On 13th August 1977, a National Front march in Lewisham was halted by activists. Reflecting in 2022, Alfie Hancox considers what does the Battle of Lewisham might reveal about anti-fascist organising.
Marlene Dietrich's sultry sexuality is the best-remembered part of the 1930 film The Blue Angel, yet embedded in the film and its afterlife is a radical history of antifascist resistance. Marybeth Hamilton explores.
In this piece, Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz reflects on the Spanish Indignados movement as a moment of political learning, global solidarity and intellectual discovery.
What does the history of anarchist books tell us about the diffusion of subversive ideas across national borders and long time spans? Anna Regener maps how state suppression has failed to prevent the 'worlding' of anarchist literature
How did housing activism support the fight against fascism and anti-semitism in the late 1930s? Sarah Glynn investigates a wave of rent strikes in London's East End and beyond
Everyone should be watching Myanmar right now. The history unfolding in the country’s towns and cities is closer than some Western commentators might like to think.
After the recent release of the Policy Exchange's controversial report on 'Academic freedom in the UK', Evan Smith argues that the 'crisis' over free speech is nothing new. Debates over 'no platforming' have a much longer history than is…
Environmentalism is a topic that has entered the mainstream, with two-thirds of Britons now believing we are in a climate emergency according to a 2019 poll. It has even, surprisingly for many, been embraced by parts of the radical right.…
How does Scotland remember the hundreds of Scottish volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War? The continued existence – even vibrancy – of the commemorative community surrounding Scottish involvement in the Spanish Civil War poses…
How can the forgotten archive of Irish-Jewish writer, Leslie Daiken, illuminate the radical networks and transnational solidarity of the Irish Left in the 1930s?
Rather than looking for American or European parallels, Michelle Carmody argues, Jair Bolsonaro's rise to power is best understood in the context of Brazil's own Cold War past.
Continuing our History Workshop World Cup series, Neil Carter tells the story of the English footballers caught up in the tensions of Nazi appeasement.
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
As statues spark controversy, Laura Leonard critically examines how white supremacists in Charlottesville, as well as critics of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, have invoked heritage as a legitimising language.
Rather than treat the far-right as an exceptional political movement, we should see it as a logical outcome of the transformed political landscape of post-Cold War Europe.
January 21, 2017 witnessed the largest one-day protest led by women that the world has ever seen. We want to help preserve the spirit, energy, hope and optimism of that day by asking those who attended the march to submit their thoughts,…
Fascism is not just the big bang of mass rallies and extreme violence; it is also the creeping fog that incrementally occupies power while obscuring its motives.
Why does aazadi (freedom) connote sedition in post-independence India? On the same day that Kanhaiya Kumar reclaimed this word in a stirring speech after his release from jail, Chitralekha Zutshi reflects on the usage and meanings of…
On the 70th anniversary of one of the last major World War II bombing raids on Dresden, Alex Clarkson argues that the origins of the recent upswing in racist social movements can be found not in simplistic explanations of the return of…
The shared experiences of people born to refugee parents from Nazism, the 'second generation', as seen through a series of interviews by the author, Merilyn Moos, with children of parents who fled from Germany, Austria, Hungary,…
