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History

Marxists must study the history of the class struggle, so that we can apply the lessons in the struggle for communism today. Here, you can find our most recent historical articles. For theoretical articles, click here.

You can also visit our education hub to find a selection of articles, books, talks and reading guides.

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The Cato Street Conspiracy – part one

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are
doomed to repeat them. For this reason, socialists take the study of the past
struggles of working people very seriously. In 1820 six men, convicted of treason, were publicly hanged
and then beheaded outside Newgate Prison in the City of London. The crime of
which they had been convicted was plotting to assassinate the entire Cabinet as
it sat enjoying a working dinner. This attempt at a violent coup d’etat is now
largely forgotten, tucked away as a footnote in the history books. It deserves
to be better known.

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Forty years since the death of Che Guevara – Part Two

Che Guevara was a dedicated revolutionary and Communist. He was also an
internationalist and understood that to defend the Cuban revolution it
was necessary to spread it to other parts of the world. He attempted
this in Africa and Latin America. This was his strong side. His weak
side was that he saw the revolution fundamentally as a peasant
guerrilla struggle and did not fully understand the central role of the
working class in the socialist revolution.

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Forty years since the death of Che Guevara – Part One

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was executed by Bolivian troops near the town of La Higuera on 9 October 1967, following an ambush. The operation was planned by the CIA and organized by US Special Forces. On the 40th anniversary of his death it is appropriate that we make a balance sheet of this outstanding revolutionary and martyr. Alan Woods in a two-part article looks at the evolution of Che Guevara from his early days to the day he was killed.

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Che Guevara: Martyr and Revolutionary

Forty years ago this month, in a small school hut in La Higuera,
Bolivia, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was brutally executed by the Bolivian
army. Since Che’s death, the popular media have tried to
assimilate his image and turn it into a harmless symbol. They have,
however, not succeeded in burying the memory of Che, just as they have
not managed to solve the problems of poverty and destitution in the
third world.

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This land is our land! The story of the Kinder Scout mass trespass in 1932

Kinder Scout in the Derbyshire peak
District is one of the most beautiful areas in Britain. The high
moorland has no farming value, yet working people were denied all
access. The area was reserved for grouse shooting, a hobby of the
rich. In the Great Depression after 1929,
walking and cycling were two of the only leisure activities young
workers could afford. On April 24th Benny Rothman
led the mass trespass that eventually gave chunks of ‘our’
country back to us.

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The Crime of Partition – part 3: The role of the Communist Party of India during Partition

Could the Communist party of India have made a decisive difference in the independence movement? Here Jamil shows they were above all the prisoners of the policies imposed by Stalin, which were normally reformist, indeed counter-revolutionary. But occasionally Stalin lurched into an ultra-left phase as in 1947-48, called the ‘Zhdanov offensive.’ In lurching from right to left, a drunk will at one point be found upright. That is the significance of the correct perception of what was happening in India by the Moscow commentators Dyakov and Zhukov.

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[Ted Grant Archive – Update] British Refuse Arms to Indians

The threatened invasion of India by Japanese imperialism in 1942
brought the question of India front and centre before the British
working class. Rather than arm the Indian people and risk India falling
into the hands of the Indians, the British imperialists would have
prefered it to fall, temporarily, into the hands of the Japanese.

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[Ted Grant Archive – Update] The I.L.P. – A Ship Without a Compass

In the middle of the war the ILP was floundering. Not having
a fully worked out Marxist programme, it combined opportunism and sectarianism
at the same time. They could not understand the method as outlined by Ted Grant
at the time, which was not to issue mere denunciations of the Labour Party
leaders. It could "only be done by demonstrating to the masses, by their own
experience, that their leaders are incapable of representing their interests."

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From July to September: Revolution and Counter revolution

This instalment, in a series of articles published by Socialist Appeal over the year that marks the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, looks at the tumultuous events of the July days in Petrograd. What attitude Lenin and Trotsky took towards the movement of the workers in the capital is a valuable lesson in the tactical flexibility of the Bolsheviks. The impotence of the Kornilov reaction that followed demonstrates the irresistable power the working class wields when it is united.

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The Crime of Partition – part 2

After World War II the British imperialists were in a hurry to leave
India. The Partition of British India in 1947, which created the two
independent states of India and Pakistan, was followed by one of the
cruellest and bloodiest migrations and ethnic cleansings in history. 

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