John Newsinger

The Conservative right was determined to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Waterloo bloodbath in style.

After all, the centenary in 1915 had been spoiled by the fact that, at the time, the British were allied with the French against the Germans who had been Britain’s allies in 1815.

Indeed, there had been more German troops in the field that year fighting the French than there were British.

An ex-miner, fiercely proud of the working class, Dennis Skinner has stood out as an uncompromising opponent of Tory governments and their works since he was first elected as a Labour MP in 1970. In his “reminiscences” he makes it absolutely clear that he will die a socialist, a fighter for the class. What marks him out though is his commitment to “extra-parliamentary action”.

He stabbed the first prisoner, leaving him to die in agony from the wound, shot the second in the stomach so he could watch him die as well, and the third he set on fire with a phosphorous grenade so he could watch him burn to death.

On 23 April 1899 Sam Hose, a black farm labourer, was lynched in Palmetto, Georgia, after killing his employer in self-defence. An excursion train was run from Atlanta carrying over a thousand people to watch the spectacle with the guard famously calling, “All aboard for the burning.” Even by the standards of the time (more than 80 black men and women were lynched in the US in 1899), Hose’s lynching was a brutal affair. His ears, fingers, face and genitalia were cut off in front of a jeering crowd of men, women and children.

The Order of the British Empire (OBE) was created on 4 June 1917. Its motto was “For God and the Empire”. The year of its foundation was not coincidental — it was very much a royal response to the pressures of total war, industrial unrest and revolution.

King George V was very worried that the monarchy was under threat — something dramatic had to be done to attach “ordinary” people to a system that was founded on privilege.

The Scottish insurgency has been successfully contained by a mixture of threats, scare stories and fraudulent promises, but what a fright it gave the ruling class.

BBC reporter Nick Robinson remarked that he could actually smell Cameron’s and Miliband’s fear when it looked as if the Yes vote was gathering momentum.

It was this fear that led the three party leaders, Miliband, Cameron and Clegg, to make what is likely to become their infamous “vow”. Given the track record of these men one can only admire their nerve.

Regular readers of Owen Jones’s various newspaper and magazine articles will be aware that there are, in fact, two Owen Joneses. The radical Jones and the responsible Jones. One week the radical Jones can write of his appreciation of the film Pride, making clear his support for the miners in 1984-85 and endorsing the view that “real change always comes from the bottom up”.

Surely we have nothing to complain of in this war. We shall get Mesopotamia, Palestine, the German colonies in South Africa and the islands in the Pacific, including one containing mineral
deposits of great value… I am told that Mesopotamia contains some of the richest oil fields in the world.” So said British Prime Minister Lloyd George on 23 April 1919.

This is a book to warm the shrunken diseased walnut that passes for Michael Gove's heart. It is very much a sign of the times: our rulers feel absolutely on top, the country is once again run by public schoolboys, the rich are getting richer, and the living standards of the hoi polloi are being cut.

In the aftermath of the First World War the US labour movement suffered a succession of crushing defeats that were to leave it on its knees throughout the 1920s. A countrywide "open shop" campaign saw union organisation broken, driven out of whole industries, and militants and activists sacked and blacklisted.