change was not the increase in wages, or the change to labour services, but the "leasing of lrds' demesnes".

Lords gave up their role as direct producers, and the peasants cautiously accumulated larger holdings. As the masses, including those depending mainly on wages, spent their new wealth, the urban and commercial economy regained some of the lost ground and grew once more.

The crises of the mid-14th century opened up a new era for the countryside and the town that would lead to the beginnings of the rise of capitalist production in the 17th century. This is not to suggest that some areas of the economy did not go backwards, and Dyer describes the abandonment of villages and the shrinkage of the cultivated land in this period. But in countering the idea that England simply entered an total economic plateau in the later medieval period he is highlighting the importance of the changing economic and social circumstances. Dyer is concerned with not trying to find a "grand narrative" to explain all the historic changes. Noting there was not a gradual "upward march", and highlighting the way that population did not increase as dramatically as one might have expected after the decimation of the Black Death. Ultimately though, for Dyer, the key question is the "creation of an enduring framework for production and exchange in the two centuries after 850, and the urbanization of period 880-1300." He continues

The dynamic tension within the feudal regime in the in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with its element of competition among the aristocracy and the lack of strict controls which enabled peasant initiatives, must be accorded great importance. The relaxation of demographic pressure int he fourteenth century and the opportunities that were given to the upper ranks of the peasantry enabled some growth in a period apparent adversity.... the problems for producers int he next two centuries again allowed a level of consumer demand which kept industry and trade in a healthy state especially around 1400 and again after about 1470.

It this this emphasis on the internal dynamics and the role of production in the economy that helps make this such an important book. It is not without its weaknesses (the lack of footnotes being a major complaint), though it is full of detailed information and the occasional fascinating anecdote. Ultimately through, Dyer never forgets that it is ordinary people who are at the heart of the processes that changed their world.

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I.M.W. Harvey - Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450

There have been few contemporary works that have dealt in detail with the Jack Cade rebellion of 1450, which makes I.M.W. Harvey's book enormously important. Cades' revolt was similar in some ways to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The rebels assembled on Blackheath and at Mile End, perhaps deliberately mimicking Wat Tyler's men seventy years earlier. Though a smaller, and less disciplined force, they too stormed London and attacked prosperous homes and shops. They even broke open the Marshalsea prison like their predecessors.

But despite the fear this caused in the ruling class, the revolt had some important differences. In 1381 the rebels were at the high point of a movement that was challenging serfdom as a social structure. This is why the destruction of manorial records, the documents that put the exploitative relations between lord and peasant in writing, were so often destroyed. In Harvey's book she only mentions one occasion when this took place in 1450. While the demands of 1450 are often social, for instance rejecting the Statute of Labourers, they were also inherently about reform. Indeed Harvey points out that the main demands in 1450 were actually those of the Kentish middle classes. That the rebellion mobilised a mass of the lowest orders to march on London reflects that there were real concerns from everyone that needed to be addressed. But there is little, if any, sense of a rebellion against the established order from the contemporary accounts. This is why Cade's rebellion included gentlemen such as Robert Poynings who was his sword carrier during the revolt. But the mass of the rebellion were peasants and small scale land owners.

Why did they revolt? Strangely the question of France was high on the list. While the rebellion involved areas outside of the south-east of England, it was dominated by Kent and, to a lesser extent, Essex. These were the areas most affected by the armies that went to Normandy to defend England's possessions. But they were areas also frequently raided by the French during the Hundred Years War. But this isn't enough to explain events. As 1450 approached it was clear that England was heading towards defeat and for many in England this was a disaster. Henry VI was widely seen as an ineffectual king, but anger was directed at the ministers around him. Many of these, in particular the duke of Suffolk, were also extremely oppressive land owners in the south-east. They exploited the people and the land, and distorted the criminal justice system in the interests of lining their pockets.

This then is the backdrop to Cade's march on London and the murder of several leading figures in the Royal household. That the king could not rely on his soldiers and fled to Kenilworth demonstrates the scale of the crisis. But possibly because the rebellion only focused on minor reforms rather than significant changes, the majority of rebels were bought off by promises and a royal pardon. Cade wasn't. He was hunted down and killed. But Henry VI's rule never regained real stability and the king was dragged further into civil war and national crisis.

Harvey's finishes by looking at the years that followed 1450. Few histories of the period have noticed the rebellion that continued in Kent until at least 1453. This was not a whole county in turmoil, but significant numbers were still prepared to rally behind the calls of new "Captain's of Kent", and increasingly they raised slogans that demanded radical change.

Harvey's book is a work of brilliant scholarly research. She has an excellent command of the source material, including the many contradictions (such as the debate over where Cade was killed). It is no surprise that almost every book dealing with the period since has relied heavily on this important study. For anyone trying to understand the backdrop the Wars of the Roses, and history that doesn't just concentrate on kings and queens, this is an important, if difficult to find book.

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Rebecca Solnit - A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster

A Paradise Built in Hell ought to be read widely. All the latest climate change science suggests that the world is going to experience increased extreme weather, from floods and heatwaves, to hurricanes and rising sea levels. Solnit's book is important for two reasons. The first is that the "extraordinary communities" that arise in disasters are going to occur more often. The second is that the response from those at the top of society is often the worst way to respond to disasters and reflects the way those at the top view the majority of people.

We think of disasters in a particular way. It is a view shaped by common sense, by the media and by disaster movies. We believe, or at least we are told to believe, that when crisis hits, as society around us breaks down and when the state ceases to function we will return to some primitive nature dominated by selfishness and greed. We also think that any survivors will be damaged irreparably by their experience. Of course some people do respond to floods and earthquakes with violence and looting, and some people are utterly damaged by what they have seen.

But what Solnit's survey of disasters shows is that the opposite is actually true. Frequently, and more often than not, ordinary people respond to disaster with self-sacrifice, humanity, kindness and basic solidarity. As shown by her overview, from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to 9/11 in New York and New Orleans in 2008, as well as many other examples.

Old boundaries are broken down, old prejudices changed, motives turned on their head and new ways of thinking abound. Here's an example from San Francisco when three thousand people had died and many more had lost their homes,

Charles Reddy, the manager of Miller and Luz, one of the big slaughterhouses on the city's southeast shore, also tells of the openhandedness that sprang up in the hours and days of the disaster. Reddy says that the proprietor's 'first thought that morning was that homeless people would soon be wanting meat, and my straight orders were to give every applicant all he needed and take money from nobody. Black, white, and yellow were to be treated just the same; and they were treated just the same, even if we had all Chinatown camped down quite near us.

Others in San Francisco, and this mirrors experiences in other disasters, began not just to fend for themselves, but to organise those around them. Makeshift hospitals, soup-kitchens, shelters and camps. Long before official assistance arrived people's lives had been saved in their thousands by volunteer firefighters, nurses, cooks and drivers. In Halifax in 1917, when a munitions ship exploded destroying the town in seconds,

A young businessman named Joe Glube slept through the explosion... he realised how horrific the disaster had been and how great the need and [took] his secondhand Ford to the grocery warehouses. They had been opened and volunteers were busy distributing their contents to the public. He began setting out with supplies and hauling the injured in to where they could be aided... Such improvisation - new roles, new alliances, new rules - are typical of disaster.

Most often these were ordinary people, but sometimes not. There's a wonderful anecdote in here of the woman who remarked that she had never met more people without introduction that during her disaster. Solnit points out that frequently people look back on their experiences as the best time of their lives, and while not everyone's memory of the Blitz is positive, the experiences of many was. Charles Sedgewick wrote of 1906

'The strong helped the weak with their burdens and when pause was made for refreshment, food was voluntarily divided; milk was given to the children, and any little delicacies that could be found were pressed upon the aged and the ailing.' And then he says, 'Would that it could always be so!' And here you get to the remarkable fact that people wish some aspects of disasters would last. He continues, "No one richer, none poorer than his fellow; no coveting the other's goods; no envy; no greedy grasping for more than one's fair share of that given for all... What a difference those few days when there was no money, or when money had no value!

Of course the return of the state means attempts to return things to normal. In 1906 this meant the arrival of the army with orders to shoot to kill, their vision of the city was it would have descended in to an anarchy of rape, murder and looting. Though as Solnit points out, looting is actually rare in disasters, people breaking into shops to find food and shelter isn't (and it shouldn't be seen as wrong in that context). One historian estimates that the forces who arrived in San Francisco after the quake killed 500 people. Certainly those organising the mass feeding stations preferred to organise themselves, rather than hand over to the authorities. Solidarity, not charity.

Two of the more modern crises bring these arguments into sharp relief. Both are difficult to read. The accounts of 9/11 and New Orleans are filled with unimaginable suffering, both at the hands of terrorists or the hurricane, but also at the incompetence of the authorities. In both cases the authorities expected chaos and the degeneration of people into animal behaviour, and in both cases ordinary people organised to save lives when the system broke down. From the men and women who got 300,000 people across the river off Manhattan Island in the aftermath of 9/11 to those who travelled to New Orleans to organise soup kitchens and medical aid. Indeed Solnit makes the point that for all the power of the US military and the hours that they had to act on 9/11, the only people who actually stopped any terrorism on that terrible day, where those on the final plane who organised to stop the hijackers.

Solnit emphasises the "elite panic" that grips the authorities at times of crisis, contrasting this with the attitudes of the majority.

Elites and authorities often fear the changes of disaster or anticipate that change means chaos and destruction, or at least the undermining of the foundations of their power. So a power struggle often takes place in disaster - and real political and social change can result from that struggle or from the new sense of self and society that emerges... the elite often believe that if they themselves are not in control, the situation is out of control, and in their fear take repressive measures that become secondary disasters. But many others who don't hold radical ideas, don't believe in revolution, don't consciously desire profound social change find themselves in a transformed world leading a life they could not have imagined and rejoice in it,

As she comments later, "disasters without redemptive moments raise the question of redemptive moments without disaster", and many readers of this review who have experience of other situations might recognise some of Solnit's themes. Revolutionaries often talk about how people are transformed through struggle, strikes, protest movements, or revolutions. Participants experience the world differently, learn new skills, see others through different eyes, overcome inhibitions and grow in confidence. At the high points of class struggle, mass strikes and revolutions, the world seems turned upsidedown and the potential for new ways of organising shine through.

Solnit sees this, describing her experience of campaigning against war, and interviewing those involved with Cindy Sheenan in her anti-war protests at George W. Bush. The stories reflect those of people involved in disasters, and many went on to play key roles from outside at New Orleans. She makes that point that disaster isn't necessary for people to help, volunteer or make sacrifices for others. But within disasters there is a concentration of need and urgency, as well as a lack of alternatives that forces people to act, and act they do, with willingness far removed from the imagination of a Hollywood scriptwriter.

The stories of solidarity and self-sacrifice in this book are inspiring. But surprisingly what we also learn is that ordinary people really do have the potential to run society.