Tag: Politics
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The Pursuit of Morality: The Difference Between The First British New Left and The Orthodox Communism

The Soviet intervention in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was an upheaval for British socialists. Jiajun Wang looks at the British workers’ movement and nuclear disarmament as well as the New Left.
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‘Fighting Bob’: Attempting an American Labour Party

Written by Sam Marks. US Politics remains, on average, shifted to the right when compared to European states. But, the 1924 presidential election has one often overlooked candidate who was the champion of the progressive movement. Sam Marks explores the significance of Robert M. ‘Fighting Bob’ La Follette.
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My Year Abroad: Studying History in France

Written by Martin Greenacre. In Britain, we have an absurd fixation with university league tables. In the absence of a similar system in France, I knew little of what to expect when I arrived in Dijon for my year abroad studying history at the Université de Bourgogne. The titles of the courses were not even…
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The Great War Column: Edinburgh’s Fallen Alumni

Written by Ashleigh Jackson. James Crozier was a former medical student at the University of Edinburgh and was tragically killed within the first few weeks of World War I. The University’s Roll of Honour from 1915 lists the first of those to be killed during the opening months of the conflict. The document, which can…
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5 Minutes With… Dr Robert Crowcroft

Written by Sophia Fothergill. Dr Robert Crowcroft has been teaching at the University of Edinburgh for five years, and currently teaches an honours class entitled ‘From New Jerusalem to New Labour: The Labour Party in Contemporary Britain’. The interview below was conducted in October 2016. Can you briefly summarise your area of interest in history? I…
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Pan-Africanism and Western Domination

Written by Pablo Perez Ruiz. “Toussaint’s failure was the failure of enlightenment, not of darkness.” – C.L.R James, Black Jacobins. “This is where the African intellectual lives in paradoxical terms: powerful yet powerless.” – Toyin Falola, Nationalism and African Intellectuals. Pan-Africanism, when taken as a broad ‘group of movements’ with ‘no single nucleus’ and stemming from the experiences of the…
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Review: Scotland and Europe – The Past Shaping the Future

Written by Felix Carpenter. A review of Professor Sir Tom Devine’s lecture ‘Scotland and Europe: The past shaping the future’, September 2016. Sir Tom Devine enters the stage, introduced as the foremost historian of modern Scottish history. Professor Devine is that unusual thing: an establishment figure who in 2014 supported Scottish independence, at the cost…
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Presidential Campaign 2016: Thoughts from Across the Pond…

Some thoughts on the current Presidential Campaign from Professor George H. Gilliam, UVA. The great philosopher Woody Allen once remarked that 80 per cent of life is just showing up. Most Americans have stopped showing up at political events. This year, only about 9 per cent (fewer than one in ten!) of the population actually…
