In the context of the ongoing fallout of the Salisbury nerve attack, Ulf Schmidt & David Peace explore the troubling history of the British state’s relationship with chemical weapons and secret science.
Historians’ Watch
Undoing the Work of the Windrush Narrative
In light of the recent “Windrush scandal”, Kennetta Hammond Perry asks what aspects of British history are extolled, and which facets remain illegible in popular renditions of the Windrush narrative – and offers up alternative “usable pasts” to understand Black people’s relationship to British citizenship.
Plastics and Fossil Fuels: Follow the History of Technological Systems
What is the history behind the global plastics crisis and what are the solutions? Simon Pirani argues that we need to look at technological systems and social and economic systems in which they are embedded.
Making a hostile environment: why the deportation of sex offenders matters
Citizenship ‘stripping’ laws have expanded the idea of a failed citizen, a boundary shaped by racialised and Islamophobic ‘moral panic’. May Robson examines what it means to be an illegal immigrant in Britain.
Britain, Germany, and the Threat of the Far Right
As far right populism resurges in Europe, Neil Gregor reflects on what the British public could learn from an exhibition on right wing extremism in Germany since 1945
‘A Descent into Hell’: Ireland, the Intellectually Disabled and the Psychiatric Hospital System
David Kilgannon brings a historical perspective to Ireland’s treatment of the intellectually disabled.
Where’s the power in a union and why is it important?
How are decisions made in a union? Jack Saunders looks at workplace organisation in the NHS and the motor industry in the post-war period, and offers lessons for the present day.
Imperial History Wars
As popular ideas of British empire become a battleground in Brexit Britain, Charlotte Lydia Riley examines the emergence of imperial history wars
Picket Line Perspectives – Part IV: More Than a ‘Lecturers’ Strike’
In the final part of our series on the UCU pensions dispute, two members of university staff reflect on higher education hierarchies, media portrayals of striking workers, and the implications for non-teaching staff members.
Picket Line Perspectives – Part III: ‘Solidarity Forever’
On the final day of a fourteen day strike across UK universities against cuts to pensions, four historians discuss camaraderie, solidarity and picket line poetry, and consider how to build on the achievements of the past four weeks.
