̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - political history

̽��ֱ��philosopher who wants us to think deeply about ordinary things

cg605 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 12:56:46 +0000

Nikhil Krishnan, winner of a 2021 Pilkington Prize for outstanding teaching, says that what he loves about teaching is what he loves about philosophy: you can’t know in advance where it’s going to lead. Outside of the lecture hall he’s unravelling how philosophy came to be what it is today.

Queen Elizabeth I would tell Boris to tax the rich rather than cut universal credit, a new book argues

ta385 — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Tudor Monarch introduced the world’s first universal welfare state in 1601, groundbreaking at the time, in response to repeated plague outbreaks and famines. ̽��ֱ��‘Poor Laws’ required all of England’s 10,000 parishes to take responsibility for their poor – anyone who refused to contribute could face prison. For the next 200 years, England was better placed to weather plagues, crop failures, and recessions than anywhere else in Europe and it laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution.

Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at Cambridge and co-author of After ̽��ֱ��Virus – Lessons from the Past for a Better Future, said: “ ̽��ֱ��evidence of history is that societies and economies fare much better with a strong welfare state and when you cut welfare to make savings, you damage society and the economy.

“Elizabeth was able to introduce an extraordinary and comprehensive response to the problems that had worried her for so long. Her ‘Poor Laws’ of 1598 and 1601 put the responsibility on local communities to care for their neighbours to make sure no one would fall into destitution. This included orphans, widows, the old, infirm, sick, involuntarily unemployed and single mothers and their children. This was the world’s first social security and welfare system – nothing like this had existed before.”

In After ̽��ֱ��Virus, Szreter and his co-author Hilary Cooper, a former government economist and senior policy maker, explore why the UK was so unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and suffered one of the highest death rates and worst economic contractions of the major world economies.

̽��ֱ��book draws lessons from history and its authors say that ‘Good Queen Bess’, as Elizabeth I became known, was truly revolutionary and would not have accepted Boris Johnson’s government’s cut to universal credit. ̽��ֱ��£20 weekly increase to universal credit was introduced last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has been controversially halted in October 2021.

Cooper, an expert in labour markets, children’s services and local development, said: “Elizabeth would absolutely have taxed the rich to support the poor in the aftermath of a virus that has claimed the lives of nearly 140,000 people in the UK.

Cooper said: “ ̽��ֱ��lesson today is the same: we cut welfare – including education and health - at our peril. Covid-19 hit the poorest the hardest, with death rates highest in deprived areas and among people of colour. We must learn from the successes from our past and start investing in our population’s wellbeing instead of repeating the mistakes of austerity.”

Szreter, Fellow at St John’s College, said: “Britain had the world’s first welfare state – put in place 400 years ago by Elizabeth I – and the country actually became richer for it. With an unavoidable responsibility to provide for the poor the wealthy increased their philanthropy, funding alms houses, schools, apprenticeships and hospitals to prevent them falling into hardship in the first place.

“It was a welfare system that worked because the prosperous set about contributing and investing in their fellow citizens while Justices of the Peace rigorously enforced payments into the poor law funds. With the old and the sick cared for, the young in particular were liberated to follow the work, migrating to towns and cities where new jobs were becoming available, secure, too, in the knowledge that their parish would support them if things didn’t work out.

“This security ended famine nearly 150 years ahead of other European nations and paved the basis for Britain to emerge as the world’s first industrial nation. ̽��ֱ��labour mobility and rapid urban growth that was unique to Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was facilitated by the security the poor law provided.”

Szreter’s research encompasses economic, social and public health history. He was the first non-American to win the American Public Health Association’s Viseltear Prize. He added: “This week’s cuts to universal credit and the continued inflexibility of the five-week wait to receive benefits will not encourage anyone to take risks in today’s labour market, while the dire state of social care leaves many unable to move from where they can easily care for ageing relatives. Welfare savings are simply a false economy.”

Although the book offers optimism and a clear manifesto for change, it also offers a warning – that Covid-19 is a ‘dress rehearsal’ for bigger crises ahead. Cooper explained: “Covid-19 is a warning shot across our bows, there are going to be many more global crises – climate change and biodiversity collapse are the big threats. Perhaps Covid-19 will be the warning the world needed to learn lessons from the past.”

Reference

After the Virus: Lessons from the Past for a Better Future by Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter is published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press.

A new book about how Covid-19 rocked the world argues that Elizabeth I would have supported the poor in the aftermath of the pandemic.

̽��ֱ��evidence of history is that societies and economies fare much better with a strong welfare state

Simon Szreter

National Portrait Gallery, London

Queen Elizabeth I by unknown continental artist (c.1575), NPG 2082.

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1989: ̽��ֱ��year Margaret Thatcher’s apparent mastery slipped away

ehs33 — Sat, 09 Mar 2019 00:00:01 +0000

Forty thousand pages of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s personal and political papers from 1989 are being opened to the public at the Churchill Archives Centre and online at the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

In 1989, the arrival of Alan Walters had an incendiary effect. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson's fundamental disagreements with the views and actions of Walters, Margaret Thatcher’s economics adviser, led to the watershed resignation of both men on 26 October 1989.

Lawson’s decision to resign after over six years as a key figure in Thatcher’s government was a pivotal moment in the events which would lead to the downfall of the Prime Minister.
For the first time, Thatcher’s extraordinary handwritten letter to Walters – written in the aftermath of both their resignations – gives profound insight and confirms Thatcher’s true sentiment and affiliation to Walters over Lawson as her Chancellor, a split that divided the Conservative party.

Across four pages Thatcher underlines her words and states she was "truly appalled" at Lawson’s request to sack Walters for undermining his authority and regarded it as "totally unjust and shocking". Her gratitude to Walters is evident saying “the work you did during our first administration was the foundation of our later success’ adding “I fervently believe you’re right”.
Thatcher bemoans the legacy of her longstanding Chancellor in a way she could not do in public. “As you know he has left us with high inflation, a very high trade deficit, not to mention the very high interest rate”.

Contained in an off the record interview with Kelvin McKenzie Editor of the Sun, released for the first time, her emotional reaction to events is powerfully present. She recalls her children’s consoling phone calls on the evening of the Lawson resignation – “Mum are you alright? don’t worry, you know we love you”. She describes their support as “meaning more than anything in the world”.

This event, combined with the highlights of the previously unseen material, opened the door to the end of Thatcherism before another year was out. Documents released for the first time include:

Startling confidential reports on the effects of the poll tax – some only sent to the Prime Minister – forewarning her of its unfairness and adverse impact on Tory marginal seats, including Thatcher’s own Finchley constituency. Thatcher was clearly warned from numerous sources about the ratio of losers to winners amongst Conservative voters and the consequent likely political damage, yet despite all this, pressed ahead. This flagship Thatcherite policy, would not be possible to abolish while Thatcher was still Prime Minister;
Thatcher’s private notes on the 'Madrid ambush', the ultimatum from Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe that she issue a date to join the ERM goes to the very heart of the story of the Thatcher government in its last years – both men had once been among her closes political allies;
Mrs Thatcher’s personal fondness for health cures in the form of her correspondence with the novelist Barbara Cartland offering her “golden acorns”, perhaps nutrimental supplements she might have taken in combination with living off black coffee and describing eggs and bacon as “quite the best thing, British peoples culinary gift to the world”;
̽��ֱ��first use of the ‘royal we' in Thatcher's statement to the press on the birth of her first grandchild, Mark Thatcher's son Michael caused huge negative public reaction. ̽��ֱ��term had previously been restricted to royalty. Its use by a mere prime minister alongside Thatcher's imperious personal manner were the source of considerable disdain at the time. Thatcher's apparent conceit led to her being described as “a legend in her own imagination”.

Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, said: “Whatever our politics we have to recognise Margaret Thatcher as a major historical figure. ̽��ֱ��material released today will further inform our understanding of these historic events during 1989. There is huge research interest in her as a political figure and in the events of her life and premiership, the material will inform further study, discussion and debate.”

̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives Centre is open to researchers five days a week for about fifty weeks each year. ̽��ֱ��Centre provides free access for all potential visitors, subject only to prior booking of a space in its reading room.

̽��ֱ��archive can be viewed at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website and will be made available to view at the Churchill Archives Centre from Monday 11 March.

Whatever our politics we have to recognise Margaret Thatcher as a major historical figure

Allen Packwood

Reproduced by kind permission of the family of Srdja Djukanovic

Margaret Thatcher 1989

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‘Don’t put yourself through it again’: Thatcher papers reveal ‘distress’ after bruising election win

sjr81 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:02:33 +0000

But despite winning 376 seats and 13.7 million votes (compared to Labour’s 209 seats and just over 10 million votes), the papers for 1987 are striking in their air of uncertainty and despondency, with one particularly prescient letter from Private Secretary Charles Powell imploring her not to fight another bruising election campaign.

As well as fighting off what Conservatives believed to be a particularly hostile press in the run-up to the election, 1987 proved a particularly troubled and unsettling year for both the Prime Minister and the country at large with the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, Hungerford massacre, King’s Cross fire, Enniskillen bombing, ‘Black Monday’ stock market crash, and the Great Storm all taking place during the course of a turbulent year.

̽��ֱ��extraordinary Powell letter, opened to the public in full for the first time by the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, strikes a pleading tone to Lady Thatcher after congratulating the PM on her historic victory.

“All the same I hope you will not put yourself through it again,” says the letter. “ ̽��ֱ��level of personal abuse thrown at you during the campaign was unbelievable and must take some toll, however stoic you are outwardly… In two or three years’ time you will have completed the most sweeping change this country has seen in decades and your place in history will be rivalled only in this century by Churchill. That’s the time to contribute to some other area.”

Responding to the letter ahead of today's opening, Lord Powell said: “I had actually forgotten writing the letter until Charles Moore cited it in his biography. It’s an unusual letter for a civil servant to send a Prime Minister, even on a very personal basis, reflecting the small size and intimacy of Number 10 especially in those days. I had been distressed to observe at close quarters the stress of a third election campaign and the back-biting it involved on Margaret Thatcher’s health and performance. In the light of subsequent events, my advice to her looks pretty sound.”

Although 1987 had its fair share of difficulties – not least a growing Tory disquiet around the upcoming ‘Poll Tax’ – Thatcher did enjoy enormously successful visits to both the USA and the USSR, the latter to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev during March/April.

̽��ֱ��success of the visit helped launch her election campaign and put clear water between her and Labour in the polls at a time when the gap had been narrowing, a constriction that provoked much disquiet in the Conservative ranks at all levels of the party machine.

While the Russia visit and resulting photos provided a bump to Thatcher's and Conservative Party popularity, Thatcher had since 1983 consciously sought a better relationship with the Soviet leadership. In truth, Lady Thatcher was yet to be convinced by Gorbachev and played down expectations both before and after the visit, even in the face of overwhelmingly positive coverage both in the UK and behind the Iron Curtain.

̽��ֱ��1987 papers also bring back to light a forgotten episode on eve of poll when Lady Thatcher, being interviewed by David Dimbleby, made what could have been a potentially election-losing and career-ending comment. Asking a question about social division, Dimbleby suggested the PM never actually said she cared. In reply, she said: “Please. If people just drool and drivel that they care. I turn round and say ‘Right. I also look to see what you actually do.’”

Thatcher instantly regretted her choice of words and immediately apologised for her use of the phrase ‘drool and drivel’.

Historian Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the only person to have read all 50,000 pages of the 1987 papers in their entirety, said: “She was a bit lucky there, I think. Perhaps the immediate retraction and election victory saved her from having to live with endless taunting in later years.

“It’s hard to find anything quite like this exchange in the whole body of her public rhetoric (which amounted to more than 14 million words by the end of her Premiership) and her feelings about it were correspondingly high.”

On a lighter note, the papers for 1987 contain her Press Office briefing notes after Lady Thatcher was persuaded to appear on children’s TV, including the BBC’s Saturday Superstore. A briefing ahead of an interview for Smash Hits magazine carries the ominous warning ‘You may not enjoy this appearance' – and if proof were needed, included an appendix with a short history of punk.

Noting that the genre was at its most extreme phase under the previous Labour government, the briefing went on to outline the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the UK, both highlighted in yellow to give these classic punk anthems even greater prominence.

Not content with her brief history of punk, the PM also gave a speech in Jamaica later that year referencing Bob Marley. Powell also sent her the words to Get Up, Stand Up.

While Thatcher may have proved her prowess at winning elections in 1987, she did come a cropper on the domestic front after appearing on a BBC science programme called Take Nobody’s Word For It with Professor Ian Fells of Newcastle ̽��ֱ�� to demonstrate some basic chemistry including a recipe for bread.

“If you offer the viewing public a recipe on a TV programme with a title like that, it better be a good one – ideally foolproof,” added Collins. “Unfortunately this one wasn’t. Horrified officials found themselves receiving letters from people complaining they had tried the PM’s bread. One said it was ‘just like chewing gum’ and another ‘that it was bad enough to cry’. Later that same year, the Roux brothers sent her a book of patisserie recipes, though history does not record whether the gift had any connection to ‘Breadgate’.”

Margaret Thatcher’s third and final election victory dominates the 50,000 pages of her personal papers for the year 1987 – opening to the public from today at Churchill College, Cambridge.

I had been distressed to observe at close quarters the stress of a third election campaign and the back-biting it involved on Margaret Thatcher’s health and performance.

Lord Powell

Thatcher speaking in the White House grounds during her 1987 visit to the USA

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‘Hectoring, strident and bossy’: Thatcher papers for 1985 reveal plans to soften the Iron Lady

sjr81 — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 15:38:52 +0000

Held by the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, 43,000 pages of papers will be opened to the public from Monday, revealing in close detail the concerns, challenges and crises faced by Thatcher during a year which marked her tenth anniversary as leader and the halfway point in her premiership.

Thatcher’s papers also reveal growing disquiet within Tory Party ranks about Labour’s recovery following the miners’ strike, as well as a general sense of Conservative malaise, and the wrangling Prime Minister Thatcher underwent as she planned and announced her Cabinet reshuffle.

Chris Collins from the Margaret Thatcher Archives Trust, which owns the papers, said the newly-released documents give a sense of the pressures on Thatcher, both domestically, internationally, and closer to home – with her press secretary attempting to soften the image of the Iron Lady.

“ ̽��ֱ��early papers for 1985 are dominated by the unfinished business of the coal strike,” said Collins. “Thatcher’s advisers were worried that Arthur Scargill might still manage to find a way to out-manoeuvre them. ̽��ֱ��papers show Thatcher closely involved in the aftermath of the strike. Although its outcome is now seen as decisive, the possibility of another strike was not discounted at the time. Thatcher wrote a note on March 7, 1985 saying ‘what a relief it’s all over… we shall rebuild stocks of coal at power stations as a first priority.’”

Elsewhere, Thatcher wrote: “We have shattered the myth that the miners can always bring a government down. And it is clear beyond all doubt that we will never give in to violence.”

But the end of the battle with Scargill and the miners did not provide the boost to Conservative popularity that many in the party imagined. In fact, Thatcher’s papers for 1985 suggest the reverse is true with press secretary Bernard Ingham’s press clippings showing how Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s conference speech won plaudits from both the Sun and the Daily Mail.

Perhaps one of the most curious revelations from the release of this year’s papers comes via the many pages of correspondence generated by multiple branches of the government machine over Thatcher’s potential non-attendance at a St Paul’s memorial service.

̽��ֱ��papers for 1985 reveal that the Church of England and Downing Street clashed over proposals to exclude the Prime Minister from the unveiling of the Falklands Memorial at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Thatcher was said to have responded angrily to suggestions that there would not be room for her in the crypt alongside the Queen, church and military officials. ̽��ֱ��row followed a high-profile falling-out between Mrs Thatcher and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie after the latter had prayed for Argentinian dead in a 1982 memorial service.

Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine unwisely allowed a letter to reach the Prime Minister showing him signing off on the agreement to hold the service without her. On the letter, in Mrs Thatcher’s own hand, she has scrawled the words which must have made many a minister’s blood turn to ice: ‘Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.’ ̽��ֱ��word ‘immediately’, just in case her displeasure was unclear, is underlined twice.

Mrs Thatcher’s lack of popularity with the Church of England also seemed to be reflected in the national approval ratings for the Prime Minster and her party as unemployment figures stayed stubbornly above the three million mark throughout the year.

Added Collins: “Private as well as published polling showed the Conservative party falling badly for much of the year, moving into third place in May behind Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance. By August, the position seemed worse still. Approval of the government’s record was at minus 42 per cent. Thatcher’s personal rating was minus 35 per cent and the party remained well adrift of its two main rivals in the Tory party’s private polls.”

̽��ֱ��disastrous polling figures may have informed attempts by Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham to soften her image. Ingham, whose papers are also held by the Churchill Archives Centre, sent a five-page memo to the Prime Minister warning that she had gained a public image as “hectoring, strident and bossy”.

Ingham’s plea to employ a softer rhetoric, including the words ‘compassion’ and ‘caring’, seem to have largely fallen on deaf ears as she shied away from using such language in her party conference speech that year.

Added Collins: “Looking at the document there is no sign of dissent from Thatcher; no scribbled notes or underlining like you often see on her personal files. But she simply would never have worn her heart on her sleeve like that, partly because it would have gone against her instincts, but also because, by that point, it would have seemed inauthentic.”

“Her public image was so fixed that she couldn’t win. If she had suddenly shown a softer side, people would not have believed it.”

Massive unemployment, the end of the miners’ strike and a controversial decision to try and exclude the Prime Minister from a Falklands War memorial service at St Paul’s are some of the issues revealed by the release of Margaret Thatcher’s personal papers for 1985.

Kindly ask the secretary of state to see me immediately.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Margaret Thatcher

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Can the Revolution in Kurdish Syria succeed?

fpjl2 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:29:02 +0000

Since the descent into civil war in Syria, revolutionary forces have seized control of the Kurdish region of Rojava. ̽��ֱ��mainstream media has been quick to publicise who the revolutionary forces in Rojava are fighting against: the brutality of Islamic State (IS); but what they are fighting for is often neglected. In December of 2014, we had the chance to visit the region as part of an academic delegation. ̽��ֱ��purpose of our trip was to assess the strengths, challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way (read the Delegation’s Joint Statement here).

Rojava is the de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria. It consists of three cantons: Afrîn in the west, Kobanê in the centre, and Cizîre in the east. It is, for the most part, isolated and surrounded by hostile forces. However – despite the brutal war with IS, the painful embargo of Turkey and the even more painful embargo of Barzani and his Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq – systems of self-governance and democratic autonomous rule have been established in Rojava, and are radically transforming social and political relations in an emancipatory direction.

As Saleh Muslim, co-president of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing the independent communities of Rojava, explained in an interview in November 2014: “[We are engaged in the construction of] radical democracy: to mobilize people to organize themselves and to defend themselves by means of peoples armies like the Peoples Defense Unit (YPG) and Women’s Defense Unit (YPJ). We are practicing this model of self-rule and self-organization without the state as we speak. Democratic autonomy is about the long term. It is about people understanding and exercising their rights. To get society to become politicized: that is the core of building democratic autonomy.”

At the forefront of this politicization is gender equality and women’s empowerment, with equal representation and active participation of women in all political and social circles. “We [have] established a model of co-presidency – each political entity always has both a female and a male president – and a quota of 40% gender representation in order to enforce gender equality throughout all forms of public life and political representation,” explains Saleh Muslim.

̽��ֱ��revolutionary forces in Rojava are not fighting for an independent nation state, but advocating a system they call democratic confederalism: one of citizenry-led self-governance through the formation of neighbourhood-level people’s councils, town councils, open assemblies, and cooperatives. These self-governing instruments allow for the participation of diverse political, ethnic, and religious groups, promoting consensus-led decision-making. Combined with local academies aimed at politicising and educating the population, these structures of self-governance give the populace the ability to raise and solve their own problems.

During our nine day trip to Cizîre canton, we visited rural towns as well as cities, where we met with representatives and members of schools, cooperatives, women's academies, security forces, political parties, and the self-government in charge of economic development, healthcare, and foreign affairs.

Throughout the visit, we witnessed discipline, revolutionary commitment and impressive collective mobilisation of the population in Cizîre. Despite the isolation and difficult conditions, a perseverance and even confidence seemed to dominate the collective mood among representatives and members of all the diverse groups we met. This collective optimism and willingness to sacrifice was in the pursuit of an admirable ideological program and genuine steps towards collective emancipation. We were particularly struck by the emphasis on education, politicization, and a consciousness-raising of the general population in accordance with a grass-roots democratic transformation of social and property relations.

Images by Jeff Miley. Click on images to enlarge.

An obvious and striking strength of the revolution clearly on display throughout our trip were the strides towards gender emancipation. Our meetings with government representatives, members of academies, women’s militias, and people’s councils all demonstrated that women’s empowerment is not mere programmatic window-dressing but is in fact being implemented. This, in the context of the Middle East and in sharp contrast to both the IS as well as the KRG, was most impressive.

Another feature of the programmatic agenda we found admirable was the insistence by the revolutionary government in Rojava that it is committed to a broader struggle for a democratic Syria, and in fact a democratic Middle East, capable of accommodating cultural, ethnic and religious diversity through democratic confederalism. In this vein, we witnessed proactive attempts by the revolutionary forces to include ethnic and religious minorities into the struggle underway in Rojava, including the institutionalisation of positive discrimination, quotas, and self-organisation of minority groups, such as the Syriac community – which even formed their own militias.

That said, the integration of the local Arab population into the revolutionary project remains a critical challenge, as does coordination and the formation of alliances with groups outside of the three cantons. Extra-Kurdish coordination and alliances are certainly prerequisites for ensuring the survival of the revolution in the medium and long term and are especially critical if democratic confederalism is to spread across Syria and the Middle East. Such a task is as difficult as it is urgent. It is crucial that the revolutionary authorities do everything in their power to assuage Arab fears of a Greater Kurdistan agenda, and include them in this struggle. Avoiding a Kurdish-centric version of history, literature and even the temptation to push for a Kurdish-only language educational system will help prevent the alienation of ethnic and religious minorities.

Revolutionary symbols (e.g. flags, maps, posters) are particularly important when it comes to integrating ethnic and religious minorities, as well as publicising the revolution across the world. More inclusive imagery would certainly facilitate the task of winning support and sympathy – both in the Middle East and more globally. References beyond the Kurdish movement were strikingly absent from the symbols we saw. ̽��ֱ��positive side of the Kurdish revolutionary symbols cannot be ignored and certainly plays a significant role in facilitating the mobilisation of the Kurdish population. However, at the same time it is likely to alienate non-Kurds and Kurds who might misidentify the struggle as one for a Greater Kurdistan.

Listen to Jeff Miley's talk on Rojava and the Kurdish revolutionary movement

Our biggest concern is that the revolution will be compromised – if not sacrificed – by broader geopolitical games. ̽��ֱ��current close alliance between the KRG and the United States, and the recent US-led airstrikes in Syria, fuel the suspicions of many – especially Sunni Arabs – that the Kurds are but pawns to yet another imperialist intervention in the region in pursuit of oil.

̽��ֱ��politics of divide and conquer employed by the imperialist powers have a long, bloody and effective history in the Middle East and beyond. This sad reality reinforces how crucial it is to build alliances, and to transcend the Kurdish nationalist imaginary within the ranks of the movement. Indeed, one of the principal strengths of IS has been its ability to mobilise militants both locally and globally in seemingly implacable opposition to imperialist powers.

It is especially important for the Kurdish revolution to appeal to the Turkish left, and to encourage them to denounce and fight against the crippling embargo enforced by the Turkish state on Rojava. ̽��ֱ��effects of and challenges created by the embargo were all too evident with respect to the basic health needs of the population we encountered. Unexpectedly, it was not a lack of medical expertise but rather a lack of medicine and medical equipment that most threatens population health.

̽��ֱ��effects of the embargo also reach beyond the immediate needs of the population in Rojava. ̽��ֱ��environmental toll was evident, most notably in the oil-seeped soil around the rigs. Given the circumstances, it is certainly understandable and indeed inevitable that the revolutionary authorities are nearly exclusively preoccupied with the tasks of providing for immediate energy and food needs of the population while searching for financial assistance to keep the revolutionary project afloat. Nevertheless, the revolution offers a unique opportunity to carefully establish an environmentally sustainable and democratically managed economy.

In the broader context of tyranny, violence, and political upheaval rocking many countries in the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that problems can be understood in isolation or solved on a country-by-country basis. One of the best things about the model of democratic confederalism institutionalized in Rojava is that it is potentially applicable to the entire region – a region, it should be recalled, the borders of which were largely drawn in illegitimate fashion by imperialist forces a century ago. ̽��ֱ��sins of Imperialism have yet to be forgotten in the region.

Democratic confederalism, however, is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states. Indeed, the model of democratic confederalism promises to help foster peace throughout the region, from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, through Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. If only this democratic revolution could spread.

̽��ֱ��long siege on Kobanê, facilitated by the criminal complicity of the Turkish state, constituted not just an assault on the Kurdish people but on a revolutionary democratic project. ̽��ֱ��region is being torn asunder in a destructive process protagonized by a variety of reactionary brands of political Islam. ̽��ֱ��revolutionary project of Rojava, based on democratic participation, gender emancipation, and multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and even multi-national accommodation, represents a third way, perhaps the only way, for achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. For these reasons the recent liberation of Kobanê should be hailed by progressives, indeed, by all advocates of peace, freedom and democracy around the world.

Watch Sociology PhD Candidate and Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik's talk on the Kurdish Women's Movement at the New World Summit in Brussels last year.

We can but hope, argue sociologist Dr Jeff Miley and Gates Scholar Johanna Riha, who here summarise some of their observations following a recent field visit to Rojava in northern Syria, and give a brief overview of the political and social ideologies underpinning the Kurdish revolution.

Democratic confederalism is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states

Jeff Miley

Deliberations among a Local Women's Council in Qamişlo, Rojava

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An interview with Tony Badger: 50 years a historian

amb206 — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 16:00:00 +0000

His interest in history, and American history in particular, started when he was 12 and has never wavered. This summer will see Professor Anthony (Tony) Badger step down from his roles as Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and Master of Clare College, Cambridge.

Badger is a specialist in 20th century America, most notably the troubled politics of the South. He has published widely on topics such as race relations, the depression of the 1930s and the New Deal. His books include FDR: ̽��ֱ��First Hundred Days, a book widely read by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and his scholarship has won him a series of accolades.

Known for his approachability and unswerving loyalty to Bristol Rovers Football Club, Badger is passionate about teaching and is proud of the achievements of his students, many of whom are making their mark on the world, both within academia and beyond. They include the BBC’s Washington correspondent Nick Bryant, actor and writer Sacha Baron Cohen, and the historian Dominic Sandbrook.

Sitting in his office overlooking the gardens at Clare College, Badger looks back on his career of 50 years. He also talks about his future roles which include working for the Foreign Office as the independent reviewer of the release of thousands of archived government files. He’s certainly not going to be idle.

When did you know you wanted to be a historian?

When I was 12 my father had a book on his shelves called America Came My Way written in the 1930s by an English baronet, Sir Anthony Jenkinson – it’s still the best book of its kind about that era. Jenkinson had very good connections and he starts with a description of the America’s Cup off Rhode Island and ends with an interview with Shirley Temple in Hollywood. In the middle of the book, Jenkinson goes to Washington and there’s a chapter called ‘Huey Long Takes His Shirt Off’. It’s all about the colourful antics of this senator from Louisiana and was very different to anything I knew about British politics. There was a little asterisk beside the title of the chapter which pointed out that the interview had taken place before Senator Long was assassinated. I read this in 1959: I knew Gandhi had been assassinated a decade before but the notion that an American politician had been killed in this way came as a big shock. Of course, that was all to change in the 1960s.

What qualities do you need?

To be a historian you need to be able to weigh up the evidence and construct a coherent explanation of events. You need to be able to really get into the subject so that you’re not surprised by things, or rather, to understand when you should be surprised. You are always tempted to apply anachronistic contemporary values. Inevitably when you’re studying the 20th century you’re bound to have strong sympathies with certain characters, in my case Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.

You came up to Cambridge in 1965. What was it like?

I was brought up in Bristol in a family of Welsh school teachers. My parents were both wonderfully encouraging, there were lots of books around, and I went to the local grammar school. I sang in a local church choir and regret I did not carry on seriously when my voice broke. I also played a lot of rugby. History was always my main interest though I wouldn’t say that I was a very good student. When I applied to Cambridge, my future director of studies said that, although I obviously didn’t know very much, I did show the ability to answer the question.

As an undergraduate at Sidney Sussex, I shared a room with a very bright historian who opened my eyes to how I could make best use of my time. But I rather cringe when I look back at what I produced as an undergraduate. Cambridge was an unusual place – almost all male at that time – but Sidney Sussex had few students from what you might call major public schools. Most of us came from maintained grammar schools and I certainly didn’t feel intimidated or different from anyone else.

At the end of my first year I decided to take a course in American history and I suddenly realised that Huey Long, the man I’d read about when I was 12, was actually rather important as a major political challenger to Roosevelt in the 1930s. I wrote a paper for my college history society about all of this – and I’ve continued to be fascinated by the politics of the South during this era. In 2007 I published a chapter about Long – called ‘When I took the Oath of Office, I took no vow of poverty: Race, Corruption and Democracy in Louisiana’ - in a collection of essays.

By the end of my time at Cambridge I’d begun to learn how to work – how to manage my time and how to concentrate rather than ‘sort of’ work, and how to take notes and read things in different ways – which things to read in detail and which things just to skim through. I’m still learning now.

What would you have been if you hadn’t been a historian?

I probably would have been a school teacher – it runs in the family. Before I got a scholarship to go to Hull to take a PhD I had accepted a place to train as a teacher at Bristol ̽��ֱ��.

You went from Cambridge to Hull to take a PhD – two very different environments?

Taking a PhD at Hull ̽��ֱ�� was the best thing I ever did. I went from somewhere where there were lots of graduate students to a place where I was the only graduate student in American history. When I first went to Hull it was for my interview and I clearly remember arriving at the station. ̽��ֱ��centre of Hull at this time was pretty depressing and I thought: ‘I’ll never have the same sense of excitement coming here as I do each time I get back to Cambridge.’ By the time I left Hull, the reverse was true. I came to appreciate the northern environment and later went to work at Newcastle ̽��ֱ��. Soon I’m going to be living in Yorkshire.

You’ve focused on American politics throughout your career. What difference does it make that you’re English?

I went to America for the first time in my life in 1969 when I was half way through my PhD and spent 13 months in North Carolina. In those days long-distance travel was really expensive so if you got somewhere you stayed as long as you could. It’s very different for our graduate students today - they go back and forth to the States all the time. ̽��ֱ��focus of the previous generation of historians of America to mine tended to be explaining America to non-Americans and to concentrate on the Anglo-American relationship. What people of my generation wanted to do was to be virtually indistinguishable from American graduate students. We sought to master the sources as thoroughly as American students would and tackle the problems that concerned American historiography - and thus be judged on our credentials on the same basis as American historians.

Over the years I’ve come to think that there is no advantage or disadvantage to being English – it’s just different. A historian from the North of America working on the history of the South is another different experience. It’s been said that you never will understand the south without having been born there. That might be right but it brings with it all kinds of assumptions. In some ways being an outsider is helpful in that it avoids you getting into a cycle of self-congratulation and lamentation that bedevils American and Southern history. It took a long time for American historians and commentators to pick up on the distinctive importance of religion in modern American politics which for outsiders really stood out.

Do we study history in order to learn from the past?

AJP Taylor famously said that we learn about the mistakes of the past in order to make the same mistakes again. I’ve written a fair amount recently on Obama and the lessons of the New Deal because in 2009 explicit comparisons were made between Obama’s administration and Roosevelt’s administration. Obama had different things to face and he didn’t have the same opportunities as FDR. American politicians, particularly Democrats, have always been imprisoned by comparisons with Roosevelt – none of them will ever live up to it. Things are never the same twice but an analysis of history can provide comparative factors and useful pointers about what may or may not happen.

As for politicians having a solid grasp of history, Clare Short once said of Tony Blair that he had very little knowledge of history while Gordon Brown did. It’s not clear what effect that had but I do think a broad historical sense gives you a certain degree of caution. ̽��ֱ��most obvious lesson of the past for European politicians should have been Iraq and for Americans it’s Vietnam

You’ve been Master of Clare College for the past ten years. What’s special about a Cambridge education?

For students the most important thing in studying history is to get an imaginative understanding of it. Like classics, it’s not a vocational subject – it teaches you how to weigh up material and make judgments. ̽��ֱ��most important thing I look for in students is that they enjoy it. What we have at Cambridge, as one of the world’s leading research universities, is an amazingly favourable environment for students. I taught for 20 years at Newcastle where we had wonderful students but in the history department they are operating with a student-staff ratio at levels which can’t possibly offer the same experience students get at Cambridge. We’re also sitting on fantastic resources here in the form of libraries and so on – so there’s absolutely no excuse for not providing world class undergraduate education.

̽��ֱ��real challenge for Cambridge over the next ten to 15 years is to raise the big sums of money needed to sustain the research standard and keep that quality of undergraduate education at the same time. ̽��ֱ��pressures on today’s College Fellows from the demands of research are such that a College needs far more of them than we did in the past in order to maintain the current level of teaching. ̽��ֱ��notion that nothing needs to change is simply wishful thinking.

How do you feel about history teaching in schools?

I feel that the best people to comment on that are teachers themselves. As an American historian I can’t complain. I don’t lament the current state of historical knowledge in our sixth forms, many of which I visit to give talks. Students arriving to start courses at Cambridge don’t come up with lesser skills than their predecessors, they come up with different skills. They are accustomed to working in a modular fashion and, in terms of doing weekly essays at Cambridge, that’s rather good training. They master IT skills that academics have on the whole been fairly slow to grasp - and they certainly know how to work hard.

What have you found most rewarding and most frustrating about your career?

̽��ֱ��most rewarding thing has been teaching a special subject in the History Faculty that’s been very popular – it’s a course on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes I hear from students from years ago who write to tell me what they are doing today – NGO work in Rwanda, for example – as a direct result of doing this course. I’ve been remarkably lucky to have some very talented PhD students, real self-starters, who have gone into the leading university jobs in American history in this country.

̽��ֱ��reality of being a Master of a Cambridge College and a professor are that you are busy but that’s not a complaint. I spent two terms on to the ̽��ֱ�� Council and had a period as chairman of the Cambridge Colleges Committee where you confront the inevitable difficulty of getting things done in a self-governing institution. In retirement I’m looking forward to not being timetabled quite so much

How has the study of history changed in the course of your career?

History looks very different from how it looked in the late 1960s if you’re an American historian. ̽��ֱ��relatively narrow range of American political and diplomatic history has been enormously enriched by the new social history. One particular example is the history of women: in 1974 I was working at Newcastle ̽��ֱ�� and I invited Carl Degler, the visiting Harmsworth Professor, from Oxford to give a lecture on “Is there a history of women?” Well, there certainly wasn’t at Newcastle – or most other places – back in 1974. ̽��ֱ��emergence of the history of women as a research area and the influx of women into the profession have transformed the subject. History is a much more theoretically sophisticated subject than it was 30 years ago. I look at the courses available to students at Cambridge today and think what a wonderful subject it is. In my own area, it was the great books of the history on slavery that came out in the 1970s that led me to teach race relations as a subject. As an American historian, it was important to know these works – and the best way to do that was to teach them.

Which of your books would you most recommend to readers?

It would have to be FDR: ̽��ֱ��First Hundred Days which came out in 2008. At first no-one was really interested in it and then it began to attract attention. ̽��ֱ��financial crisis in the autumn of that year meant that 10 Downing Street got interested in it and just after Christmas, the historian Tristram Hunt wrote in the Observer that this volume was top of the reading list of political classes on both sides of the Atlantic. It developed from a book I published in 1989, a one-volume history of the New Deal called ̽��ֱ��New Deal: ̽��ֱ��Depression Years 1933-1940.

What are you doing next?

I’ve got three main things to do.

I’m independent reviewer for the Foreign Office for, firstly the Migrated Archive and their Special Collections. ̽��ֱ��Migrated Archive is a vast number of papers sent to London from the British administrations of former colonies in their last days rather than handing them over to their successors. ̽��ֱ��existence of this archive came to light in the Kenya torture trial. My appointment was designed to provide assurance that these papers would get published in their entirety. I did that in 2013.

̽��ֱ��Foreign Office then acknowledged that they had a much larger collection of papers that they had not made available – held at the records centre at Hounslow Park. These papers are not as significant, I suspect, as the Migrated Archive and they are much more haphazard in what they cover. ̽��ֱ��best way of describing this archive is as residual collections – they didn’t come in the normal way under the 30-year rule that governs the annual transfer of documents from any government department to the national archive. These files have been accumulated outside that departmental route – they include stuff from the Allied Control Mission and stuff on the Foreign Office investigation of Burgess and McLean as well as very interesting material from Hong Kong and claims against the German government from British citizens who were victims of Nazi persecution.

While the Migrated Archive released over the last two years had just over 20,000 files, the Special Collections has 600,000 plus files. It’s my role to guarantee that these are being released in a timely fashion. This task isn’t quite as massive as it seems as 250,000 of these files relate to Hong Kong and won’t be released until 2047. Another 150,000 files are routine foreign compensation claim files. My role is to prioritise the release of the most important papers as quickly as possible.

̽��ֱ��second thing is that I’m chairman of the Kennedy Memorial Trust which administers the Kennedy Scholarships and also the memorial at Runnymede. Thirdly, a former colleague of mine is doing a remarkable job building up American history at Northumbria ̽��ֱ�� in Newcastle and I’m going to be doing some work for them. So, all in all, I’m going to be pretty busy.

Inset images: Tony Badger as Bristol choirboy, rugby player and visiting scholar (credit: Tony Badger)

̽��ֱ��Choir of Clare College will tomorrow (5 July 2014) perform a special concert at West Road as tribute to outgoing Master and eminent historian Professor Tony Badger. With characteristic candour, Badger answers questions about his trajectory from grammar school boy to leading specialist in American political history.

Tony Badger

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Black Power in Britain becoming “forgotten history”

tdk25 — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 11:53:27 +0000

Britain’s Black Power movement - and its battle against institutional racism - is in danger of being “written out of history”, according to a new book about its principal figurehead, Darcus Howe.

̽��ֱ��claim is one of the opening contentions in Darcus Howe: A political biography, in which the authors argue that the major flashpoints of black political activism - such as the trial of the Mangrove Nine, and the Black People’s March of 1981 - are being overlooked in favour of a more palatable version of British history.

Writing in their introduction, Robin Bunce and Paul Field argue that “there has been a resurgence of outright denial, linked to a romantic, dumbed-down ‘whiggish’ view of history that suggests that racism was always someone else’s problem.”

They add that Britain is consistently portrayed by politicians as being “on the side of the angels” in race relations, and point to the 2007 celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade as an example of how Britain prefers to propagate a myth of itself as “the utopia of civilized fair play”.

Their book, which is published by Bloomsbury, claims to correct and balance some of that denial by using Darcus Howe’s biography as the framework for the first, detailed history of Black Power in Britain. It traces the story from Howe’s Trinidadian origins, through his political activism in the 1970s and 80s, his subsequent broadcasting career, and up to his controversial refusal to condemn the London Riots of 2011.

Dr Bunce, Director of Studies for Politics at Homerton College, Cambridge, was moved to research the book a few years ago when Howe was diagnosed with prostate cancer, from which he fortunately recovered. Over the course of two years he met with Howe, who is now 70, once a fortnight, sorting through documents and conducting interviews.

“It occurred to me that Darcus Howe was striving for many of the same things as the Black Power Movement in America, which is obviously much better known,” Bunce said. “What nobody has documented is the British struggle. We are now reaching a stage where the people who can tell us about it are not going to be around for much longer.”

“One reason that the story is not well-known is that we prefer to tell a story which presents Britain as a place of civilisation and fairness. ̽��ֱ��effect is that people like Howe, and what they did, are being written out of British history. Sadly, the truth was never as good as we like to think; the history of black people in this country from Windrush until at least the 1970s is one of being treated as second-class citizens.”

British Black Power was far less prominent than the American black rights movement, which had a clear political focus in segregation, and produced iconic, internationally-recognisable figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther-King. Despite its lower profile, however, it played an critical role in the fight against the less visible problem of institutional racism in the police, the justice system, and the jobs market.

̽��ֱ��story of the movement is inextricably tangled up with that of Darcus Howe himself. Born in Trinidad, he originally moved to the UK in 1961 to study law, although he subsequently entered journalism. In 1968, on the advice of his uncle, the Caribbean intellectual, CLR James, he attended the 1968 Montreal Congress of Black Writers, where he met members of the Black Panthers and various West Indian political movements. Stimulated by their views, he then became involved in the 1970 Trinidadian black power revolution.

After returning to London, Howe became a leader of black political activism in the UK. Famously, in 1970, he masterminded a campaign to stop the Metropolitan Police from closing down the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill, a centre of black and celebrity culture in London which was raided 12 times in six months by the force. This climaxed in a pitched battle between police and 250 protesters, following which Howe and eight others - the so-called “Mangrove Nine” were charged with riot, affray and assault.

Conducting his own defence over 55 days at the trial, Howe not only secured some measure of acquittal for all the defendants, but forced the judge to acknowledge a level of racial hatred within the Met. “He basically turned it into a trial of the Police,” Bunce concludes. “His defence appealed to the Magna Carta, and the media loved it because it was rooted in English traditions of fair play, but was also enormously radical and subversively funny.”

Ten years later, Howe was again at the centre of a landmark moment in racial politics in Britain when, after the New Cross Fire, in which 13 young black people died, he organised ̽��ֱ��Black People’s Day of Action, a march across London, protesting against police mishandling of the case. During the 1970s and 80s, he also became a prominent journalist and broadcaster, writing for publications including ̽��ֱ��Guardian and editing the magazine Race Today, while presenting a series of programmes which covered ethnic minority issues for a general TV audience on Channel 4.

As late as 2011 he remained a controversial public figure, by refusing to condemn the London Riots and instead demanding action on the disproportionate number of young black men who were being targeted by police stop-and-search strategies - a policy which had resulted in the shooting of Mark Duggan and precipitated the unrest.

But even though the urban black poor in Britain remain a marginalised group in society today, Bunce argues that the history of British Black Power should be also be seen as having created real social change, not least in the form of a cultural shift which enabled the equality bills of the 2000s, and the more effective representation of ethnic diversity in the media.

“ ̽��ֱ��vast majority of people in Britain today want a fair and decent society,” he added. “ ̽��ֱ��debate now is about how we achieve that. ̽��ֱ��idea that, for example, there is racism within the police force would have been entirely unacceptable in the 1970s. What Howe and the Black Power Movement achieved is recognition that grass-roots activism and community action can contribute to real change.”

A new biography of Darcus Howe, which offers the first detailed history of Britain’s little-known Black Power movement, claims that the racism it fought is being overlooked in modern narratives about the nation’s past.

̽��ֱ��truth was never as good as we like to think; the history of black people in this country from Windrush until at least the 1970s is one of being treated as second-class citizens.

Robin Bunce

Private collection of Darcus Howe

Darcus Howe, far right, leading the demonstration on the Black People’s Day of Action, March 2, 1981. He is accompanied on the truck by two of his sons, Darcus Jr. and Rap.

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