Neville Kirk

Since the 2007-8 financial crisis and its aftershocks, international capitalism has once again been in crisis. The crisis has been particularly marked in the UK and its outcome is currently unclear. Based upon a wealth of sources, from newspapers, journals, government, political party and polling organisation publications, as well as archival and secondary material, Neville Kirk examines the systemic crisis facing the nations of the UK. The book traces the crisis from the period following the 2016 EU referendum up to 2022, a period during which the crisis intensified and became more widespread. Kirk covers the elections of 2017 and 2019, political fragmentation, Scottish nationalism, Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, continuing economic problems and conflicts around class, gender, race and nation. Finally, the book considers competing pathways out of the current impasse. Through his thorough examination of the UK's main political parties and players, Kirk offers the reader a new and original understanding of how we reached the present situation.

Division, Conflict and Capitalism in the United Kingdom

A Nation in Crisis

Unearthing events that have barely been covered in recent published records, this account examines the conflicts of a remote Scottish Highland community in the 1900s, bringing to light a broad spectrum of social and economic concerns, including a remarkable willingness to fight for principles and the welfare of friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Exploring a wide range of experiences and loyalties, this history compares successes and failures, as well as compromises, to discover the historiographical significance of a forgotten land.

Ballachulish 1900-1910

Custom and Conflict in 'the Land of the Gael'

This is a pathbreaking comparative and trans-national study of the neglected influences of nation, empire and race upon the development and electoral fortunes of the Labour Party in Britain and the Australian Labor Party from their formative years of the 1900s to the elections of 2010. Based upon extensive primary and secondary source-based research in Britain and Australia over several years, it makes a new and original contribution to the fields of labour, imperial and 'British world' history. The book offers the challenging conclusion that the forces of nation, empire and race exerted much greater influence upon Labour politics in both countries than suggested by 'traditionalists' and 'revisionists' alike. The book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars in history and politics and all those interested in and concerned with the past, present and future of Labour politics in Britain, Australia and more generally.

Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present

Labour and the Politics of Empire

John Belchem

This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of language in relation to the subject of history. The British and American contributors put forward the idea that language is a broadly based means of communication with contested and consensual meanings, and that such meanings must be revealed and evaluated by precise historical contextualisation of language and proper attention to established rules of historical method. The essays contend that the connections between the linguistic and the social must be rethought. The book aims to move beyond the unproductive fragmentation and relativism, the narrow textual range and the literal and anti-realist readings of the postmodern 'linguistic turn' to offer a rigorous approach to the study of language and the subject of history.

Languages of Labour

This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of language in relation to the subject of history. The British and American contributors put forward the idea that language is a broadly based means of communication with contested and consensual meanings, and that such meanings must be revealed and evaluated by precise historical contextualisation of language and proper attention to established rules of historical method. The essays contend that the connections between the linguistic and the social must be rethought. The book aims to move beyond the unproductive fragmentation and relativism, the narrow textual range and the literal and anti-realist readings of the postmodern ’linguistic turn’ to offer a rigorous approach to the study of language and the subject of history.

In recent years historians and other social scientists have widely questioned the continued relevance of social class - as historical relationship, as sociological category, as philosophical concept, and in terms of its enduring political significance. The success of the British Conservative Party since 1979, combined with the weaknesses and failures of the Labour movement, have led historians and social scientists to reconsider the general nature of connections between the 'social' and the 'political' and the specific relations between the working class and socialist and Labour politics. This collection of essays is a multi-disciplinary critique of the new revisionism, which demonstrates the continued vitality and promise of non-reductionist and non-determinist modes of class analysis.

Defences and Challenges

Social Class and Marxism

Yann Béliard

In most studies of British decolonisation, the world of labour is neglected, the key roles being allocated to metropolitan statesmen and native elites. Instead this volume focuses on the role played by working people, their experiences, initiatives and organisations, in the dissolution of the British Empire, both in the metropole and in the colonies. How central was the intervention of the metropolitan Left in the liquidation of the British Empire? Were labour mobilisations in the colonies only stepping stones for bourgeois nationalists? To what extent were British labour activists willing and able to form connections with colonial workers, and vice versa? Here are some of the complex questions on which this volume sheds new light. Though convergences were fragile and temporary, this book recapture the sense of uncertainty that accompanied the final decades of the British Empire, a period when radical minorities hoped that coordinated efforts across borders might lead not only to the destruction of the British Empire but to that of capitalism and imperialism in general. Exploiting rare primary sources and adopting a resolutely transnational approach, our collection makes an original contribution to both labour history and imperial studies.

Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s

Workers of the Empire, Unite

A pioneering study of the neglected transnational activities and influences of two important, connected socialists, British-born Tom Mann (1856-1941) and Australian-born Robert Samuel 'Bob' Ross (1873-1931)

Transnational Radicalism and the Connected Lives of Tom Mann and Robert Samuel Ross

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of academic and popular interest in the issue of social identity. Yet the subject areas of regional and sub-regional identities, and historical engagements between ’the regional’, ’the local’ and ’the national’, remain very neglected. Seeking to make a contribution towards redressing these areas of neglect and to further advancing our knowledge and understanding of the general issue of social identity, this volume of essays offers the reader an exploration of some of the rich and varied, historical interpretations of ’the North’ and ’Northernness’. The focus rests mainly, but not exclusively, upon the North of England. Taken as a whole, the essays highlight the contingent, fluid, and ambiguous nature of ’Northenness’, its complex and shifting interplay with feelings of localism and nationalism, and the profound, if varying, influences of class, race, gender, sport, tourism, music and political and economic structures and concerns upon ’northern’ identities. This book will hold a general appeal to readers interested in the issue of social identity, especially in its regional and local manifestations and engagements. It will find a wide readership across the humanities and social sciences. It should be compulsory reading for those in New Labour addressing the issue of the ’North-South divide’.

Neville Kirk

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