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.
Histories of the Present
Shackles and Handcuffs: The ‘Special Relationship’ of Racist Policing
A culture of hyper-vigilantism and the conflation of skin colour with criminality did not begin with the abolition of slavery or with the current age of mass incarceration. Joseph Yannielli and Christine Whyte explore its 18th-century origins in metal chains, runaway advertisements and the establishment of modern policing.
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.
Windrush Migrants and “Our NHS Heroes”
It is often in the silence, in the space left by what is not said, that we see the true shape of British anti-blackness, argues Anna Caceres in her analysis of the discourse around the NHS and migrant workers.
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.
Pandemic Politics During the Renaissance
The sixteenth-century struggle to balance biological and economic well-being implicated a surprising number of authorities, but not everyone accepted their discipline. Matthew Vester explores in Pandemic Politics During the Renaissance.
