November 1918 brought imperial Germany’s defeat, accelerated by uprisings, while Allied rulers, whose own empires grew larger with victory, were bent on revenge. But as the year began, discontent over food shortages and prices in Britain was magnified by calls for peace, stimulated by Russia’s socialist revolution, which the Lloyd George government was already seeking to reverse. With a close look at the Establishment, popular and anti-war press, John Ellison re-visits this year of change, in which war resisters and the rising socialist movement stood proud.
Spain’s “Left” Critics by Daily Worker editor JR Campbell and George Orwell and Spain by Bill Alexander, who was commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigade, provide a valuable insight into the political controversies and realities of the Spanish Civil War. JR Campbell’s demolition of the ultra left delusions which infected a section of the British left at the time gives a refreshingly partisan and contemporary account of the struggle to organise solidarity with the Spanish Republic Writing many years later Bill Alexander wrote to counteract the damage that George Owell’s mendacious and highly unreliable Homage to Catalonia done to historical truth. The introduction by Tom Sibley provides a valuable context to the period and discusses George Orwell’s political views and the revelations that he ended his life as an informer who denounced his literary and political contemporaries to the British secret police. £4 per copy plus £2 p+p Bulk orders over 20 copies post free
