What opportunities does COVID-19 present for ending homelessness? David Christie argues that the achievements of New Labour’s Rough Sleepers Unit can provide a starting point for progressive policy building in the wake of the pandemic.
Histories of the Present
Catching the Activist Archivist Fever
The archive has been portrayed by historians for many years as a ‘magical’ place of neutral enquiry. In fact, it has historically been used in the perpetuation of many abuses by the state and continues to play a role in privileging some narratives above others at the expense of disadvantaged groups within society. Increasingly, a new breed of activist archivists are paying attention to what can be done to correct the imbalances within the archival record.
COVID-19 and Facemask Diplomacy
The COVID-19 pandemic sheds light on the history of “facemask diplomacy”, in which contagion and epidemic become prisms through which power rivalries, tensions and aspirations are conducted – international politics wearing a facemask.
Rock Star Individualism?
Where have rock stars gone, asks Will Rees in this examination of a pop cultural movement’s philosophical underpinnings.
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.
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.
