What does the gargantuan legacy of public statuary have to do with Britain’s history? Miles Taylor argues that the past is not like a statue.
Historians’ Watch
Borders and Beyond
In the latest from our series on “Radical History after Brexit”, Peter Leary asks how we can think beyond borders in an age of both globalisation and national retrenchment.
Enoch Powell, The Coronavirus and The Nation
Analogies to the Second World War are a recurring theme in modern British history. The seeming orthodoxy in Britain in 2020 is that the nation is at war, on a scale not known since the Second World War. The enemy, this time the coronavirus, is invisible to the naked eye.
Black Lives Matter in Britain: The Future and the Past
Jennifer Davis warns that the official sympathy and acknowledgment afforded to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, was not extended in London’s recent past, and may not inform the future of policing policy in the UK.
Colston Revisited
Madge Dresser argues that statues of slave traders, such as Edward Colston, often served complex local and civic objectives, which were inextricable from historical processes which silenced the voices of enslaved Africans.
Four Years On
Four years on from the Brexit Referendum, Christopher Kissane reflects on the Brexiteers’ abuses of history, and the challenges facing radical historians.
Proper Channels
How did Atlantic slavery end? Diana Paton argues that erasing the Haitian Revolution preserves the fiction that Britain is and was a progressive outlier in relation to race and racism
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