History

The radical history of Hackney blog

Submitted by Steven. on Mar 9 2018 19:15

Archived backup of the excellent Radical history of Hackney, east London, blog.

A Victim of Power (Corp) and Police: The La Presse Conflict and the Tear Gas Suffocation of Michele Gauthier

Submitted by greensyndic on Mar 7 2018 04:37

A report on the 1971 conflict at La Presse and the police killing of socialist feminist Michele Gauthier. The broader struggle against Power Corp., the impact of the police killing, and the development of the Common Front and subsequent general strikes.

Bim-Bom, Bang Bang! Chekists and Clowns

Submitted by Battlescarred on Mar 6 2018 18:27

A short account of the circus clown duo Bim-Bom and their encounter with the Cheka in revolutionary Russia.

When Chomsky Worked on Weapons Systems for the Pentagon - by Chris Knight

Submitted by hedgehog on Mar 4 2018 14:00

MITRE's first command and control project: the SAGE air defense system for nucle

Between 1963 and 1965, Noam Chomsky worked as a consultant on an Air Force project to establish English as an “operational language for command and control.”[1] According to one of his students, who also worked on this project, the military justification for funding this work was “that in the event of a nuclear war, the generals would be underground with some computers trying to manage things, and that it would probably be easier to teach computers to understand English than to teach the generals to program.”[2]

The Hebridean Land Revolt

Submitted by DD on Mar 2 2018 10:18

An 1884 London Illustrated News portrayal of a crofters' rally

The Hebridean land revolt was a major uprising by the rural peasantry in 19th-century Scotland. Rents went unpaid. Fences were cut in the night. Land was illegally occupied. Telegraph poles were cut down. Roads were blocked with boulders. And government officials were attacked and beaten by mobs of women and men and children. Finally, in November 1884, the British government authorised a military invasion, dispatching gunboats and hundreds of marines.

Anatomy of a scandal – Miguel Amorós

Submitted by Alias Recluse on Feb 20 2018 21:56

An account of the “Strasbourg Scandal” of 1966—widely recognized as a precursor to the greater scandal of May 1968—its background, its protagonists, the takeover of the local student union and the origins of the pamphlet, “The Poverty of Student Life…”, the role played by the members of the Situationist International in the affair, particularly Debord and Mustapha Khayati, the humiliating exclusion of the “Garnaultins” in January 1967, and the SI’s subsequent descent into an even more rigid and unapproachable sectarian existence until its dissolution in 1972.

Divide and conquer or divide and subdivide? How not to refight the First International – Mark Leier

Submitted by RobynK on Feb 18 2018 10:04

A pamphlet by labour historian Mark Leier (author of Bakunin: The Creative Passion) which looks at the similarities and differences of the two leading figures of the First International, Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx. Leier suggests that the differences are often exaggerated by anarchists and Marxists alike, and that revolutionaries today can learn a great deal from both figures' strengths and weaknesses.