The writing of history, and the reception of historical works, reveals quite a lot about the values of a given society. I have written before about the often explicit political character of historians’ interpretations of the French Revolution and this applies not only to the twentieth century but also to the period in which the [...]

Larry Elliott’s article about the current Eurozone crisis in yesterday’s Guardian contained a reference to some interesting research to come out of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. The paper, titled Eurozone Crisis: Beggar Thyself and Thy Neighbour contains some thoughtful insights into the underlying structural causes of the current predicament. [...]

It was almost inevitable. Following Kraft’s acquisition of Cadbury, the US food giant has gone back on its guarantee not to close the Cadbury plant in Somerdale with the loss of 400 jobs. According to the BBC, Cadbury employs 4,500 people in the UK. Kraft has yet to announce plans for its Bournville factory in [...]

I was horrified to read Suzanne Breen’s latest instalment in her brave solo exposition of what is one of the most disturbing stories to emergence from behind the Iron Curtain of the Sinn Féin spin machine in recent years. Two women, the first a former national secretary of Ogra Shinn Féin and niece of Joe [...]

In the midst of one of history’s most severe crises of capitalism, there is no more apt time than the present to briefly survey the basics of Marxist economics. It would be beyond the scope of this short article to trace the development of the theory from the works of Marx up until the present [...]

With the ongoing instability of the devolved institutions and the degeneration of the relationship between the First and deputy First ministers, it is an apposite time to revisit a rather under-rated monograph from the beginning of the year.
‘The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007‘ by Cambridge historian, Martyn Frampton, is a necessary [...]

In a sign of things to come, whatever the result of the next General Election, Ken Clarke has announced Tory plans to sell off the Royal Mail. The democratic choice facing the electorate will be a Tory full-blooded privatisation or a Labour part-privatisation, with the Liberal Democrats also supporting the latter option. Such a democratic [...]

Sunday’s news that SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, would stand aside if he was re-elected as the MP for Foyle came as a surprise to almost everyone. It was assumed by many that his time as leader would be soon coming to an end, but the timing and the nature of his announcement to Mark Devenport [...]

The nature of crises is a multi-faceted one; they seem, at first, to come from nowhere yet they are the unfolding of underlying laws of motion to their ultimate and destructive conclusion; they are both a moment of great catastrophe but also one of great opportunity; they are, so to speak, the end of one [...]