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“Let others talk of glory, let others celebrate the heroes who are to deluge the world with blood…They know not what a cottage is. They know not how the poor live…”

Mike Marqusee’s latest column for Red Pepper celebrates William Frend, a radical who deserves to be better remembered. Contending for the living Red Pepper, August 2014 The 35-year-old Cambridge lecturer William Frend was putting the finishing touches on ‘Peace and Union’, his pamphlet on political reform, in early 1793 when the hostility between Britain and… Read more

The man who went beyond a boundary

CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, February-March 2013 When CLR James’ Beyond A Boundary was first published fifty years ago, the sociology of sport and the politics of popular culture had no place in the academy or on the left. The book had to create its own subject, define a new field of intervention. James… Read more

Obama abroad

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 29 May When it came to foreign affairs, Barack Obama’s first presidential task was a simple one. He had to be better than his predecessor. For this alone, it seems, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. But those who hoped Obama’s promise of “change” would apply to the US’s… Read more

Empires past and present

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 23 April A high court in London is hearing a suit brought against the British government by four elderly Kenyans who were tortured, sexually abused and in one case castrated while held in detention during the British repression of the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. As a result of… Read more

Thoughts on Libya and liberal interventionism

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that liberal interventionism is “fine in theory” but goes wrong “in practise”. I’d suggest that it goes wrong in practise because it’s deeply flawed in theory. The hypocrisy, double standards and selectivity displayed in the western military action in Libya defy enumeration, but just for a start…. In Yemen… Read more