Fifty years ago Russian tanks rolled across the Czechoslovakian border. They brought the upheavals of 1968, that year of global revolt against war, oppression and capitalism, into the heart of officially “socialist” Eastern Europe.1 Students took to the streets, fought… Continue Reading
The pamphlet Education, Capitalism and the Student Revolt, chapters one and four of which are reproduced here, was written by Chris Harman, Richard Kuper, Dave Clark, Andrew Sayers and Martin Shaw, five student members of the International Socialism group (forerunner… Continue Reading
On 20 April 1968 Enoch Powell gave a talk in a small upstairs room to 85 Tories in Birmingham’s Midland Hotel. The words of this Conservative shadow minister and MP for nearby Wolverhampton South West were not directed towards these… Continue Reading
A review of Celia Hughes, Young Lives on the Left: Sixties Activism and the Liberation of the Self (Manchester University Press, 2015), £70 For those who argue that women and men make history, it makes sense to assess the 1968… Continue Reading
Revolutionaries do not determine events, nor do they predict them.1 Lenin was surprised by both 1905 and 1917. What revolutionaries can do is understand events and develop a strategy to take advantage of them. “All revolutions in history have begun… Continue Reading
On the fortieth anniversary of his assassination, eulogies on the life of Martin Luther King Jr come cheap, and often from the most unlikely quarters. The gesture is by now an almost obligatory one for American politicians, including many who… Continue Reading
The French events of May 1968 were a profound shock to General de Gaulle’s ten-year presidency and the French state. A student rebellion at the prestigious University of Paris sparked a general strike of roughly ten million workers. Twenty years… Continue Reading
Why celebrate the anniversary of 1968? Media commentators treat the year as one of student rebellion and youthful excess, but it was much more than that, as the late David Widgery explained in this article, written on the tenth anniversary… Continue Reading
January 1: US opinion polls show support for war and re-election of President Lyndon Johnson. 17: Harold Wilson’s Labour government announces major cuts package. 250 students sit in at Aston University. 22: Illegal assembly by 800 philosophy students in fascist… Continue Reading