Shop Books

Pit Women. Coal Communities in Northern England in the Early Twentieth Century.

Griselda Carr

Combining her experience of living in a mining village for two decades with her training in social studies, Carr describe how women were an integral part of the mining industry from 1900 to the nationalization of the mines in 1947. Her original goal was to find the foundations of the strength women demonstrated during the strike of 1984-85. Distributed by Paul & Co. Publishers Consortium. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Jobs With Justice. 25 Year, 25 Voices

Eric Larson (ed)

For 25 years, the labour-community coalition Jobs with Justice has endured the brutal vagaries of the global economy with a single alternative economic vision. By putting its ideas into practice, it has won powerful victories with working-class communities. Through a series of interviews and essays, Jobs with Justice allows the activists that have built JwJ to tell why the organisation's core principle - the power of solidarity between unions, community groups, and immigrant, student and faith organisations - continues to drive its victories at all levels.

The Labor Wars. From the Molly Maguires to the Sit-Downs

Sidney Lens

History.

1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike.

Graphic History Collective

"In May and June 1919, more than 30,000 workers walked off the job in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They struck for a variety of reasons-higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. The strikers made national and international headlines, and they inspired workers to mount sympathy strikes in many other Canadian cities. Although the strike lasted for six weeks, it ultimately ended in defeat. The strike was violently crushed by police, in collusion with state officials and Winnipeg's business elites. One hundred years later, the Winnipeg General Strike remains one of the most significant events in Canadian history. This comic book revisits the strike to introduce new generations to its many lessons, including the power of class struggle and solidarity and the brutal tactics that governments and bosses use to crush workers' movements. The Winnipeg General Strike is a stark reminder that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common, and the state is not afraid to bloody its hands to protect the interests of capital. In response, working people must rely on each other and work together to create a new, more just world in the shell of the old."--Site web de l'éditeur.

The Global Imagination of 1968 Revolution and Counterrevolution

George Katsiaficas

With discussions of more than 50 countries, Katsiaficas articulates an understanding of the 1960s' social struggles not bound by national or continental divides nor focused on famous individuals. From the Prague revolt against Soviet communism to the French May uprising, the Vietnam Tet offensive, African anticolonial insurgencies, the civil rights movement, and campus eruptions in Latin America, Yugoslavia, and the United States, this book portrays the movements of the '60s as intuitively tied together. Student movements challenged authorities in almost every country, giving the insurgency a global character. As uprisings occur with increasing frequency in the 21st century, the lessons of 1968 provide useful insights for future struggles.

International Brigade Against Apartheid. Secret's of the People's War That Liberated South Africa

Ronnie Kasrils (ed)

This book reads like a war-time thriller. We hear for the first time from internationalists who secretly worked for the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in the neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tonnes of weapons into the country in the most creative of ways. Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face danger which dogged them at every turn. At least three were captured and served long terms of imprisonment, while others were arrested and, following international pressure, deported. They reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries, who gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause. Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key role players in the international Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and its public mobilisation to isolate the apartheid regime. These include worldwide campaigns like Stop the Sports Tours, boycotting South African products, and black American solidarity. The Cuban, East German and Russian contributions outline those countries' support for the ANC and MK. The public, global AAM campaigns provide the dimension from which internationalists who secretly served MK emerged. This is an invaluable historic resource, explaining in highly readable style the significance of international solidarity for today's youth in challenging times. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ronnie Kasrils is author of the best-selling memoir Armed & Dangerous, which has been translated into German, Russian and Spanish, A Simple Man, the Alan Paton Award-winning The Unlikely Secret Agent, and Catching Tadpoles which has been translated into French. A commander in Umkhonto weSizwe from its inception in 1961 until 1990, he served in government from 1994 to his resignation as minister for intelligence in 2008. He describes himself as a social activist and lives in Johannesburg.

Can't Pay Won't Pay. The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax

Simon Hannah

Thirty years ago, a social movement helped bring down one of the most powerful British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century. For the 30th anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion, Simon Hannah looks back on those tumultuous days of resistance, telling the story of the people that beat the bailiffs, rioted for their rights and defied a government. Starting in Scotland where the 'Community Charge' was first trialled, Can't Pay, Won't Pay immerses the reader in the gritty history of the rebellion. Amidst the drama of large scale protests and blockaded estates a number of key figures and groups emerge: Neil Kinnock and Tommy Sheridan; Militant, Class War and the Metropolitan Police. Assessing this legacy today, Hannah demonstrates the centrality of the Poll Tax resistance as a key chapter in the history of British popular uprisings, Labour Party factionalism, the anti-socialist agenda and failed Tory ideology.

The Case of Joe Hill

Philip S. Foner

Examines the life of the famous Wobbly poet, songwriter, and labor organizer whose execution for murder is seen by many as a case of class persecution.

Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14.

Ralph Darlington

New insights into one of the most important episodes in British labour history The Labour Revolt that swept Britain in the early 20th century was one of the most sustained, dramatic and violent explosions of industrial militancy and social conflict the country has ever experienced. It involved large-scale strikes by miners, seamen, dockers, railway workers and many others, and was dominated by unskilled and semi-skilled workers, many acting independently of trade-union officials. Amidst this powerful grassroots energy, the country saw widespread solidarity action, phenomenal union membership growth, breakthroughs in both industrial unionism and women's union organisation, and a dramatic increase in the collective power of the working-class movement. It heralded political radicalisation that celebrated direct action and challenged head-on the Liberal government and police and military, as well as parliamentary reformism of the Labour Party. Exploring the role of the radical left and the relationship between industrial struggles and political organisation, with new archival research and fresh insights and combining history from below and above, Ralph Darlington provides a multi-dimensional portrayal of the context, causes, actors, dynamics and contemporary significance of the Labour Revolt. Ralph Darlington is Emeritus Professor of Employment Relations at Salford University. His books include Glorious Summer and Radical Unionism. His research has been featured in national newspapers, and radio and television.

Collectives in the Spanish Revolution

Gaston Leval

Gaston Leval's study brings together two aspects that are generally difficult to unite--analysis and testimony. He visited the towns and villages of revolutionary Spain where people had opted to live a libertarian communist lifestyle almost without precedent in history, collectivizing the land, factories, and social services. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution demonstrates clearly that the working class are perfectly capable of running farms, factories, workshops, and health and public services without bosses or managers. It proves that anarchist methods of organizing, with decisions made from the bottom up, can work effectively in large-scale industry, involving the coordination of many thousands of workers in many hundreds of places of work across numerous cities and towns, as well as broad rural areas. Leval's history of anarchy in action also gives insight into the creative and constructive power of ordinary people. The Spanish working class not only kept production going throughout the war, but in many cases managed to achieve increases in output. They improved working conditions and created new techniques. They created, out of nothing, an arms industry without which the war against fascism could not have been fought. The revolution also showed that without the competition bred by capitalism, industry can be run in a much more rational manner. Finally it demonstrated how an organized working class has the power to transform society.

God and the State

Mikhail Bakunin

This pocket book starts with the essay "A Great Thinker or A Man of action: How Did Bakunin Shape Anarchism in the 19th Century?" by Vyvian Raoul and is followed by Bakunin's best known work, the unfinished "God and the State." His denunciation of religion and authoritarian tyranny in all its forms is a basic text of anarchism.

Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement. Victims, Grievance and Blame

Mike Morrissey & Marie Smyth

The difficulties that have dogged the Northern Ireland peace process and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement are rarely out of the headlines. This book gives a uniquely up-to-date insight into one of the issues at stake for the people of Northern Ireland – the long-term impact of political violence on the civil population.The result of extensive research among local communities, and drawing on survey and interview evidence, Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement sets this issue within the context of past conflict and the continuing sectarian violence of the present. In particular it presents the views of ordinary people about their personal experiences of political violence and the impact it has had upon their lives. Moreover, it shows how the Troubles have affected the young people of the region, and looks at the problems facing a society coming out of a protracted period of low-intensity conflict.

War and an Irish Town

Eamonn McCann

War and an Irish Town is Eamonn McCann's classic account of growing up Catholic in a Northern Irish ghetto.

The Hidden Famine. Hunger, Poverty & Sectarianism in Belfast 1840-50

Christine Kinealy & Gerard MacAtasney

Written by one of the outstanding historians of modern Ireland, The Hidden Famine examines the impact of Ireland's Great Famine on the city of Belfast.

Fragments of Victory. The Contemporary Irish Left

Oisín Gilmore & David Landy (eds)

Inspiring insiders' accounts of modern Irish activism under austerity and beyond

Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights

Camilla Fitzsimons & Sinéad Kennedy

A celebration and analysis of a 35-year long grassroots movement that successfully overturned the ban on abortion in Ireland

Austerity Ireland. The Failure of Irish Capitalism

Kieran Allen & Brian O'Boyle

Ireland has been marketed as the poster boy of EU austerity. EU elites and neoliberal commentators claim that the country's ability to suffer economic pain will attract investors and generate a recovery. In Austerity Ireland, Kieran Allen challenges this official narrative and argues that the Irish state's response to the crash has primarily been designed to protect economic privilege. The resulting austerity has been a failure and is likely to produce a decade of hardship. The book offers a deeply informed diagnosis of Ireland's current socio-economic and political malaise, suggesting that a political earthquake is underway which may benefit the left. Austerity Ireland is essential reading for students of Irish politics and economics, as well as those interested in the politics of austerity and the eurozone crisis.

Peace Under Fire. Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement

Josie Sandercock et. al. (eds)

The story of this movement reveals the horror of the occupation and the new hope for growing international solidarity.

Unsilencing Gaza. Reflections on Resistance

Sara Roy

Vagabonds 006. To See In the Dark. Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

Nicholas Mirzoeff

How social media shaped the new global intifada

The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth

Andreas Malm

Malm unearths the shared roots of colonial adventurism in Palestine and fossil fuelled warfare. Israel’s pulverization of Gaza since October 7, 2023 is not only a humanitarian crisis, but an environmental catastrophe. Far from the first event of its kind, the devastation Israel has inflicted on Palestine since October 2023 has merely ushered in a new phase in a long history of colonization and extraction that reaches back to the nineteenth century. In this urgent pamphlet, Andreas Malm argues that a true understanding of the present crisis requires a longue durée analysis of Palestine's subjugation to fossil empire. Returning to the British empire’s first use of steam-power in war, in which it destroyed the Palestinian city of Akka, Malm traces the development of Britain’s fossil empire and shows how this enduring commitment to fossil energy continues to drive Western support for the destruction of Palestine today.

The Palestine Laboratory. How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

Antony Loewenstein

How Israel makes a killing from the occupation of Palestine **WINNER OF THE 2023 WALKLEY NON FICTION JOURNALISM PRIZE** **Finalist for the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing** Israel’s military industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. For more than 50 years, occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an “enemy” population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers this largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos' and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe’s most brutal conflicts. As ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate model.

Leila Khaled. Icon of Palestinian Liberation

Sarah Irving

Dubbed "the poster girl of Palestinian militancy," Leila Khaled's image flashed across the world after she hijacked a passenger jet in 1969. The picture of a young, determined looking woman with a checkered scarf, clutching an AK-47, was as era-defining as that of Che Guevara. In this intimate profile, based on interviews with Khaled and those who know her, Sarah Irving gives us the life-story behind the image. Key moments of Khaled's turbulent life are explored, including the dramatic events of the hijackings, her involvement in the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, her opposition to the Olso peace process, and her activism today. Leila Khaled's example gives unique insights into the Palestinian struggle through one remarkable life – from the tension between armed and political struggle, to the decline of the secular Left and the rise of Hamas, and the role of women in a largely male movement.

Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State

Jeff Halper

What if our understanding of Israel/Palestine has been wrong all along?